(Bloomberg article here)

Etc, etc, etc.

From a socio-scientific perspective it does make a lot of sense, especially when you throw in some good 'ol form of substance abuse (alcohol, cocaine come to mind) ;-)

Hey - happy 2012, folks!

Paul

That observation's been made before...in print...not just on forums and blogs.

And the politicans and world leaders implementing jacked up policies are totally sane.

we might just remind ourselves and the general public, least we forget, no?

Ciao

Paul

I went to a Uni that was a feeder school for Bay Area tech firms. If you think Wall St. people are psycho you should see the psychos that Oracle, Sybase, SUN, Apple, Genentech etc attract and put out......

These people will kill you if you tell them you dont find their latest inventions "relevant", or if you ask them how you are actually supposed to make money off of? A computer software that allows you to open canned food remotely from your laptop? etc...

The sense of self-worth makes these people more psycho than Wall Streeters in my experience. But that could be because a lower % of them make the big money they expected perhaps?

But there are psychos in every industry perhaps?

Yeah but whereas a psycho (we're talking about the real pathological condition, not autism/Asperger, mind you) confined to some secundary tier industry should only manage to cause "limited damage" (whatever tha means nowadays) to his/her immediate surroundings, someone who can access the kind of leverage and reach as the members of the financial industry élite can ruin the life of nations.

Remember Jamie Dimon, in the aftermath of the Fed bailouts? When asked in a "inside" conference call (which fortunately was hacked for us all to hear - I'm trying to find that link for you) how would the Credit division go about the business of extending loans to the public and small businesses - he just replied that he didn't care, and that he would stick to the bank's "strategic plans".

This is the kind of behavior we're talking about.

And here's a link to something written by an economist by the name of Maxine Udallabout the "values" or lack of, in the wake of TARP/TAFL/etc.
[sadly it was to be the last post of her life - I would have loved to read more of her articles....].

P.

I think that kind of "mild psychosis" is paramount to invention. Every computer "guru" was categorised as a "psycho", beginning with Alan Turing.
Most inventions and research you can't "make money of" (at least not immediately) - and luckily that mentality doesn't pervade in the field of scientific research financing otherwise we'd never have gone past the Middle Ages.

Granted in an isolated computer world a misinterpretation of Gauss' copula function is less likely to cause the damage it did when used and abused by financial word psychos.

A psycopath is a different animal than someone *suffering* from autism (the keyword being suffering).
Of course one could eventually suffer from autism AND be a psycopath as well.

Probably Steve Jobs was in part autistic - which would help explain the many quirks in hi character - while AIG Financial Products' John Cassano IMHO is a psycopath as he definitely had the brains to understand that being naked short of a gazillion of CDS would have disintegrated the company and several counterparties and would have caused massive turmoil in fin'l markets.

Sweet and simple as that (unfortunately)

Paul