Beware corporate psychopaths – they are still occupying positions of power

Written By Brian Basham of the Independent in UK.

I don't know if this is a reputable paper or a rag mag, but it coincides with what I posted from Jesse's Cafe earlier. There out to be a test to weed them out and instead there is a test to add them in. Queenbee.

Outlook Over the years I've met my fair share of monsters – rogue individuals, for the most part. But as regulation in the UK and the US has loosened its restraints, the monsters have proliferated.

In a paper recently published in the Journal of Business Ethics entitled "The Corporate Psychopaths: Theory of the Global Financial Crisis", Clive R Boddy identifies these people as psychopaths.

"They are," he says, "simply the 1 per cent of people who have no conscience or empathy." And he argues: "Psychopaths, rising to key senior positions within modern financial corporations, where they are able to influence the moral climate of the whole organisation and yield considerable power, have largely caused the [banking] crisis'.

And Mr Boddy is not alone. In Jon Ronson's widely acclaimed book The Psychopath Test, Professor Robert Hare told the author: "I should have spent some time inside the Stock Exchange as well. Serial killer psychopaths ruin families. Corporate and political and religious psychopaths ruin economies. They ruin societies."

Cut to a pleasantly warm evening in Bahrain. My companion, a senior UK investment banker and I, are discussing the most successful banking types we know and what makes them tick. I argue that they often conform to the characteristics displayed by social psychopaths. To my surprise, my friend agrees.

He then makes an astonishing confession: "At one major investment bank for which I worked, we used psychometric testing to recruit social psychopaths because their characteristics exactly suited them to senior corporate finance roles."

Here was one of the biggest investment banks in the world seeking psychopaths as recruits.

Mr Ronson spoke to scores of psychologists about their understanding of the damage that psychopaths could do to society. None of those psychologists could have imagined, I'm sure, the existence of a bank that used the science of spotting them as a recruiting mechanism.

I've never met Dick Fuld, the former CEO of Lehman Brothers and the architect of its downfall, but I've seen him on video and it's terrifying. He snarled to Lehman staff that he wanted to "rip out their [his competitors] hearts and eat them before they died". So how did someone like Mr Fuld get to the top of Lehman? You don't need to see the video to conclude he was weird; you could take a little more time and read a 2,200-page report by Anton Valukas, the Chicago-based lawyer hired by a US court to investigate Lehman's failure. Mr Valukas revealed systemic chicanery within the bank; he described management failures and a destructive, internal culture of reckless risk-taking worthy of any psychopath.

So why wasn't Mr Fuld spotted and stopped? I've concluded it's the good old question of nature and nurture but with a new interpretation. As I see it, in its search for never-ending growth, the financial services sector has actively sought out monsters with natures like Mr Fuld and nurtured them with bonuses and praise.

We all understand that sometimes businesses have to be cut back to ensure their survival, and where those cuts should fall is as relevant to a company as it is, today, to the UK economy; should it bear down upon the rich or the poor?

Making those cuts doesn't make psychopaths of the cutters, but the financial sector's lack of remorse for the pain it encourages people to inflict is purely psychopathic. Surely the action of cutting should be a matter for sorrow and regret? People's lives are damaged, even destroyed. However, that's not how the financial sector sees it.

Take Sir Fred Goodwin of RBS, for example. Before he racked up a corporate loss of £24.1bn, the highest in UK history, he was idolised by the City. In recognition of his work in ruthlessly cutting costs at Clydesdale Bank he got the nickname "Fred the Shred", and he played that for all it was worth. He was later described as "a corporate Attila", a title of which any psychopath would be proud.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/comment/brian-basham-beware-corporate-psychopaths--they-are-still-occupying-positions-of-power-6282502.html

Peter Brandt 

A Major Divergence in Gold Asset Classes: Buy Miners and Sell Bullion

Bullion is considerably overpriced in relationship to the miners

If the PDF does not show up below, click the link here.

Form Reuter's

EXCLUSIVE-Big banks may line up to block sale of LME

* Potential bidders CME, ICE would entail U.S. regulation

* Tough regulator could curb holdings of dominant positions

* Blocking stake of 25.1 pct seen achievable

By Melanie Burton and Susan Thomas

LONDON, Jan 3 (Reuters) - Top bank stakeholders of the London Metal Exchange are likely to amass enough support to block a sale they fear would bring a more heavily regulated owner and hurt their lucrative warehousing businesses, senior industry sources say.

The LME said in September that at least 10 parties had expressed interest in buying it, and analysts estimate it could be worth as much as $1 billion. As a member-owned organisation, the exchange requires approval from members holding 75 percent of outstanding ordinary or "A" shares for any sale.

Potential buyers are likely to include CME Group Inc , IntercontinentalExchange and SGX Singapore Exchange. The first two in particular have stricter U.S. regulators, which could threaten members' businesses.

Big banks such as J.P. Morgan and Goldman Sachs have invested heavily in physical metals business since the economic downturn began by buying warehouses and beefing up their trading teams and financing operations.

Shunting metal around has been a money spinner for them as slowing global growth pulls down commodity prices and leads to stockpiles of surplus material.

For the banks, simply storing all the metal can generate tens of millions of dollars in rental revenues.

LME rules allow warehouses to release only a fraction of their inventories per day, much less than the metal that is regularly taken in for storage. This creates long queues to get metal out and guarantees rental income.

http://af.reuters.com/article/metalsNews/idAFL6E8C31MD20120103?pageNumber=2&virtualBrandChannel=0&sp=true

Whether you think holding gold is important look who holds the most. This is from the World Gold Council. QB

Tonnes			% of reserves**			Tonnes			% of reserves**
1	United States	8,133.5		76.6%	51		Brazil	33.6		0.5%
2	Germany	3,396.3		73.7%	52		Slovakia	31.8		67.6%
3	IMF	2,814.0		1)	53		Ukraine	27.9		4.5%
4	Italy	2,451.8		73.4%	54		Ecuador	26.3		32.0%
5	France	2,435.4		71.8%	55		Syria	25.8		7.9%
6	China	1,054.1		1.8%	56		Morocco	22.0		5.6%
7	Switzerland	1,040.1		15.3%	57		Nigeria	21.4		3.2%
8	Russia	871.0		9.2%	58		Serbia	14.1		5.1%
9	Japan	765.2		3.5%	59		Cyprus	13.9		58.3%
10	Netherlands	612.5		61.9%	60		Bangladesh	13.5		7.5%
11	India	557.7		9.6%	61		Jordan	12.8		5.5%
12	ECB	502.1		35.0%	62		Czech Republic	12.5		1.6%
13	Taiwan	422.4		5.9%	63		Cambodia	12.4		16.6%
14	Portugal	382.5		89.2%	64		Qatar	12.4		4.4%
15	Venezuela	372.9		67.7%	65		Colombia	10.4		1.8%
16	Saudi Arabia	322.9		3.3%	66		Sri Lanka	8.1		5.3%
17	United Kingdom	310.3		17.6%	67		Latvia	7.7		5.5%
18	Lebanon	286.8		32.2%	68		El Salvador	7.3		14.6%
19	Spain	281.6		39.2%	69		Guatemala	6.9		5.8%
20	Austria	280.0		57.0%	70		Macedonia	6.8		14.8%
21	Belgium	227.5		41.2%	71		Tunisia	6.7		4.5%
22	Algeria	173.6		79.5%	72		Ireland	6.0		15.1%
23	Thailand	152.4		4.6%	73		Iraq	5.9		0.6%
24	Libya	143.8		1)	74		Lithuania	5.8		4.1%
25	Philippines	142.7		10.4%	75		Bahrain	4.7		1)
26	Singapore	127.4		3.0%	76		Tajikistan	4.4		1)
27	Sweden	125.7		13.6%	77		Mauritius	3.9		6.5%
28	South Africa	125.0		13.8%	78		Canada	3.4		0.3%
29	BIS 2)	119.0		1)	79		Slovenia	3.2		15.8%
30	Turkey 7)	116.1		7.0%	80		Aruba	3.1		24.2%
31	Greece	111.6		81.3%	81		Hungary	3.1		0.3%
32	Mexico	106.3		4.0%	82		Kyrgyz Republic	2.6		7.5%
33	Romania	103.7		11.3%	83		Mozambique	2.3		4.9%
34	Poland	102.9		5.3%	84		Mongolia	2.3		4.8%
35	Australia	79.9		9.5%	85		Luxembourg	2.2		10.6%
36	Kuwait	79.0		13.8%	86		Suriname	2.2		13.1%
37	Egypt	75.6		14.8%	87		Hong Kong	2.1		0.0%
38	Kazakhstan	73.6		12.5%	88		Iceland	2.0		1.3%
39	Indonesia	73.1		3.5%	89		Papua New Guinea	2.0		2.8%
40	Denmark	66.5		4.1%	90		Trinidad and Tobago	1.9		1.1%
41	Pakistan	64.4		18.9%	91		Albania	1.6		3.4%
42	Argentina	54.7		6.4%	92		Yemen	1.6		1.8%
43	Bolivia	49.3		22.9%	93		Honduras	0.7		1.4%
44	Finland	49.1		24.6%	94		Paraguay	0.7		0.7%
45	Bulgaria	39.9		12.0%	95		Dominican Republic	0.6		1.1%
46	Korea	39.4		0.7%	96		Malawi	0.4		8.9%
47	Belarus 4)	38.5		41.4%	97		Mauritania	0.4		4.6%
48	WAEMU 3)	36.5		12.9%	98		Uruguay	0.3		0.1%
49	Malaysia	36.4		1.5%	99		Estonia	0.2		6.0%
50	Peru	34.7		4.0%	100		Chile	0.2		0.0%