“Psychopaths Caused the Financial Crisis … And They Will Do It Again and Again Unless They Are Removed From Power”

Ha!!  The truth spreads like a virus!  This post will be “borrowed” from http://www.washingtonsblog.com/.  And you thought I was the only one.  ‘That PW, such an unhealthy fascination with psychopaths.’  ‘Sad really, just sad.’ ‘Indubitably, indubitably.’  I hear your whisperings, I see you looking askance at me when you think I’m not looking.  And you even call me paranoid — gasp!!  . . . But, enough about me . . . read on:

All the following quotes (and the post title) are from http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/01/psychopaths-caused-the-financial-crisis-and-they-will-do-it-again-and-again-unless-they-are-removed-from-power.html#comment-27721 [green highlighting added].

Psychopaths Caused the Financial Crisis

The “corporate psychopaths” at the helm of our financial institutions are to blame [for the financial crisis].

Clive R. Boddy, most recently a professor at the Nottingham Business School at Nottingham Trent University, says psychopaths are the 1 percent of “people who, perhaps due to physical factors to do with abnormal brain connectivity and chemistry” lack a “conscience, have few emotions and display an inability to have any feelings, sympathy or empathy for other people.”

. . . . . .

How do people with such obvious personality flaws make it to the top of seemingly successful corporations? Boddy says psychopaths take advantage of the “relative chaotic nature of the modern corporation,” including “rapid change, constant renewal” and high turnover of “key personnel.” Such circumstances allow them to ascend through a combination of “charm” and “charisma,” which makes “their behaviour invisible” and “makes them appear normal and even to be ideal leaders

. . . . . .

Then, according to Boddy’s “Corporate Psychopaths Theory of the Global Financial Crisis,” these men were “able to influence the moral climate of the whole organization” to wield “considerable power.”

Psychopaths Have Different Brain Chemistry from the Rest of Us

In October, we observed:

I noted last year:

Vanderbilt researchers have found that the brains of psychopaths have a dopamine abnormality which creates a drive for rewards at any cost, and causes them to ignore risks.

As PhysOrg writes:

Abnormalities in how the nucleus accumbens, highlighted here, processes dopamine have been found in individuals with psychopathic traits and may be linked to violent, criminal behavior. Credit: Gregory R.Samanez-Larkin and Joshua W. Buckholtz

The brains of psychopaths appear to be wired to keep seeking a reward at any cost, new research from Vanderbilt University finds. The research uncovers the role of the brain’s reward system in psychopathy and opens a new area of study for understanding what drives these individuals.

. . . . . .

Has anyone tested the heads of the too big to fails for this dopamine abnormality?

What are the odds that they have it? And if they have it, what are the odds that they will voluntarily start acting responsibly, especially given the broken incentive system?

Experts also tell us that many politicians also share traits with serial killers. Specifically, the Los Angeles Times noted in 2009:

Using his law enforcement experience and data drawn from the FBI’s behavioral analysis unit, Jim Kouri has collected a series of personality traits common to a couple of professions.

Kouri, who’s a vice president of the National Assn. of Chiefs of Police, has assembled traits such as superficial charm, an exaggerated sense of self-worth, glibness, lying, lack of remorse and manipulation of others.

These traits, Kouri points out in his analysis, are common to psychopathic serial killers.

. . . . . .

Unless We Remove the Psychopaths from Power, They Will Cause More and More Destruction

The inmates are still running the asylum.

Anyone who knows Jamie Dimon, Lloyd Blankfein or the other Wall Street “leaders” can tell you that they haven’t changed a bit since 2008. They are not repentent for their role in the financial crisis. They don’t feel bad that the taxpayers have had to bail them out again and again …

. . . . . .

I noted in October:

As former IMF chief economist Simon Johnson notes, the American finance industry has effectively captured our government in a “quiet coup”, a state of affairs that is at the center of many emerging-market crises, and that recovery will fail unless we break the financial oligarchy that is blocking essential reform.

***

The U.S. has become a kleptocracy, an oligarchy, a banana republic, a socialist or fascist state … which acts without the consent of the governed. There is a malignant symbiotic relationship between the governmental leaders and their cronies, which makes a handful rich at the public trough[.]

From having worked at UBS, PaineWebber, Union Bank of Switzerland (an earlier iteration), Lehman Brothers, Salomon Brothers, Drexel, EF Hutton, I couldn’t agree more.

Let me add that the claim that they brought about this economic collapse/disaster purposely is pure bs — a standard psychopathic canard.  They do this for three mutually supporting reasons:  1) they hate to lose, 2) if they can define a loss as a win it actually becomes a win — here’s their distorted cause and effect reality, their strange view of words, and much else, and 3) they wish to demoralize/undercut/confuse the opposition to prevent effective countermeasures.

“Criminal Minds — Will testing the brain, even before birth, separate the good seeds from the bad?”

More Adrian Raine.

. . . a series of studies using magnetic resonance imaging, which reveals structures and shapes, showed that criminals and people who scored high on tests of antisocial disorders had a smaller than normal orbitofrontal region and amygdala. And the corpus callosum, the communications bridge between the brain’s two hemispheres, was abnormally large.

. . . [Adrian Raine] needed to go back even further and look for a defect that begins before birth and can still be detected in adults. Raine found it in a hole in the head. More precisely, a thin wall of brain tissue that separates a hole—all brains have these spaces—into two. The hole appears during the 12th week of a fetus’s development, and the wall—pushed forward by a normally developing amygdala and other brain areas—divides it by the 20th week. When the wall doesn’t form completely, a condition known by the jawbreaking name of cavum septum pellucidum, it’s usually a sign of abnormal development in the amygdala and other structures. Years later, in adults, the failed wall can be spotted in a brain scan.

In a 2010 paper, Raine and his colleagues compared people with and without the feature on several fronts. The groups were tested for antisocial personality disorder, psychopathy, and aggression. Their records were searched for criminal arrests and convictions. In every single one of those areas, there were a lot more men and women with the wall defect. Here, finally, was evidence tracing criminality back to the womb, before any head-banging could occur.

“I think there’s no longer any question, scientifically, that there’s an association between the brain and criminal behavior. We’re beyond the point of debating that,” says Raine. “Every study can be criticized on methodology. But when you look at the whole, at all the different designs, it’s just hard to deny there is something going on with biology.”

Read more: http://www.utne.com/Science-Technology/Neurodevelopmental-Criminology-Acquired-Sociopathy-Predict-Criminals.aspx?page=3#ixzz1f8IM8hNL

What the heck? Are these brain structures meaningful or not?

"Fallon's brain (on the right) has dark patches in the orbital cortex, the area just behind the eyes. This is the area that Fallon and other scientists say is involved with ethical behavior, moral decision-making and impulse control. The normal scan on the left is his son's."

"Fallon was prompted to study his brain after his mother, Jenny, told him his ancestry was full of alleged murderers."

These photos are from “A Neuroscientist Uncovers a Dark Secret,”  by Barbara Hagerty.  Further quotes from the article:

The criminal brain has always held a fascination for James Fallon. For nearly 20 years, the neuroscientist at the University of California-Irvine has studied the brains of psychopaths. He studies the biological basis for behavior, and one of his specialties is to try to figure out how a killer’s brain differs from yours and mine.  . . .

After learning his violent family history, he examined the images and compared them with the brains of psychopaths. His wife’s scan was normal. His mother: normal. His siblings: normal. His children: normal.

“And I took a look at my own PET scan and saw something disturbing that I did not talk about,” he says.

What he didn’t want to reveal was that his orbital cortex looks inactive.

“If you look at the PET scan, I look just like one of those killers.”

This situation described is very interesting.  There is a whole series on NPR on the criminal brain, Inside the Criminal Brain, Can Genes and Brain Abnormalities Create Killers?, etc.  I caught part of Hagerty’s show on July 6.

The question for me isn’t the criminal brain or serial killer brain, the question is who is a sociopath and who is not.  Who can feel empathy, has a conscience, views other humans as fools to be manipulated for one’s own ends, pleasures and amusement, etc. and who cannot and doesn’t.  Most sociopaths are not serial killers, but many still leave a broad swath of emotional disaster behind them.  Clever sociopaths can rise to high levels in business and government, it’s a question of self control and skill at being hypocritical (at recognizing when it is safe to express the sociopathic hungers, that are always there) — but they still have no shared humanity and no chance of developing any, imo.  The rest of us are so many bugs on the windshield to them.  So are these brain structures relevant or not?

Fallon certainly doesn’t appear to be sociopathic — no sociopathic arrogance comes through the photos, he lacks the classic “hollow eyes,” he has a loving family, etc.  On the other hand, families rarely ever recognize a sociopathic family member.  He looks like such a lovable guy, it’s hard to imagine that he might be a sociopath.  Could he be wearing that persona as a cloak?  If not, then the differences in brain structure illustrated above, which seem to me to be radical, are almost meaningless.

Unusual search: Can cats sense someone is a sociopath?

This is the first time I’ve ever seen this search.  All I can say, the most extreme female sociopath I’ve ever known said cats and dogs hated her.  Was this just something unique to her or do dogs and cats have some innate sense of fairplay?  Did they recognize her as a rapacious, reptilian-minded predator?  I don’t know.

Other searches

Pseudologia fantastica in real person: Yep, it’s real alright.  Actually if one is not immediately caught up and swept away by the pseudologue’s “pity play” then they are more obvious than regular sociopaths — their stories are so extreme and fantastical.

How to get a workplace sociopath to leave: Good luck.

How to let go of a sociopath: This will happen when your soul (not your mind) realizes there is no soul in the other person.  If this doesn’t happen, perhaps the other person is not a sociopath or perhaps you are actually fighting a realization that one of your parents is sociopathic ($50 please).

Or in the emotional immediacy of transsociopathica‘s words:

A few months after you have recovered you will wonder what you ever saw in these things. They will rapidly seem cold, ugly, empty, pathetic, distorted and almost deformed to you. That’s because this is what they are, always were, and you are finally perceiving them in their real unmasked state. This ‘broken beast’ is all that’s left and the only memory you’ll have of them going into the future. It’s all they deserve, because it is all they are.  http://transsociopathica.blogspot.com/2009/10/farewell-my-sociopath-hello-real-love.html

Sociopath at parties: Due to few inhibitions and no shame they can be real lives of the party.  Read “The Incredible Charlie Carewe” ($94, http://www.amazon.com/incredible-Charlie-Carewe-Mary-Astor/dp/B00005W69S Some are also very, very skillful at party crashing.

Sociopath and blackmailing: Goes together like ham and eggs.  They love crimes without consequence.

Pictures of  Thomas Capano: Hmmm.  This is a repeat search.  He’s the only one of my blog’s possible sociopaths (more than possible in his case) whose picture people seem particularly interested in.  I don’t know why.

I was with a sociopath for 8 years…why? For one thing, since no one is ever informed of this possibility as they are growing up or upon reaching romantic age, it often takes years for someone to realize their situation.  Also, as the sociopath often cons relatives of the non-sociopath, individuals in your position are really on their own.  Addressing this is one of the main missions of my blog.

You have a lot of company.  Ann Landers was married for thirty years to the sociopath, in my opinion of course, Jules Lederer (who she described as the best salesman in the world).  They met while she was shopping for a wedding dress for her upcoming marriage to another person.  Just the kind of challenge that might appeal to a “super” sociopath.  Also, as I recall, her sister, Dear Abby, criticized her after the divorce for not understanding her husband.

Are sociopaths giving to neighbors and friends? I have witnessed such behavior, but it was only used to engender goodwill to set up later depredations.  Like a “pity play” (all sociopaths excel at inducing people to feel sorry for them) it brings people to their side emotionally.  Often, it seems, they want a reservoir of protectors before they commit their antisocial depredations (such as date/friend rape, “dress gray” rape, tricking a teen neighbor into prostitution, outright thievery, “murder by suicide” bullying (this is no exaggeration), blackmail, etc.).  They want the accuser to be met with angry disbelief (anger that such a nice person would be accused).  Not only do they wish to protect themselves through “plausible lies,” they want to place their victims in the position of having to claim “implausible truths.”

Can God change a sociopath? The short answer is no.  That would be akin to changing a stone into a block of wood, or lead to gold.  If the question is actually can sociopaths be lead to see the error of their ways and cease being sociopaths, unfortunately the answer is absolutely not.  Sociopaths have their own nature, they are the way they are born to be.  “Socially acceptable psychopaths” (SAPs) who, by definition are capable as passing in normal society, can choose whether or not to follow society’s norms and laws but they can’t feel them.  Justice and empathy are just empty words, even to them.  This searcher might be interested in the post,  “More structural brain abnormalities seen in psychopaths,” over at Psychopathy 101, http://psychopathy101.wordpress.com/2009/09/28/more-structural-brain-abnormalities-seen-in-psychopaths/.  I think its clear that most sociopaths are born with these brain structures.

Drifter & sociopath: The drifters and rolling stones of life are in fact often sociopaths, driven by boredom and lack of emotional bonds.  Boredom is simply one of their prime driving forces.  Thus the backwaters, catch basins and outposts of empires or large nations have a much higher sociopathic percentage — for example, California, Australia and New Zealand.

Will my baby be born a sociopath?: Here’s a heart breaker.  From the little I know, it seems the genetics of sociopathy is very complex.  I’ll try to look into this further.  If this searcher was attracted to a sociopath because one of her parents was sociopathic the odds aren’t good.