“Just as some species become extinct in nature, some new financing techniques may prove to be less successful than others.”
The remark was made to the US Congress in September by Anthony Ryan, assistant Treasury secretary. Only when we know the true magnitude of the current financial crisis will we be able fully to appreciate the significance of his words.
Analogies between finance and evolution are in themselves nothing new. “The survival of the fittest” is a phrase that aggressive traders like to use. “It’s Darwinian out there” is a stock utterance by hedge fund managers after an especially tough week. Back in November 2005, a conference hosted by Goldman Sachs, the investment bank, was entitled “The Evolution of Excellence”.
Yet, as became clear at that gathering, when financial practitioners use such terms they seldom understand just how apposite they are. A long-run historical analysis of the development of financial services, going all the way back to the days of Charles Darwin, strongly suggests that evolutionary forces are as much at work in the realm of money as they are in the natural world.
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