Gekko

THE life span of international bankers seems to be shortening to something approximating that of fruit flies. In the old days—that is, four or five years ago—there was some memory among them of past problems on their balance sheets caused by overlending, loose terms, and general market euphoria That knowledge now seems to be lost.

The annual meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund were held in Washington at the beginning of the month, and, for my sins, I went. While the entertaining style has been scaled down over the years, from imperial to merely regal, there was more business being done than ever. And an entire generation of bankers had disappeared. These were the older glad-handers with great Rolodexes—the paper kind. There was much to despise about them, including their shallow analyses, their roles in the debt debacles of the Seventies and Eighties, and their snobbishness, self-dealing, and expense-account excesses. But they did have a couple of things going for them: the burn scars from their previous mistakes and some personal style.