Ten Years After The Massacre.
Prepping for the show Sunday 19, when I speak with Dave Cullen, author of the mesmerizing and appalling "Columbine," a comprehensive review of the mass murder of children by two sick people ten years ago, April 20, 1999, I was stumped and then gripped by the brief chapter on "Psychopath." I read this paragraph with a fresh chill. "Researchers are just beginning to understand psychopaths, but they believe psychopaths crave the emotional responses they lack. They are nearly always thrill seekers. They love roller coasters and hang gliding, and they seek out high-anxiety occupations, like ER tech, bond trader, or Marine. Crime, danger, impoverishment, death -- any sort of risk will help. The chase new sources of excitement because it is so difficult for them to sustain." Did you notice? "Bond trader." And then I put this up against what I read daily about the grotesque risk the big banks and attendant shadow banks sought out and took during the well-known housing bubble of 2002-2008. AIG's counterparty bets with CDS is astonishing until you consider there may have been a psychopathology to the behavior. The risk was the desire, not the money. All the major banks took part in similar fashion. Where was the adult supervision? Anger management? Were the traders psychopaths? No. But perhaps a few, more than a few, and perhaps that behavior was acceptable to the sane. Or perhaps the psychopaths were very good at disguising their rage and compulsive, reptile-brain risk-taking. Another stunning paragraph from the "Psychopath" chapter: "Psychopaths are distinguished by two characteristics. The first is a ruthless disregard for others: they will defraud, maim, or kill for the most trivial personal gain. The second is an astonishing gift for disguising the first. It's the deception that makes them so dangerous. You never see him coming. (It's usually a him-- more than 80 percent are male.) Don't look for the oddball creeping you out. Psychopaths don't act like Hannibal Lecter or Norman Bates. They come off like Hugh Grant, in his most adorable role." Does this sound too much like Jamie Dimon, Tim Geithner, Vikram Pandit, even Lloyd Blankfein? Is the big banking culture a nest of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold types? Impossible! Are they thrill seekers? Why are their banks either insolvent or fashioned with an architecture of opacity? Will JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup and Goldman Sachs pass the stress tests due Monday May 4? You ask?
If the Psychopaths Didn't Do It.
There is the possibility that the reason the banks are insolvent, the dollar is deteriorating to dust, and the great nations of the Earth face a decade of helplessness or famine is that we are burdened by bad leadership which we accept as inevitable. Joseph Stiglitz, speaking to Bloomberg, doesn't look for psychopaths. As encapsulated by a savvy poster at Calculated Risk, Stiglitz just sees more Federal foolishness:
Joseph Stiglitz on Bloomberg
Stiglitz Says White House Ties to Wall Street Doom Bank Rescue
A sample of quotes
"All the ingredients they have so far are weak, and there are several missing ingredients," Stiglitz said in an interview. The people who designed the plans are "either in the pocket of the banks or they're incompetent."
"We don't have enough money, they don't want to go back to Congress, and they don't want to do it in an open way and they don't want to get control" of the banks, a set of constraints that will guarantee failure, Stiglitz said.
Relying on low interest rates to help put a floor under housing prices is a variation on the policies that created the housing bubble in the first place, Stiglitz said.
"This is a strategy trying to recreate that bubble," he said. "That's not likely to provide a long run solution. It's a solution that says let's kick the can down the road a little bit."
While the strategy might put a floor under housing prices, it won't do anything to speed the recovery, he said. "It's a recipe for Japanese-style malaise."
Japanese is the thing this year. There is Always Weary Cynicism to Soften the Rest of the Century.
More from Calculated Risk comments:
Citizen AllenM
So I thought I would take a drive down memory lane here and see what is new.
The crisis grinds on, in a most boring fashion, now beginning to smell just like the S&L crisis except that houses are also massively involved.
Did everybody like my bottom calls? Kinda looks like the double bottom might hold now throughout the summer.
In other words, the worst of this crisis is past- the next is several years away, meanwhile all of the wreckage of the last one heaves into view and the punditocracy grinds away at the reality of it.
The best was watching all of the deluded folks from my office yesterday as they paraded with their teabags.
Pining for stuff that was gone before they were born.
How's everyone enjoying that Velvet Fist of Government?
The system was saved, sort of, kind of, but not to be anywhere near as good as it once was.
I told you Wall Street wouldn't like what my colleagues in DC had in store for them- now they are positively miserable.
I do note that our Chinese friends are beginning their long run away from the dollar- a true so long and thanks for all the fish moment is still a long ways away.
So, enjoy the boredom, punctuated by moments of volatility that will faintly recall that magnificent fall- but those days have truly past. Now we sit and wait.
Someday this war's gonna end...
Harris and Klebold the Bond Traders.
Consider that they would now be 28 years old and working as bond traders. Probably responsible for buying $500 billion worth of MBS before their trading desk was closed down by the FDIC. Now they are applying for jobs in the Black Box unit at GS. And just in case, they have also sent their resumes to the FDIC to help administer PPIP. All is not lost. There is hope. For mysterious reasons, the condition of middle age calms down psychopaths. This may explain men who look like Hank Paulson.
Bravo Mr. Bachelor!
Yes they are psychopaths. Yes they are power hungery. Yes they want to further Enslave the American population. Yes, you have the inmates running the insane asylum.
BTW, the USA is considered a cooperation. The president is actually the CEO of the country with the International Bankers as the shareholders. It is traded on Wall Street like any other stock. Your social security number is collateral for owing money to the Bankers way back in WWI. The government is in debt then and now more debt so what else will government ask of you.Hmmmm
No need to be too academic when describing aberrant behavior. Trust your gut which tells you that killing defenseless individuals in cold blood is terrible precedent, and not acceptable whatever the reason. I used to day trade and still enjoy roller coasters. For years, I routinely strapped on a sidearm for work. Does that mean I’m now considered a psychopath? John, you can do better than this.
More to the point is (as you mention) that psychopaths deceive their prey. Many people now feel that we were deceived by November’s election. Does that make Obama and company ‘psychopaths’? No. They are perfectly sane. They know what they want and know how to go about getting it done. Unlike jihadis and the Columbine kids, they are not suicidal. Like the Wall Street traders and bankers, they spent years acquiring their skills. Wall Streeters settled for cash; Obama lusts for power (at our expense, I might add).
The Columbine kids were both, criminals and sinners; but lying was not one of their sins. For what they had in mind lying was not required. It’s simply something one does quietly in the bathtub or, if the mood should strike one, noisily in the school cafeteria. After it’s over, it’s finished – no heaven; no hell; no redemption. It’s as though one never even existed save for a vague smudge on the wounded memories of those left behind.
We keep dredging it up again and again in order to help us remember that there was something that once moved us. Suicides move America more than murder. The suicide rejects all life; the murderer takes life in order to affirm his own. Both are sins but suicide is considered to be the unpardonable sin. Whereas murderers often have the opportunity to achieve greatness in what historians should later decide to constitute the hierarchy of men – see Hitler (who committed suicide) as opposed to Stalin (who was murdered) – suicides are never celebrated except by other suicides or would-be suicides.
ER Tech, Bond trader, Marine? Hang Gliding and Roller Coasters?
How about some real bang for the buck like florist (ouch, those thorns), cake decorator (can't you imagine the stress, what if you squirt instead of flow?), Wal Mart greeter (do you need a basket? Rrrrisky business!), tele solicitor (only God knows how they get a moments rest), tailor (pinstripes and scissors? the horror).... sew forth and sew on.
I agree that bad leadership has delivered us to where we are and it's not because they are pathological or involved in great conspiracy. But, these are not the ones suffering psychosis. I know, it doesn't sound exciting or doesn't fit some peoples need for intrigue and sure doesn't help to further the discussion of the diabolical plan to send us all to hell. They aren't that creative.
It's well known now that you can tell a psycho by the way they walk, male or female. No, it's true!!
Watch for the saunter- there are some real leaders out there forthcoming and they are crazy as... well, you decide. I say bedbugs!
Captain Phillips remarks to the press- exemplary
Praise to the professionals "They are at the point of the sword everyday"
Give them a task to do and then trust them. Don't hinder them in the performance of their task and thank them whenever you have the chance because they don't expect any more than that. They are our best!
Someone show some leadership concerning Roxanna, Laura, and Euna- they have been abducted and are being held hostage, too!!
Interesting how people's views at both ends of the political spectrum are coalescing, see, e.g.: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/4/19/95050/4986.
One guy's guess:
---we missed the real Black Swan, a collapse of commercial realty on top of the residential collapse;
---the conditions are in place for a resumption of growth from a much lower level of general prosperity at a much slower rate and with much higher structural unemployment;
---this economic reality could lead to civil disturbances, but likely won't; and
---everyone will accept that the US is no longer THE great economic or military power.