Three Dead Executives Add to Unease with World Economy

A high profile job, a comfortable income and the respect of peers was apparently not enough to prevent three men in the banking industry from taking their own lives in the past week.  William Broeksmit was found hanging in his London home.  When he retired in February 2013, he was a senior manager at Deutsche Bank and the head of risk optimization for the bank. He was considered one of the finest minds in the world on the subject of risk management.

Also in London, Gabriel Magee fell to his death from the roof of J. P. Morgan's 33 story European headquarters building at 25 Bank Street. Magee was a 39 year old vice president of technology for J. P. Morgan.  He died at approximately 8:00 a.m. But his body lay covered by a sheet until it was moved about four and one half hours later. His parents are said to be angry at the bank because the bank had failed to call them. They described their son as being happy with his life. They are planning on traveling to London from their home in Albuquerque, New Mexico to find the truth of what happened to him.

In Tacoma, Washington, the body of 50 year old economist Mike Dueker was found near the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. Police said it appeared he had climbed over a four foot fence and fallen to his death down a 50 foot embankment. He had been reported missing by friends on January 29. Dueker was the chief economist at Russell Investments.  He had formerly been an economist with the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank. He was very highly regarded as a researcher in the financial world. His particular area of expertise was the economic cycle. He was the author of many research papers. His best known paper was titled “Strengthening the case for the yield curve as a predictor of U.S. recessions" which he wrote while he worked for the Federal Reserve.

It is shocking to see so many suicides of high profile executives in the banking industry within only a few days of one another. These three men had successful careers at the very top of their industry. They had friends and family who cared for them. And yet they have allegedly all taken their own lives. This comes at a bad time for the banking industry which has been struggling since 2008 to come out of the recession caused by the collapse of the United States real estate market which lead to an interbank credit crisis that bankrupted many subprime mortgage lenders. Many people feel that the monetary policies of the various central banks have only been a temporary patch on the world financial system. Recently, there has been weakness in the emerging markets that has been a drag on the world's stock markets. "My Bank" in Russia has halted all cash withdrawals. HSBC has been refusing to give its customers their money from their savings accounts unless they can provide an adequate reason. This makes depositors very nervous in a world where last year Greece seized the deposits of bank customers. 

Why these three men in the same industry died so close together in time will never be answered to everyone's satisfaction. But in a world where things are known to change very suddenly and unpredictably, these three deaths will add to the nervousness many people feel about the safety of their money and the strength of the world economy.