thousands of credit crunch suicides feared

No doubt share values somewhere may be effected, up or down is not known, by the good news that Sir Peter Lampl, the missing tycoon, has been found alive, sitting on a bench at Victoria Station.

Sir Peter had been missing for two days after vanishing from his home in Wimbledon, London on Sunday. Earlier today [see photo], it seemed increasingly likely he was about to join the growing list [below] of desperate suicide banker credit crunch casualties; another needless sacrifice to the money gods.

In fact bankers are far less likely to kill themselves in a serious financial crisis than normal mortals. True to form, bankers are more likely to fake suicide.

However, if the experience of the Great Crash of 1929 is anything to go by, thousands of ordinary people could decide to kill themselves in the next year, and succeed. 23,000 Americans committed suicide in the year following the 1929 Crash, the highest number in a 12 month period on record. Hardly any were bankers; just ordinary working people who could not take it any more - farmers who lost their farms, individuals who lost their jobs or savings, and business people who lost their dreams.

Hollywood happily generated the myth of Wall Street bankers killing themselves after the crash, dramatically jumping off the top of New York skyscrapers, and landing on big bouncy cushions in a film studio. Less than 20 Wall Street bankers or speculators actually committed suicide.

If you believe the media today it seems like there is an open season on bankers, and they are finally getting the battering they deserve; but in the real world it is much more likely to be bank customer's blood that will be flowing.

money kills - credit crunch suicide bankers casualty list

23th May 08 - Barry Fox, a veteran Bear Stearns manager, took a drug overdose and then jumped from his 29th-floor apartment after he learned he wouldn't be hired by J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., who were about to buy his firm.

29 Sep 08 - 47-year-old Kirk Stephenson, chief operating officer with the investment company Olivant Advisers, threw himself in front of a 100mph express train at a railway station in Berkshire.

5th Dec 08 - Alex Widmer, 52, Chief Executive Officer of the Swiss Bank Julius Baer, dies unexpectedly as his company's share value drops 60 per cent. His family are reported to say he committed suicide, Julius Baer employees were told he died of an unspecified illness, while the Swiss police refuse to confirm anything. Julius Baer's hedge fund operations had 360 billion Swiss francs invested on behalf of some of the most powerful people, businesses and institutions in the world, including the shadowy Carlyle Group which has close links to President Bush, both junior and senior. Basically the Carlyle Group is a privatised mass murder, rape and pillage multinational conglomerate that specialises in huge government military projects worth billions, and arms trading worldwide. In February 09, Julius Baer unsuccessfully tried to sue Wikileaks over whistleblower revelations concerning Baer's internal tax avoidance plan in the Cayman Islands for companies such as the Carlyle Group, beloved by conspiracy freaks, US presidents, and other top politicians.

22 Dec 08 - Christen Schnor was the head of insurance for HSBC Europe's biggest bank, responsible for Britain and the Middle East. A hotel worker found Schnor naked and hanging by a belt in a closet at the exclusive Jumeirah Carlton Tower hotel in Knightsbridge.

23 Dec 08 - Mr de la Villehuchet, co-founder of an investment management firm that lost $US1.4 billion ($2 billion) of other peoples money and his own personal fortune to Madoff's Fraud, was found dead in his Manhattan office, his arms and wrists slashed with a box cutter, and a rubbish bin positioned so as to catch the blood and not spoil the carpet.

5th Jan 09 -The body of Adolf Merckle, one of Germany's wealthiest men, was discovered near train tracks outside the southern German city of Ulm in what local police described as a "railway accident." There are no signs that anyone else was to blame, they added in a statement. His family later said Merckle committed suicide after his business empire began unraveling amid mounting debt.

5th Jan 09 - Chicago real estate mogul Steven L. Good was found dead in his Jaguar, apparently from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Mr. Good wrote a book called "Churches, Jails and Gold Mines ... Mega-Deals from a Real Estate Maverick."

19th Jan 09 - Patrick Rocca, a leading Irish property investor and 'poster boy' for the 'Tiger' Irish economy, who lost millions when the real estate market bottomed out, waited until his wife took their children to school before he shot himself in the head.

• Don't Panic has an interesting list of 'suicide' bankers.