When the media does a story about the economy or the financial markets, there’s usually a quote from an analyst – a person employed by a bank or a fund to big up its reputation by issuing confident-sounding numbery reports about what’s going on in the markets and what might happen next.
Analysts of various stripes have played a big part in inflating the AI investment bubble which is lifting the US stock market. If and when the market crashes, as many people expect it to do, it would be easy to dismiss such people as fools or cynical mercenaries.
A subtler take on the mentality of the analyst, however, comes from the Spanish novelist Javier Marías (1951-2022). His novels can be effortful, being very long and endlessly flowing from one digression to another as they follow the central character’s chain of thought, but the reward comes in passages which no-one else would have written.
For example, this passage (slightly edited by me) is about someone who works for an intelligence agency but could also apply to a financial market analyst or, for that matter, anyone who is employed by an institution to explain events and guess the future:
“ … You begin by prefacing everything with “I don’t know”, “I’m not sure”; or by qualifying and modifying as much as possible. “It could be.” “I would say that.” “I can’t be sure, but … “ “It seems likely to me that …” “Possibly.” “Possibly not.”
… That is how it is at the beginning. But you soon grow more confident: you sense a commendation or a reproach in an oblique look or a chance remark, directed apparently at no-one in particular and uttered in a neutral tone which you know, nonetheless, is intended for you, that it applies to you. You notice that “I don’t know” does not please, that inhibition is little appreciated, and that ambiguities are met with disappointment and niceties fall on stony ground … that “Perhaps” and “Maybe” are tolerated for the good of the enterprise and of the group who, for all their audacity, do not wish to commit suicide, but they never arouse enthusiasm or passion, or even approval, they come across as faint-hearted and meek. And the bolder you get, the more questions they ask and the more skills they attribute to you, the bounds of what is knowable are always within a hair’s breadth of being lost, and one day you find that they are expecting you to see the indiscernible and to know the unverifiable, to have an answer not just for the probable and even the merely possible, but for the unknown and unfathomable.
The most striking and dangerous thing about this whole business is that you, too, begin to believe yourself capable of seeing and fathoming, of finding out and knowing and, therefore, of hazarding an answer.”
Javier Marías , “Your Face Tomorrow”, Volume 1, page 253, translated by Margaret Jull Costa (Vintage, 2002).
Note how brilliantly the translation turns the Spanish of the original text into a mellifluous yet chilly tone in the English which seems perfect for the world of 20th century British spying. The same world as that of Le Carré, in fact, and though Marias’ writing is quite different in intention and style, it shares his preoccupation with betrayal and psychic damage.
Puck 