Last week Lovefraud published an article about the paper written by a British professor who theorized that the global financial crisis was caused by corporate psychopaths. Here’s another article on the same topic with an amazing twist: One British investment banker admits that his company actually hired corporate psychopaths on purpose, because “their characteristics exactly suited them to senior corporate finance roles.” I wonder if that bank is still in business.
Read Brian Basham: Beware corporate psychopaths they are still occupying positions of power, on Independent.co.uk.
Many companies intentionally hire psychopaths, they may not know the name for them, but they hire people with cut-throat ability who will be able to clear a path through the human workers to get the best profits for the company. The bottom liine is that “the company” does not care for the people who work there, or even the customers because a “company” is the people at the top, the spread sheet, it is not human, does not have empathy and people who work there are simply “human resources” just like lumber or chemical resources, what happens to the things the company uses to make money, up the bottom line, is unimportant as long as the bottom line goes up.
Of course “the company” may pretend to care about the people who work there so hard….but it took me a long time to realize that “the company” or the “hospital” or whatever you want to call it, does NOT care about the “human resources” as anything more than a RESOURCE to be used and exploited.
There may be some individuals who work for”the company” who care about people, but they won’t last long in anything except middle or lower management.
There are more Bernie Madoffs in “financial companies” than Mother Teresas. So as long as you know what you are dealing with, and therefore can protect yourself, it should help you survive “the company” where you work and realize that your pay check is the only “love” and “loyalty” you will get from “the company” you should be okay!
Excellent comment Oxy – as always. I so tend to believe that the hard work and excellent service I try to provide my clients matters but sometimes I find out to my dismay it does not! That is when I always need to take a good hard look and realize my priorities are a bit out of order…
As for the article, I do take issue with the last statement the author makes “In attempting to understand the complexities of what went wrong in the years leading to 2008, I’ve developed a rule: “In an unregulated world, the least-principled people rise to the top.” And there are none who are less principled than corporate psychopaths. ”
His premise is that the regulations are written fairly and in order to keep the psychopaths in check. What we see here in the US anyway is that psychopaths in finance and in government have colluded to create regulations that benefit them and protect them from honest competition by honest people. When Goldman Sachs is in the backroom writing “the regulations” you can be sure as shootin’ that while to the blind it looks like they are adding fees and checks and balances to their processes but truthfully what they do is create barriers to entry for others and then they pass the cost of the fees and regulations on to the customers who have no new options….because Goldman and Barnie Frank and Chris Dodd have made starting a new business in the industry impossible. This is not new.
Breckgirl,
I think the psychopaths have been the “rulers” in resource distribution since we were in caves…they had no concern for others, so they took the most women, the most food, and the most of whatever goods were avaialbe.
Now they are in banks, stocks, company CEOS and they do the same thing only now it is represented by “money” and paper, and they manipulate it to acquire the goods.
Workers are only one of the resources that they manipulate to achieve their ends. There is no loyalty to the workers any more than there are to the widgets or the trucks or the backhoes or assembly lines.
For a while Unions represented the workers against the corporations, but even they became corrupt with the psychopaths rising to the top in the Unions like cream rising to the top of milk. That’s just what happens and the unions then represent the big shot psychopaths in their corner offices instead of the workers\ they claim to represent.
Some industries are controlled by the unions and if you don’t join the union you do not work. Period.
I think in most cases the psychopaths will rise to the top in politics, industry and any other way that they can control the money. They have the advantage that they will climb over their peers with hobnailed boots to get what they want. Makes the climb much easier for a psychopath than for someone with a conscience and empathy for the man /woman he fires or uses.
Breckgirl,
Exactly. Regulations or not, we are screwed as long as psychopaths exist. Rule and regulations mean nothing to them, they will simply meddle in that as well. They are attracted to authority and authorative positions.
My own spath loved to use the police to attack his victims. So the rules and regulations were usurped in his service.
The only solution is education so that we recognize red flags and then to refuse to participate. We’ve seen it in our personal lives and we can see the same principles apply in the greater scheme of things.
Spaths will create the problems JUST SO THEY CAN OFFER A SOLUTION. The solution then empowers them and gives them more control over your life. My spath did this all the time. It’s one of his chief operating procedures. In my case, even before I met him, he had sabotaged my car so that he could offer to fix it when nobody else could. I felt indebted to him and agreed to date him, that was his foot in the door.
Over the years I watched him “fix” so many people’s airplanes and helicopters, so that they became his good friends. Not all of them survived, but the “fixing” is done illegally (without a mechanics license) so that the victim never told anyone that spath was working on the aircraft.
This cycle of causing problems and offering the solution is a classic spath red flag. It is seen when a drug pusher creates addictions and only they can “solve” your dilema. And it is observed in the trauma bond, when the spath love bombs then takes love away. The resulting feeling is that only the spath can salve the hurt of his rejection.
I submit that the bubbles in finance are exactly the same thing. They create the illusion of wealth and easy money, then they take it away. They offer to fix it if only you will give them MORE control over your lives and more money, of course.
It is unfortunate because deregulation fails as miserably as regulation does where spaths are involved. Only NC works with a spath. Don’t feed them your money or emotions.
Legislating regulations and rules doesn’t work really well.
Some examples:
It is a crime to murder people. There are still many murders each year
It is a crime to rob a bank: People still do it
It is a crime to smoke marijuana, snort coke, and other drugs, yet it is the biggest single business in the US
It is illegal for minors to get cigarettes and alcohol, yet the majority of 12 year olds have tried both
It is illegal for an adult to have sex with a 10 year old—yet how many pedophiles are there having sex with children
It is illegal to drive stoned or drunk—how many people do it anyway.
It is illegal to text and drive—how many people do it anyway
And so on, name the law, name the regulation that is followed by those who do not respect any laws. There are none that are not broken.
All a law does is codify what we can punish folks for IF WE CATCH THEM.
Catching a bank robber is easy compared to catching a banker who is stealing or insider trading which is one way they succeed.
This is kind of a funny article to me. My X! husband finally admitted that he hated ranching and as a man who loved to get one over on people, I suggested investment banking. He interviewed and of course, the local honchos LOVED him. The last little qualification was that the head corp office wanted all applicants to take a personality test. And YES, I knew considering who he showed himself to be, my advice was mean spirited but I did it anyway. I advised him to answer as truthfully and sincerely as he could. He FAILED the personality test. To this day, I don’t know if it was b/c he LIED and answered what he THOUGHT they wanted or if it was B/c he followed my advice to be truthful, which would have revealed him to be deceitful (in which case, I expected them to HIRE him).
The ONE time my x! husband was outed as failing a personality test, it was by a corp test for investment bankers! In spite of failing though, they all dismissed the results, thinking it was some anomally, that it could NOT possibly be true. Even though it was the SAME test they took to get their positions! Funny? Well, I got a chuckle out of it.
I worked for an international investment bank. My direct supervisor was a lying, manipulative sociopath who would throw his mother under a bus to get a bigger bonus — then brag how he pays for her medical expenses.
This sociopathic “relationship” ruined my career and my health. I met my x-spath just before I was illegally terminated and in essence, I was simultaneous victim to two sociopaths.
For legal reasons, I cannot name my former employer. Publicly, its face is one of “integrity and responsible corporate conduct” yet is has been part of every major financial scandal at least since World War 2. The fine for one of their illegal activities is the largest ever paid by a financial services company.
Not coincidentally, it is a leading provider of financial services to the very wealthy, with one of their scandals a scheme for wealthy Americans to avoid tax payments.
BBE that is why I think you need to take up a new career one where you are not forced to associate with or be a psychopath. I got out of mid-level hospital management because I did not like treating those under me like dirt….and working them like slaves, and lying to them. I went into rural health clinics as a health care provider and fortunately had a powerful and great doctor as my direct boss for 10 years….we took care of patients and to heck with the hospital’s agenda…then for 4 years I worked for a college as health care provider for the kids and it was wonderful…until a new boss came in that I have NO DOUBT was a psychopathic CEO president of that college and he cut my job to part time which nixed my insurance and other benefits and the hospital said for all those years of loyalty (they actually employed me, and rented me to the college) Find yourself another shift somewhere so you can keep your benefits, here’s a list of where we need nurses.
The manager at the hospital I think is high in P traits and she is now the TOP dog at another hospital. I could go on with what this woman did to other employees for years and years that she was over the clinics. As far as I know every manager they’ve had over the clinics was a cut throat high in P-traits manager. I couldn’t do that.
Retirement is nice. I’m my own boss. LOL But the pay sucks!
Ox;
I am casting a broad net and will this time listen to my gut instincts. I readily admit to having warning signs regarding my sociopathic x-boss and with the x-spath but I proceeded with both.
More my x-boss. We actually worked together in a previous company. I was a consultant there and he was a full-time, but organizationally we were at the same level. Then, I had mixed feelings about him, and in the two years I knew him, he was not doing anything other than looking for another job.
His resume was a best highly exaggerated.
Any time there was an issues, his first response was to look for blame. Of course I would become one of those.
He never accepted calls from anyone less than his level.
He continually lied about status.
In 2006 and 2007, when Wall Street was booming and the company was actively hiring, he only allowed us to interview people from his wife’s placement firm.
My former employer did catch on to his management ineptitude. He left via a voluntary layoff, having effectively been demoted to a figurehead manager. Of course there is no justice in this world, as he is now the CTO of small West Coast firm.
Regarding his placement firm conflict of interest with his wife, this seemed to be the norm, not the exception. I can name a Director, Executive Director, Managing Director, right up to the CIO, each having a “preferred” placement firm.