On the brink of disaster, but only this week

So, the world is on the brink of collapse, if you believe some of the pundits this morning. A rather black day on the world's stock markets and people are already thinking the next Wall Street Crash is just around the corner. Having spent the best part of my working years working with, and for, investment banks this journalistic sentiment is rather unsurprising.

Here we have on the one hand, the private and institutional investors who are already nervous about interest rate rises, a collapse in the debt market, and unspectacular equity performance who are now being told in no uncertain terms that they should be taking all the money they can lay their hands on and putting it under a rather large bed somewhere.

What I find interesting is just whose reputations are at risk here. Is it the banks, already heavily criticised for profiteering who are "gambling with your hard earned cash" ? Or the exchanges for running a less than acceptable service ? We should think long and hard about how we accept the freedom of the press, and the downstream impact (often negative) of their reportage on sensitive topics like stockmarket performance. It could all too easily become a self-fulfilling prophecy, allowing the fervour of negativity to stimulate precisely the heightened levels of investor paranoia that perpetuate such downward spirals in the world's stockmarkets.

It just goes to show you. Almost everything in business has a reputation, and increasingly those reputations are becoming key influencers in financial performance.