Panicking over Wall Street? It’s a natural thing

Atlanta financial planner and jazz fancier Joe Foley usually puts the mellow Thelonious Monk on the stereo when he gets home at night, but lately he’s been listening to “a lot of screaming.”

That would be his clients, shrieking “Sell!”

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Todd R. McQueen/Special

John Bell, Widespread Panic’s guitarist and singer: ‘I would say we’re not panicking, but we’re very aware that something’s afoot here. I don’t know if panicking helps in any situation, whether you’re onstage or in a burning movie house.’

PANIC AS PRODUCT
• "Panic": 2001 movie starring William H. Macy, John Ritter and Neve Campbell. "A story of family, lust, murder ... and other midlife crises."
• Panic Inc.: An Oregon software company.
• Widespread Panic: Athens-based rockers, recently inducted into Georgia Music Hall of Fame (they're at Lakewood Amphitheatre Oct. 17-18 and the Tabernacle Oct. 19).
• Panic at the Disco: Las Vegas-based rock band.
• Manic Panic: A line of "extreme" hair color, cosmetics and fashion by "Tish & Snooky" of New York City.
• Zombie Panic: An online video game "based on a classic zombie outbreak scenario."
• Creative Panic: Arlington, Va.-based designers/producers of silk-screened posters.
-- Compiled by Michael Gray

• Don't panic! Save money instead!

BUSINESS
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The howls aren’t just coming from Wall Street. Crumbling banks, international markets in flames, a vicious presidential campaign and a couple of wars have put our hair on end on Main Street, too.

Our leaders tell us to chill — “anxiety can feed anxiety,” President George W. Bush warned Friday — but that’s easier said than done. Watching the federal government running scared doesn’t help. If they’re terrified, should we really stay calm?

“On days like this,” finance writer John Waggoner said Friday, before Monday’s market rebound from a run of gloomy financial news, “it’s really just raw, naked emotion.” Wall Street brokers generally try to project an air of professorial cool, but these days “they’re running around like they’re on fire.”

Reuters news service helped throw a little gasoline on the blaze late last week, terming the international situation a “global stock market panic.”

So is it time to panic? Perhaps.

Wired for panic

Ask Waggoner, the author of “Bailout: What the Rescue of Bear Stearns and the Credit Crisis Means for Your Investments.” He wrote it back in the spring, before Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers also cratered. In other words, when things were relatively sunny.

His view is now a bit bleaker. Waggoner said the market, which had dropped 40 percent over the past year by the end of last week, conceivably could drop another 40 percent in short order.

He points out that while for the buyer this is an ideal time — “there are plenty of blue light specials out there” — he concedes that there are few buyers to be found.

That’s because our brains are wired to go with the herd, and when the herd is selling stock or waiting in line for gas, it requires significant mental stamina to disagree, even if we know it makes the problem worse.

“Just be aware that your judgments are being colored by what everyone is saying, your judgments are not strictly your own,” says Gregory Berns, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Emory University and author of “Iconoclast: A Neuroscientist Reveals How to Think Differently.”

When we consider going against the grain, the almond-shaped amygdala area of our brains resists. It pulls us toward the group — and often toward panic.

“It’s a fear of being the one left behind,” Berns says. “We’re completely fixated in the moment.”

Stress on top of stress

Perception is all important, which is why our recent gasoline shortage triggered a more visceral reaction than the drought.

Despite the lack of rain, liquid still came out of the tap, and most of us weren’t watching the reservoir go down. Gas is more immediate and emotional, says Lars Perner, an assistant professor of clinical marketing at the University of Southern California.

“You feel your freedom is infringed on,” Perner says. A general sense of anxiety from finances or the election uncertainty does the same. Sleep problems, marital discord and knots in our spine are the payback.

Bob Dalton of Highland Chiropractic said he’s seen more patients lately, and no wonder. Our caffeinated lives tend to be in “fight or flight” mode 24 hours a day anyway, said Dalton. Recent events mean “you’re taking a society that’s already stressed out, and you’re dumping more on them.”

But we are not powerless, Berns points out.

We can delay big decisions, surround ourselves with level-headed people or reframe the problem. We should expect normal stress responses — sleeplessness, headaches, loss of appetite, maybe depression — but shouldn’t let them guide us.

“It’s this instantaneous need — ‘Got to do something, don’t know what,’ ” Berns says. “If you have to do something, do it sparingly.”

And stay optimistic. That advice comes from John Bell, guitarist and singer with Widespread Panic, the Athens jam band recently inducted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame.

Despite the name, “I would say we’re not panicking, but we’re very aware that something’s afoot here,” said Bell, who will be in Atlanta for a three-show run next weekend. “I don’t know if panicking helps in any situation, whether you’re onstage or in a burning movie house.”