was the financial crisis caused by corporate psychopaths?
Was the financial crisis caused by corporate psychopaths? Clive Boddy, writing in the Journal of Business Ethics, seems to think so.
These corporate collapses have gathered pace in recent years, especially in the western world, and have culminated in the Global Financial Crisis that we are now in. In watching these events unfold it often appears that the senior directors involved walk away with a clean conscience and huge amounts of money. Further, they seem to be unaffected by the corporate collapses they have created. They present themselves as glibly unbothered by the chaos around them, unconcerned about those who have lost their jobs, savings, and investments, and as lacking any regrets about what they have done. They cheerfully lie about their involvement in events are very persuasive in blaming others for what has happened and have no doubts about their own continued worth and value. They are happy to walk away from the economic disaster that they have managed to bring about, with huge payoffs and with new roles advising governments how to prevent such economic disasters.
Many of these people display several of the characteristics of psychopaths and some of them are undoubtedly true psychopaths. Psychopaths are the 1% of people who have no conscience or empathy and who do not care for anyone other than themselves. Some psychopaths are violent and end up in jail, others forge careers in corporations. The latter group who forge successful corporate careers is called Corporate Psychopaths.
I have a complaint to make to the editors of the Journal of Business Ethics. Why is the term “Corporate Psychopaths” capitalized every time it appears in the paper? As if that’s not enough, why do we need the to capitalize “Global Financial Crisis” every time it appears in the paper? This combination leads to unattractive sentences like this:
The knowledge that Corporate Psychopaths are to be found at the top of organisations and seem to favour working with other people’s money in large financial organisations has in turn, led to the development of the Corporate Psychopaths Theory of the Global Financial Crisis. The Corporate Psychopaths Theory of the Global Financial Crisis is that Corporate Psychopaths, rising to key senior positions within modern financial corporations…..
Why not just capitalize and put in bold every letter and add blinking animation for emphasis?
“…Some psychopaths are violent and end up in jail, others forge careers in corporations. …”
This is as disappointing in a peer-reviewed academic journal for business ethics as calls for increased business regulations in a WSJ editorial.
And it just reveals sloppy thinking, even if the premise were acceptable. Some psychopaths live more or less normal lives and never go to jail because the harms they cause are not criminal under law. And some psychopaths work in government. And others work in hospital operating rooms or fabric shops. In short, diseases (pathologies) cut across social lines.
A deeper fault may be the label of “the financial crisis.” What is “the”? To me, the downturn in the economy started with the Dot Com Meltdown; but that was followed by 9/11 and the Second Gulf War. The real estate bubble was only another pony in the traces. And those instruments were sold under a presumption of risk insurance that also failed. Moreover, the federal government (home to some few psychopaths and very many ordinary folk) bailed out the failures with phony dollars, again, another link in the chain, as any Austrian economist will explain. So “economic recovery” however defined remains elusive and “the” crisis continues…
On the other hand, UM Flint’s Mark Perry’s Carpe Diem blog delivers day after day of good news, great news, happy news about “the economy,” or more correctly, elements of it.
Personally, I look to George Orwell’s 1984. Never mind the Thought Police and the TV screens. The power of Big Brother lies in the failure of liberal education. Who is the enemy? East Asia! Simple question, simple answer. You are not supposed to ask for a definition of “enemy” or “East Asia” before you write your 5000 word answer. So, too, here yet again with “the economic crisis” being “caused” by “psychopaths” are we supposed to accept a repeatable sound stream (doubleplusgood ducktalk) as actual thought.
Michael Marotta
February 26, 2012 at 5:47 am
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the financial crisis is simple: a re-accounting of the value of cash relative to credit, a deflation « JRFibonacci's blog: partnering with reality
March 3, 2012 at 4:44 pm