Well, it's been a busy weekend for the captains of American finance.  Not quite the way they want to spend a Saturday and Sunday.  With Lehman Brothers bankrupt and Merrill Lynch sold off and AIG teetering on the brink of insolvency, it's a good time to step back and think big thoughts. 

   A Confucian might look at the chaos and say "that's what happens when people focus too much on making profits and not cultivating Humanity."   That is not particularly helpful advice for those consumed at present with the crisis, but Confucius would not want to be helpful in that regard.  He would be more disgusted by the whole affair.  Here, for the record, are some passages from the Analects:

The Master said: "If profit guides your actions, there will be no end of resentment." (4.12)

The Master said: "The noble-minded are clear about Duty.  Little people are clear about profit." (4.16)

The Master said: "If there were an honorable way to get rich, I'd do it, even if it meant being a stooge standing around with a whip.  But there isn't an honorable way, so I just do what I like." (7.12)

The Master said: "The noble-minded devote themselves to the Way, not to earning a living.  A farmer may go hungry, and a scholar may stumble into a good salary.  So it is that the noble-minded worry about the Way, not poverty or hunger." (15.32)

     Just to be clear, in 7.12m the "I just do what I like" should be taken as concentrating on Duty, Ritual and Humanity; that is, after all, what Confucius wants and likes to do.  And that would be his counsel for Wall Streeters today: turn back to what really counts, the cultivation of you closest loving relationships.

      And what of Taoists?  They would pick up on that last quote from the Analects, 15.32, but express Way in there own, expansive terms.   Tao Te Ching passage 34 (from the Hendricks Te Tao Ching translation) comes to mind:

The Way floats and drifts; it can go left or right. It accomplishes tasks and completes its affairs, and yet for this it is not given a name.

The ten thousand things entrust their lives to it, and yet it does not act as their master. Thus it is constantly without desires. It can be named with the things that are small.

The ten thousand things entrust their lives to it, and yet it does not act as their master.It can be named with the things that are great.

Therefor the Sage's ability to accomplish the great comes from his not playing the role of the great. Therefore, he is able to accomplish the great. 

   We might also say that Way moves up and down, markets rise and fall.   Way is beyond our ability to name or describe it; it infuses things both great and small.  It is expressed in big crashes on Wall Street.  All is beyond our control so our best response is not to attempt to impose control.  There will be times of loss and times of gain, one never exists without the other.  These times of loss will pass; Way will accomplish this task like all others.  And, some day, down the road, Way will go up again, a time of gain will return.