Last night was the final night of a course in social gerontology I taught at the University of Bridgeport. I left the class feeling optimistic about humans. While walking to my car I reflected on an interview of Dr. Charlotte Perry, Medical Anthropologist at UCSF. When asked about the needs of aging African Americans she said,
“I did a study in the Southeastern part of the United States of a large group of widows living in subsidized housing. The widows who were “weller” (for lack of a better term) were in fact taking care of those in the housing complex that weren’t as well. The housing complex management took no responsibility for making assessments on health status beyond the initial application that showed that applicants were able to manage their daily lives. People didn’t come forth and say, “Well, now I’m unable to do this,” because if they did, they would no longer be able to live there. What we found was that younger widows were taking care of those who were frail.”
The “weller widows” don’t get much press but I believe they actually reflect the values and beliefs of most humans.
On the ride home, I was jolted out of my euphoria by News Radio 88 which had quite a different story to tell. It is alleged that one of Wall Street’s most trusted investment advisors, Bernie Madoff has actually been a fraud. He stands accused of the largest Ponzi scheme in history. The losses may approach 50 billion dollars.
When I got home, I emailed my cyber-friend who is securities fraud investigator, asking, “Is Bernie Madoff a con artist?” This morning on awakening I eagerly opened her reply hoping to read a long story of some terrible mistake. The email said only, “Of course.”
The Wall Street Journal has the most detailed account I could find of the unraveling of Madoff’s life. FBI agent Theodore Cacioppi said Madoff’s investment advisory business had “deceived investors by operating a securities business in which he traded and lost investor money, and then paid certain investors purported returns on investment with the principal received from other, different investors, which resulted in losses of approximately billions of dollars.”
The WSJ also tells the story of Madoff the entrepreneur who started his company with “$5,000 he saved from a lifeguarding at Rockaway Beach in Queens and a job installing underground sprinkler systems, according to a 2000 report in a trade magazine, Wall Street + Technology.” Lifeguard to Wall Street vanguard? does sound a little far-fetched for anyone but a sociopath/psychopath.
Is it possible Madoff is a sociopath? or maybe one of Paul Babiak’s psychopathic Snakes in Suits?
In Chapter 12, of Unmasking the Psychopath, Dr. Ethyl Spector Person compares entrepreneurs to psychopaths. She states, “In their personality styles, both psychopaths and entrepreneurs are action oriented and innovative rather than reactive and inhibited. In particular, they utilize manipulation of the interpersonal field”¦In the entrepreneur, domination and the will to power are incorporated into the ego ideal and therefore stand at considerable psychic distance from primitive sadistic wishes”¦Sadism must be vented (in the psychopath), in order to preserve the sense of self; sadism saturates the interpersonal enactment of intra-psychic dramas and ultimately leads to downward drift in the lives of psychopaths.”
Can we infer from the above quote that sadism and downward drift differentiate the psychopath from the entrepreneur?
I’ll leave you with the story of one of Madoff’s alleged victims. “Susan Leavitt of Tampa Bay, Fla., said she had several million dollars of inherited money invested in the firm and added $500,000 earlier this year. A stay-at-home mother with two children, the 46-year-old Ms. Leavitt says she is considering going back to work. “That was my nest egg for the children, and my future. I’ll never see much back, I’m sure,” she said.”
I move we put disadvantaged African American widows in charge of Wall Street, the Banks, the Auto Industry and the country. Anyone else for that?
For more information on the scam, read this report on Bernard Madoff arrested over alleged $50 billion fraud on Yahoo News.
To read an interview of Madoff from 2000, visit CNN.
Wini
Yeah Oxy he also sang “What Would You Give (In Exchange for Your Soul).
Good ole Charlie D!
EyeoftheStorm
An excellent Op-Ed column by Paul Krugman. It’s about Madoff and the entire Wall St. culture which breeds and supports similar activity. Krugman suggests such practices have given rise to what he calls The Madoff Economy!.
If our American economy has evolved into a Madoff economy with countless victims, are the Wall St. Madoff wannabes mirroring his pathology as well. If so, what does that say about our tolerance of it and our blindness to it as a society? Politicians, regulators who looked the other way, the Federal Reserve, innocent investors who believed what they were told, and our legislators who voted for bailouts. Talk about red flags!
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/19/opinion/19krugman.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink
Rune
Hello Carries:
There is indeed something else — notice the “hurry, hurry” around the bailout vote? Notice how the last many years have held torture and control and extreme variations in our economic situation to be “normal”?
Notice how lies are “truth” and telling the truth becomes a violation of the “patriot act”?
I keep being reminded of the Dalai Lama advising us to meditate on compassion. With compassion in our minds and hearts, we are more likely to do the right thing. And when we are wise enough (through our terrible experiences) to recognize the fraud in front of us, we can test our observation by noting whether that person also carries the vibration of compassion, or that person is hell-bent on chaos.
I believe our only way out of the current mess is through compassion –as Dr. Leedom says, the “weller” taking care of the others. The fiber of our economic system is in shreds; it no longer exists. What Madoff did is scarcely anything compared to the gutting of our nation in the past seven and some years. We could even recover from Madoff if we had jobs, measured and predictable appreciation so our houses had value, decent mortgage rates.
It was never about “bad borrowers.” It was always about a system being gutted by psychopathic thrillseekers.
Rune
And, no, it wasn’t even about greed. If it was, it would make more sense.
Carolyn A Silvers
I am so glad to discover this site. I am probably older than
all of you. I was married to a sociopath for 20 years. In those days there was not much understanding about the disorder and he had me confinced that I was the nutty one. I have been physically free of his prison for over 20 years and now in a good marriage. After my freedom I went back to school and obtained my masters in Education. However, the effects of having my personality, opinions, and dreams hyjacted pop up to haunt me in nightmares. Six wifes later, he died on my 60th birthday. I was actually happy thinking I would forget him now. However, there is not a day that his horrid face, sound of his voice, or a memory doesn’t pop into my head. I wonder if we are ever free of their control and prisons.
Indigoblue
CAS
I believe you can be free , but you have to choose to be free !
I did this by 1. Give Him to God. 2. Forgive myself and Him.
CAS
Rape cannot be validated ! Physical , mental , Financial ! It does not matter what insignificant tiny miniscule part we play in the Movie. It is not our fault and no one deserves to be Parasitized! LOVE JJ
Stargazer
Carolyn,
My mother married some sort of sociopathic narcissist (not sure of the label) who was abusive to my sister and me from the time I was 7 till I left home at 16. Back in those days there was no information or resources about abusive people. To this day, my mother doesn’t realize how harmful of a person he was and how much damage he did to us. I admire you for having the courage to face this past marriage and come out of denial about what you were dealing with. It can’t be easy looking back after so many years. It is understandable that you are still affected by it. Trauma symptoms don’t know any time table and can last a lifetime. There are some forms of therapy that address trauma specifically. Sounds like you may be a good candidate for some of those things. I hope you will find it therapeutic to talk about it here and learn about it. Maybe it will give some of this stress in your psyche an outlet of expression.
Congratulations, too, on rebuilding your life. You are a role model for many of us here.
Peace out,
StarG
neveragain
Thank you JJ for the comments on rape. Needed that. Have suffered physical (before I was even a teen, by a stranger, and my family just TOTALLY ignored the whole thing) and emotional rape, and I’m here to say the emotional is MUCH WORSE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! God, how I wish the P had just beat me up and left me for dead. MUCH easeir to put behind you.
Wini
Rune: What is your definition of GREED?
Go put the word in the search engine and see what is listed under it’s headings. You’ll be surprised.
Peace.