Why are we facing a world financial crisis? Perhaps because psychopaths are running the show. In a post on the website Reality Sandwich, author Jonathan Zap writes:
Most psychopaths are not violent criminals; they may be more likely to pursue white-collar crime, where the payoff is so much higher and the odds of detection so much lower.
Psychopaths are perfectly designed for success in many fields, especially business, law and politics. They have higher IQs on average than the general population; they are charming, charismatic and manipulative; they can be decisive and take risks without anxiety, and they are ruthless, cunning and coldly rational. Psychopaths often personify many of the traits that the human resource departments of many corporations look for in job candidates:Â confidence, charisma, decisiveness, emotional detachment, coolness under fire and relentless drive.
In Part One of the article, the author gives a pretty good description of the psychopathic personality. In Part Two, he discusses examples of psychopathic behavior in business, referring to cases such as Enron and Bernie Madoff. He makes many valid points.
Read Foxes and Reptiles: Psychopathy and the financial meltdown, on RealitySandwich.com.
Link supplied by a Lovefraud reader.
Oxy and Matt,
times have changed… somewhat.
back in the old days there was a lot more winking going on. Now there is alot more hood-winking going on.
Ted Kennedy might not have survived his BS today, but back then, he skated.
I think the same about Joe Kennedy. The fact that he could keep the wallstreet gang in line didn’t mean he didn’t have his hand in the cookie jar the whole time. It was probably part of the trade off, people knew he had power outside of government and they didn’t want to end up with cement shoes so they toed the line.
The point is though, that we want to move PAST the days of Gengis Khan and to a world where power doesn’t equal corruption. Putting a fox in the hen house is an unpredictable scenario. It’s a crapshoot. And it’s unhealthy for the rest of society to have spaths in power because the spathiness trickles down.
I think it might be too late anyway, our culture has turned into an N-culture.
Favorite attorney……BWAHHHHHHHAHAHAHAHAHAH!
Love ya Matt!
EB, Now don’t you laugh at me (((hugging)))) Matt….most attorneys that I know would not let me hug them because they would figure I had a KNIFE in AT LEAST one hand! LOL But not my Matt, cause he is my favorite attorney, cause he’s our LF attorney/adviser of good sense!
Sky, I think the culture is not any different now than “back when” (like back when we still lived in caves) the biggest, baddest psychopath on the block gets the most stuff and s/he takes it away from others by force or stealth.
Look at how things are over most of Africa and the Middle East, the people are ruled by terror, “believe in the god I believe in and worship the way I say or I will stone you to death” or “believe in the politics I believe in or I will lock you up or kill you”
Look at EVERY war that has been fought—the leader or leaderS were greedy and wanted something (even if only CONTROL) over some other group…every war or every dog fight has been over who is the TOP DOG and who gets the most stuff. Our country just has a bit of “culture” layered over the top of the greed and power motives…the Bernie Madoffs, the Bill Clintons, and the John Edwardses of this country screw others while pretending to be moral humans.
I have to add some comments after reading the article by Zap. I do not know what the solution is to dealing with intraspecies predators but that is one of the best descriptors to the problem we have. The solutions I would come up with initially sound pretty harsh but I am with the responder to the researcher’s question: In a Harvard University study conducted by anthropologist Jane M. Murphy in 1976, an Eskimo man was asked how his people might deal with a Kunlangeta, to which he replied, “Somebody would have pushed him off the ice when nobody else was looking.”
There are few points the author makes I take issue with, but there are one or two – some of which others have covered here. The one primarily I find fault with is his blame of capitalism for the run-amok problems we have had with the Bernie Madoff’s, Enron’s, World Savings, the Keating 5’s of the world. Capitalism practiced on a LEVEL PLAYING FIELD – without government giving through regulation and tax code manipulation – and with a strong rule of law and protection of private property rights is the BEST insurance against the corrupt. You notice that NONE of the regulatory agencies that signed off on the risky mortgage backed securities as Triple A rated when it has been proven they knew they were CR@P have gone to prison, no one from World Savings, Countrywide, Fannie or Freddie, Morningstar, Goldman Sachs (the chief psychopathic entity in all of it IMHO) NONE of those monsters went to prison – instead their friends in government actually rewarded them! THIS IS WHERE THE PROBLEM LIES! Heck, the SEC was warned about Madoff long before it unraveled and they let it slide. That we will always have predators is indisputable – that the entities designed to protect us are failing is what is at issue. There are too many people getting paid to look the other way. We need to get rid of the blinders and stop thinking someone else – some government agency is going to save us – they are raping and pillaging right along side the snakes in suits, enabling, aiding and abetting – with NO RECOURSE – as you cannot sue the government and win in most cases as they have exempted themselves from the inevitable failures of human nature.
Allowing our elected officials to rob the population by playing favorites and tilting the playing field toward the financial elites is where the responsibility lies. It is not the person who offers the bribe that causes the real problem – it is the person that takes it. Unfortunately, the way it works in DC – if you do not take the bribe you then get punished – it is like a protection racket – pay up or we shut you down. I do not know the solution to it all and this is probably inappropriate here but I support Ron Paul. I could go on, I am well versed in what is coming not only in the US but throughout the world and the chief predators have a miserable future planned for the vast majority of us all. Our children and grandchildren will be serfs. Google the Georgia Guidestones if you want to know what Sociopathy / Psychopathy writ large looks like.
Breckgirl,
judging from your post, this will give you a heart attack.
http://money.cnn.com/2011/11/21/news/companies/aig_greenberg_lawsuit/
Apparently, you CAN sue the government.
No matter how much you give these spaths, they want more. There are no words to express the audacity, but I will say this: they do it because they can, because we let them.
Sky – that makes me want to vomit – and yes – I stand corrected – you can sue – but unless you are suing for something ridiculous like that and you have vast sums of money – your chances of success are slim to none.
ON THE OTHER HAND – I know people locally who own coastal property and government agencies are suing them to get the land – and the owners have successfully won TWO cases and yet the coastal commission is coming back again at them because they want other people’s private property. It is beyond disgusting and that my tax dollars are used for this is infuriating.
Quick add – we are encouraged not own guns to protect ourselves and are told the police will do that. The fact is the police only show up AFTER the damage is done. If you are under threat from a stalker or other person they do not provide protection. They advise you to tear your life apart and move. AND – when you do call if you do not get a police response and are further harmed and you try to sue for damages – well good luck. Wake up people! Read here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia
and here: http://www.psacake.com/dial_911.asp
Breckgirl,
As far as the police goes, my spath had them all eating out of his hand and they were doing exactly what he told them. They were calling me, demanding that I prove I was still alive by coming to see them. This was because the spath likes to prove that he can make anyone jump when he says jump. Once I realized that, (from reading “why is it always about you? the seven deadly sins of narcissism” by sandy hotchkiss), I stopped responding to spath or his minions. So he brought in the big guns, the cops. I never did do what they wanted, but I did corner the sheriff one day and handed him a copy of the recording I made of the spath admitting to this. The sheriff said, “well if you’re so afraid of him then why don’t you move?”
Power corrupts. People in power only respect and protect other people with power. They do not respect or protect victims.
It’s time we take our power back BY REFUSING TO PARTICIPATE IN ANY SYSTEM THAT IS CORRUPT. GRAY ROCK THEM ALL.
Breckgirl,
Your points are absolutely correct, and these people SHOULD GO TO PRISON, but just like at PENN STATE—-if you want to find out what is happening FOLLOW THE MONEY.
It is “always about the money” was what my egg donor’s sleeze-bag attorney said when he was sneering at me when she accused me of trying to take her money.
Welllllllll, NO, IT IS NOT ALWAYS ABOUT THE MONEY, there ARE people who tyry to do RIGHT, regardless of the money involved, but there is a MAJORITY (I think) who would sell their souls for the MONEY/POWER/CONTROL and just like Matt said some times it “takes a thief to catch a thief” and that is an unfortunate part of life.
One of the old “sayings” that con artists use is “you can’t cheat an honest man” and that is NOT always true, but many times like in the “Pigeon drop” con, the fact that the person who is the target is a BIT DISHONEST is the reason they can be cheated, because a totally honest person wouldn’t “fall for” the con.
The psychopaths know they can “black mail” people a bit or use a bit of dishonesty if the target is not a “hun-d-er-nt and ten percent” honest. I can hold my hand up and say that I too let myself be lured OFF CENTER of my own moral compass by the psychopaths I dealt with, and if I had stayed 100% on course morally I would have had much less problems with the psychopathic fall out. Not always, but some of the time, I was lured off center, and that makes it so much easier for them to target us. When they accuse us of being dishonest, if we have been totally HONEST, then at least when we say “I have NOT been dishonest” we can hold our heads us no matter what others believe.
When people are cheating on a marriage (even if the marriage is for all reasonable purposes dead) the psychopath can use that to legitimately smear them in the eyes of others….even if it is a one-time event, not a life pattern. The psychopath that I dated after my husband died had a LIFE LONG PATTERN of cheating on his wife with multiple women at the same time…his was not a “one time” lapse of moral compass, he HAD NO MORAL COMPASS and he would have cheated on me just like he did with her. He only wanted a “wife” to help keep his “harem” of women from insisting that he marry them, but those women KNEW he was married when he was “dating” them….so they really didn’t have a “moral leg” to stand on. If nothing else, I can say I didn’t date him when he was married, but I did date him a while longer AFTER I KNEW about his serial cheating in his marriage. I tried to excuse it and say “he would be different with me”—and of course that was big time denial.
Only NOW, if I recognize a pattern in someone’s behavior, I view frequent and continual spinning of the moral compass as a RED FLAG. The best indicator of future behavior is past behavior.
I do realize that people CAN and do change….I have changed…but it takes a concerted and intense desire to change. One that unfortunately, psychopaths have no desire to change.
Breckgirl,
“When seconds count, the cops are only MINUTES AWAY!”
“I carry a gun because a cop is too heavy.”
Believe me, I do NOT depend on the police to protect me.
I am paranoid, but it is because there are people who want me dead.
Oxy – my marriage was a living hell, beyond miserable. For many years I could not screw up the strength to divorce as I took my vows seriously, unlike my spouse who cheated on me during the entire marriage. I did not know this but the day I found out I had been trying to fix something that would never be fixed I filed for divorce. Before I left the house I put the evidence all over the kitchen – I dang near wallpapered it. The asshat called me while I was at the attorney and laughingly said “what is all this?” – I said – you have two weeks, pack your stuff and get out, I am filing for divorce today…. He was just a passive aggressive moron with limited capability to be intimate (only with strangers)… Why I even share this – during all those years of misery I had several women “friends” encourage me to just have affairs to get my needs for physical and emotional contact met. My husband withheld sex from me for most of our 7 year marriage…2X a year was the average, the last 3 years – nothing… Yet, I stayed and I stayed faithful. After I finally kicked him out I began to date. He had the balls to accuse me of being an adulterer.
I next fell into the arms of the nutjob as I call him – the N/S/P that ultimately threatened my life. Knowing how I kept to my vows and did not toss my husband – he knew I was very prone to honoring my end of a commitment even in the face of the other person breaking their end. That is my failure – in believing I had to keep a commitment no matter what. You do not have to continue to honor an agreement that another has broken – especially when they break it repeatedly. A very painful lesson. I am teaching my kids (I joke that they are dang near immaculate conceptions…) that when someone shows you what they are – and what they are is evil or bad – walk or even run for the nearest exit. Do not allow your compassion or empathy or notions of politeness to allow you to be victimized. May God bless us all and keep us safe from the snakes in suits and out of them!