A Breed Apart Without Conscience - Psychopaths and Systemic Crisis

Psychopaths are social predators who charm, manipulate, and ruthlessly plow their way through life, leaving a broad trail of broken hearts, shattered expectations, and empty wallets.  Completely lacking in conscience and in feelings for others, they selfishly take what they want and do as they please, violating social norms and expectations without the slightest sense of guilt or regret.

Psychopaths often come across as arrogant, shameless braggarts—self-assured, opinionated, domineering, and cocky.  They love to have power and control over others and seem unable to believe that other people have valid opinions different from theirs.

What makes psychopaths different from all others is the remarkable ease with which they lie, the pervasiveness of their deception, and the callousness with which they carry it out.

The most debilitating characteristic of even the most well-behaved psychopath is the inability to form a workable team.

The majority of people and therefore workplaces are easy prey, because we still want to believe that people are inherently good.  We don't really want to believe that such people exist...Wherever you find money, prestige and power you will find them.

We are far more likely to lose our life savings to an oily-tongued swindler than our lives to a steely-eyed killer.

Robert D. Hare, Without Conscience

And this is why people must come together, to create a system of laws and transparency, of checks and balances, of objective oversight.

It is difficult to believe that we have to remind otherwise intelligent adults, who might be temporarily, but too often enthusiastically, blinded by some utopian ideology too often crafted by devious intents, that not everyone is good, law-abiding, and honest.

The Wall Street Conspiracy: Ascent of the Psychopaths and the Culture of Death

"The privileged have regularly invited their own destruction with their greed."

John Kenneth Galbraith, The Age of Uncertainty


"Psychopaths have a grandiose self-structure which demands a scornful and detached devaluation of others, in order to ward off their envy toward the good perceived in other people."

“He will choose you, disarm you with his words, and control you with his presence. He will delight you with his wit and his plans. He will show you a good time but you will always get the bill. He will smile and deceive you, and he will scare you with his eyes.

And when he is through with you, and he will be through with you, he will desert you and take with him your innocence and your pride. You will be left much sadder but not a lot wiser, and for a long time you will wonder what happened and what you did wrong.

And if another of his kind comes knocking on your door, will you open it?"

Robert D. Hare, Without Conscience

The Wall Street Conspiracy




You can also watch the full documentary 'Fishead' here.

I thought the section focusing specifically on Prozac was a bit overdone, as if it was somehow a cause rather than a symptom. At the height of its use, the largest per capita use of Valium was in Japan, probably due to the high tension caused by their close living conditions and a strict cultural system of obligations tied to personal worth.

The point of the film to me is that psychopaths require no such drugs, and if they come to power they order the system to suit their needs. Psychopathic cultures foster extraordinary actions amongst ordinary and feeling people to cope and compete.

High tension cultures live on abusing drugs, whether they be alcohol, cocaine, marijuana, amphetamines, prescription drugs, nicotine, or even sex, sports, or obsessive collecting. People can 'lose themselves' in many ways, including apathy, hatred and ignorance. There was a story just today that says the latest craze on Wall Street is testosterone therapy.

Let's just say that anything can be abused, used for inappropriate purposes, but that does not mean that it is 'bad.' What is more questionable is the set of values and the culture that drives people to such extremes, and their inability to otherwise regulate and restrain themselves that makes a mockery of such idylls as the efficient markets hypothesis.

What has changed in the States over the last thirty years, as best as I can determine based on conversations I have had with a number of people older than myself and extensive reading, is the notion of the 'social norm.' What is considered acceptable, and even desirable, has changed dramatically. "Greed is good" was more than just a line in a movie. And the decline in what was once considered abhorrent, but is now acceptable or even necessary, has been gradually progressing, year by year, slowly and almost imperceptibly. Until over time a people can become hard, almost heartless, even cruel.

"Dort wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man auch am Ende Menschen."
Where they have burned books, they will end in burning people.

Heinrich Heine

Always there is a progression of evil. As you may have gathered, MF Global represents an important event, a watershed, a mark along the progression of society which I have been watching. If the US continues along this path, at some point the next milestone will be reached, and the die may be cast. You cannot believe it now, but it can happen. And your grandchildren will curse you for their shame.

This film may be especially fitting and useful perhaps, given that it is an election year and the choice is between two well-groomed corporate brands, with messages cynically tailored to appeal to different aspects of their audiences, but with little actual difference between them.

"Lying, deceiving, and manipulation are natural talents for psychopaths...When caught in a lie or challenged with the truth, they are seldom perplexed or embarrassed -- they simply change their stories or attempt to rework the facts so that they appear to be consistent with the lie. The results are a series of contradictory statements and a thoroughly confused listener."

Robert Hare, Without Conscience

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Which Side We Have Chosen

 

"Self-regulation is at best a vulnerable strategy in any human concern involving trust, but is absolute folly in an industry where the emphasis and incentives are based on the ruthless pursuit of performance at any cost, and where such behaviour is lauded.

There is little doubt that strong personality types such as even marginal psychopaths can hijack an organization, a [political] party, or even a sub-culture given the right environment of moral relativism and complacency.  And if successful, they bring more of the morally ambivalent and weak-willed along with them.

The efficient market hypothesis is more a clever cover story than a legitimate scientific observation worthy of consideration in public policy discussions.  Transparency and oversight are absolutely essential in all financial matters.   The financial system, and their amoral enablers in politics and the media, have done enough damage to the world.  It is time to stop."

Jesse, Psychopaths on Wall Street, 17 March 2012

"The suspicions that the system is rigged in favor of the largest banks and their elites, so they play by their own set of rules to the disfavor of the taxpayers who funded their bailout, are true. It really happened. These suspicions are valid.”

Neil Barofsky, TARP Inspector General

"A lot of white-collar criminals are psychopaths.  But they flourish because the characteristics that define the disorder are actually valued.  When they get caught, what happens?  A slap on the wrist, a six-month ban from trading, and don't give us the $100 million back.  I've always looked at white-collar crime as being as bad or worse than some of the physically violent crimes that are committed."

Robert Hare

"Three dark personalities, narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy have been studied in businesses. Although the first two share similar traits with psychopathy, such as superficial charm, lying and manipulation, the inability to accept responsibility for their actions, and the complete lack of empathy, guilt and humility, a large body of research has demonstrated that psychopathic individuals are more dishonest, treacherous and destructive than the others. While all three dark personalities can be bad-news for a company, corporate psychopathy is the most dangerous.

If success is defined by the accomplishment of one’s goal, then I would say psychopathic individuals, by definition, are often successful. That is, they are successful at manipulating others into getting what they want, whatever the cost might be to others. Their ability to charm, manipulate and lie to others, coupled with the fact that their lack of empathy and guilt and failure to accept responsibility for their actions, gives psychopathic individuals the upper hand to attain their goals, by any means possible.

There is a difference between being confident and not being capable of humility or modesty. Good leaders will back their realization and success stories with verifiable facts and will do it with a certain dose of humility, occasionally giving credit to others. Moreover, good leaders will take some credit but will also give credit to their team members while psychopathic individuals are likely to take all the credit for previous achievements."

Cynthia Mathieu, The Devil Lurks In the Suit

"I wonder whether people who ask God to intervene openly and directly in our world quite realise what it will be like when He does. Then it will be God without disguise; something so overwhelming that it will strike either irresistible love or irresistible horror into every creature. It will be too late then to choose your side. That will not be the time for choosing: it will be the time when we discover which side we really have chosen, whether we realised it before or not."

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 1944

Stocks did their yo-yo routine again today, but nevertheless rallied back from their flighty drop of yesterday.

Gold and silver moved higher.   Both are within range of breaking out.

They may be tested by the Comex metals option expiration of next week.

VIX chopped sideways in familiar volatility.

The Dollar climbed back a little.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious.Metal Charts - Predator Nation - FOMC Minutes Tomorrow

"Psychopaths are social predators who charm, manipulate, and ruthlessly plow their way through life, leaving a broad trail of broken hearts, shattered expectations, and empty wallets. Completely lacking in conscience and in feelings for others, they selfishly take what they want and do as they please, violating social norms and expectations without the slightest sense of guilt or regret.

Psychopaths often come across as arrogant, shameless braggarts—self-assured, opinionated, domineering, and cocky. They love to have power and control over others and seem unable to believe that other people have valid opinions different from theirs. What makes psychopaths different from all others is the remarkable ease with which they lie, the pervasiveness of their deception, and the callousness with which they carry it out.

The most debilitating characteristic of even the most well-behaved psychopath is the inability to form a workable team.

The majority of people and therefore workplaces are easy prey, because we still want to believe that people are inherently good. We don't really want to believe that such people exist. Wherever you find money, prestige and power you will find them. We are far more likely to lose our life savings to an oily-tongued swindler than our lives to a steely-eyed killer."

Robert D. Hare, Without Conscience


“Over the past quarter century, the leaders of both the Democratic and the Republican political parties have perfected a remarkable system for remaining in power while serving the new economic oligarchy. Both parties take in huge amounts of money, in many forms — campaign contributions, lobbying, revolving-door hiring, favours, and special access of various kinds.

Politicians in both parties enrich themselves and betray the interests of the nation, including most of the people who vote for them. Yet both parties are still able to mobilize support because they skilfully exploit America’s cultural polarization. Republicans warn social conservatives about the dangers of secularism, taxes, abortion, welfare, gay marriage, gun control, and liberals.

Democrats warn social liberals about the dangers of guns, pollution, global warming, making abortion illegal, and conservatives. Both parties make a public show of how bitter their conflicts are, and how dangerous it would be for the other party to achieve power, while both prostitute themselves to the financial sector, powerful industries, and the wealthy. Thus, the very intensity of the two parties’ differences on “values” issues enables them to collaborate when it comes to money.”

Charles Ferguson, Predator Nation

Stocks are still struggling to recover from their recent decline and set a new high.

Gold and silver were hit sharply today early on, but recovered somewhat into the close, as the Dollar strengthened again.

The amount of gold available for delivery at these prices has become shockingly low.

FOMC minutes tomorrow.

Have a pleasant evening.

Corporate Psychopathy: An Interview With One of the Researchers of the Hare Project

This interview was done by my friend 'Davos' who has agreed to post it here in addition to his own site, Psychopathic Economics 101.

I had always felt that there was something not right with one of the higher up bosses I had in a major division of a Fortune 100 company. Now there is little doubt in my mind that he was a psychopath.

He had the verbal acuity to talk his way in and out of almost anything, and was quite proud of it, and of being hard to pin down. And he gathered a subculture around himself, both above and below, of similar personality types and sycophants, with a few captive enablers who were technically very competent.  His powerful personal style fatally marked everything.

I left, not because I could not deal with it, but rather because I saw where this all was heading.  The only reason he  lasted as long as he did was because the CEO was hands off and weak, and the board was servile and largely clueless. His reputation caught up with him and I heard he did not fare well, and ended up being indicted and went to prison. He ruined the lives of thousands of people. To this day he admits no guilt and no regrets, except in getting caught.

It should be said here that just because you don't like or understand your boss does not mean that he or she is a psychopath, or even a bad person. There are places where people who don't like their bosses meet to discuss it. They are called bars, and they meet there every Friday night.

I was interested in what the researcher called The Dark Triad of Personality: Machiavellianism, Psychopathy & Narcissism.

Why is this study of corporate psychopathy more than a morbid concern? Because it drives a spike in the heart of the assumption that on the whole people in business (and politics for that matter) are rational and naturally good, and that this therefore permits us to forge an economic structure based on self-restraint and self-regulation (or little to no regulation at all for that matter), the so called efficient markets hypothesis. 

Anyone who has acted in the real business world knows this is utter nonsense.  The unscrupulous can not only act for many years without hindrance, they can often prosper and thrive, and distort whole sections of an economy through preying on the weaknesses of even the most ordinary of men.

And yet an economic theory based on this assumption of perfect rationality shaped American culture for the past thirty years, from the days of Reagan at least.

As they say, the devil's greatest success is in convincing people that he does not exist.

First Study Where Fortune 100 Executives Were Screened For Psychopathy [Podcast] Interview With Dr. Daniel N. Jones, Ph.D. Postdoctoral Researcher for Dr. Robert Hare Ph.D.
Posted on March 2, 2012 by Davos

I Am Fishead caught my eye on Jesse’s Café Américain. In this documentary psychopathy researchers “fish for psychopaths” inside Fortune 100 corporations.

Dr. Robert Hare is in the movie. He was a familiar face. I had remembered him from the documentary The Corporation. In that documentary Dr. Hare analyzes a corporation, a soulless entity given the rights of a person. A person whose DNA makes him put profit above everything else—even his fellow citizens. In The Corporation, the corporation is compared against the WHO’s psychopathic diagnostic checklist. Corporations meet the criteria. I wrote about this problem in Why We Are Totally Finished. The movie is linked within that piece.

The second thing I realized after watching the other documentary that Dr. Hare was in, I Am Fishead, was that I had a ton of questions. ”The Dark Triad’s” negative externalities that we’ve had to endure are pretty apparent after the crash of 2008: Unemployment is 22.5%; 47 million Americans are on food stamps; our children have been saddled with even more debt which went to bailing out insolvent institutions who deserved to fail; prime foreclosures now rival subprime foreclosures; home prices are through the first floor and will be subterranean soon; 25% of kids age 18-34 live in mom and dad’s basements; 46% of kids 18-24 have no job; 12% of homes are vacant; there are schools just for homeless children; tent cities have sprung up; and 60 Minutes now runs stories of children living in cars with their unemployed parents.

So I wasn’t surprised to hear that there was a magnetism between corporations and psychopaths. What caught my ear was that in I Am Fishead, Dr. Hare said he interviewed 203 employees at Fortune 100 companies. He then went on to say that 8 of them had very high scores. Sample the population and you’ll find 1% of them are psychopaths.

Eight out of 203?

I also wondered how this came about. I mean, I just couldn’t picture a Fortune 100 company calling anyone up and saying, “Hey, I think not only is the corporation a psychopath, but I’m concerned many of our executives are as well.”

Dr. Daniel N. Jones

Here is a summary, of which some of the following is verbatim, some isn’t, quotes were omitted, please listen to audio as it is far more precise, I’m an economic blogger, not a transcriptionist ;-).  The summary is merely for those in a rush who want to tune into what is of interest, and also for the search engines to find.  Not only do I think this is fantastic work, a super cause but I truly feel it is something that should be utilized a lot more.

---

Psychopathic Economics Interview: Psychopath Study Conducted at Fortune 100 Companies

---

• 0:05 Genesis of Fortune 100 psychopathy study as seen in the movie documentary I Am Fishead.
• 0:16 Dr. Paul Babiak Ph.D, Dr. Crag S. Neumann PhD., Dr. Robert Hare Ph.d got together and worked on that particular project.
• 0:30 Dr. Paul Babiak is a consultant for industrial organizational psychology, does consulting work for various organizations.
• 0:40 They approached Dr. Babiak because they wanted some high-level executives screened.
• 0:48 Dr. Babiak felt it would also be appropriate to screen for psychopathy, in this particular instance, as an informative measure.
• 1:00How the test was administered, he gave the Psychopathy Checklist Revised, the “Gold-Standard” of psychopathy assessments.
• 1:12 Twenty items, standard clinical interview administered to employees being considered for executive level positions.
• 1:39 Individuals are extremely cooperative, very happy to help.
• 1:43 One thing we know about people individuals high in psychopathy, through the literature, they don’t think there is anything wrong with them—it’s just the rest of the world that is screwed up.
• 1:52 If they run into problems it is not their fault.  Or at least that is how they perceive it.
• 2:00 Individuals were extremely happy to help and cooperative.
•  2:15 Individuals who scored high in psychopathy were rated as much more effective in their communication skills and their creativity, so these individuals that were actually, we considered toxic people both in society and corporations, were actually evaluated higher than others in their communications skills and creativity.  Which I find to be kind of a scary thing.
• 2:50 Psychopathy is measured by the psychopathy checklist which breaks into four different aspects.
• 3:00 Aspect 1.)  Being a manipulative person or a liar.
• 3:05 Aspect 2.) Callous, kind of a lack of empathy towards others.
• 3:08 Aspect 3.) Impulsivity, or more specifically a lack of impulse control.
• 3:15 Aspect 4.) Antisocial behavior, some kind of breaking rules, whether it be social rules or legal rules.
• The first two aspects were particularly related to positive overall outcomes in the sense that they were evaluated as more effective leaders and communicators.  They were more creative. 
• 3:44 But what these first two aspects giveth, the second two aspects taketh away.  Evaluations were lower, productivity was lower and their ability to work with others.
• 4:10 Depending on the short or long checklist you consult, you get 4 to 5 percent of these executives that were interviewed meeting the threshold criteria for being a psychopath.
• 4:30 That is quite frightening when you consider that in the general population that you have about 1 percent of people walking among us that are psychopathic.  Maybe 1.5 percent of men and 0.5 percent of women.
• 4:44 So that is startling a 4 to 5 fold increase.
• 4:50 NONE of the CEO’s met the threshold for psychopathy!!!  It was really the up and comers, vice presidents, senior managers, middle managers.
• 5:25 Good theories as to why that is.
• 5:38 All the malevolence doesn’t come from just one type of person.
• 5:50 There is actually a cluster of traits that we refer to as, “The Dark Triad of Personality” called Machiavellianism, Psychopathy & Narcissism. 
• 6:00 Overlap, but are distinct their unique aspects.
• 6:10 Machiavellian’s are liars and callous but they also have a lot of long-term planning.
• 6:30 The narcissist is the spokesperson
• 6:37 The henchmen are the frontment, aggressively climbing his way, that is really the psychopath.
• 6:50 When you get these 3 together in an organization it is a particularly toxic outcome because they feed off each other’s unethical behavior.
• 7:15 Asocial Offenders and Antisocial Offenders.  Asocial Offenders are introverts, socially awkward, unable to communicate.  Antisocial Offenders gets along quite well impersonally.  It’s just they Antisocial Offender has no regard for rules.
• 7:45 B-Scans (Business Scans). How to better equip and inform corporations and other organizations for providing more information.  No one gets fired or disciplined.  It is extremely confidential.
• 8:15 We want to work with corporations to better inform them where there might be problematic areas.  We really try to work at the departmental level if there is a cluster of red flags in finance or you are struggling with personality clashes in HR.  Want to be able to provide corporations with tools to flag problematic  areas and ultimately deal with people at the corporate level who don’t see the mission of the corporation properly.    Helping also screen at the entry level.  Solutions for chronic problems.
• 9:37 The B-Scan is written in business not criminal language.  Context appropriate.  The B-Scan is not divorced from the target audience.
• 12:11 Over 800 stories given.  Individuals higher in psychopathy were less likely to go through the penal justice system.  The higher the score the more they stole and the less they got caught.
• 13:20 Bernie Madoff and average psychopath and the people below Madoff.
• 14:00 Just scratching the surface.  Everything before has been leadership and fostering cooperative work environments.
• 14:19 We’re only now beginning to realize how these clinical and personality research can really form kind of derailing type of behaviors that we see in corporations.  Now never has it been more critical at this juncture.  Forty-three percent of all corporations report some major fraud at some point in the past few years.
• 14:50 There research reports estimating anywhere between $160,000,000,000.00 to $600,000,000,000.00 annually are pumped out of our economy as the result of corporate fraud.  People are loosing their livelihood essentially because of these individuals.
• 15:09 It’s amazing and baffling to me that we are almost starting now to ask these questions.
• 15:17 Corporations are relatively new.
• 15:32 Hervey M. Cleckley and Robert Hare both kind of fed off each other.  It was really late 1970s early 1980s before we really kind of had any working conception of what a psychopath really was.
• 15:50 Startlingly fast considering the history of the organization versus the working conception.

Rate the personality of your boss and coworkers

Research site website.

About That Seemingly Irrational Need for Bonuses...

Psychopath: A person with an antisocial personality disorder, manifested in aggressive, perverted, criminal, or amoral behavior without empathy or remorse.

He would sell his mother for an eighth.

He would betray his most solemn promise on a whim.

He was a law unto himself, forcing others to serve his needs.

He would grab society's tit and suck it dry.

He would grasp and tear until he showed them all.

He was beyond good and evil--- He was an American hero.

"Our hypothesis was that psychopathic traits are also linked to dysfunction in dopamine reward circuitry," Buckholtz said. "Consistent with what we thought, we found people with high levels of psychopathic traits had almost four times the amount of dopamine released in response to amphetamine."

In the second portion of the experiment, the research subjects were told they would receive a monetary reward for completing a simple task. Their brains were scanned with fMRI while they were performing the task. The researchers found in those individuals with elevated psychopathic traits the dopamine reward area of the brain, the nucleus accumbens, was much more active while they were anticipating the monetary reward than in the other volunteers.

"It may be that because of these exaggerated dopamine responses, once they focus on the chance to get a reward, psychopaths are unable to alter their attention until they get what they're after," Buckholtz said. Added Zald, "It's not just that they don't appreciate the potential threat, but that the anticipation or motivation for reward overwhelms those concerns."

Psychopaths' Brains Wired to Seek Rewards No Matter the Consequences

So let's give deregulation and the efficient markets hypothesis another chance to really maximize the damage.

An entire society built around white punks on dopamine, trapped in the infantile stage of development, allocating resources for the many, the arbiters of utility and worth, from Wall Street to the Congress: this is what America has become.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Incalculable Risk of Being Honorable

 

"'A lot of white-collar criminals are psychopaths,' says Bob Hare.  'But they flourish because the characteristics that define the disorder are actually valued.  When they get caught, what happens?  A slap on the wrist, a six-month ban from trading, and don't give us the $100 million back.  I've always looked at white-collar crime as being as bad or worse than some of the physically violent crimes that are committed.'

Some can be particularly good at bending the rules to fulfill their need to feed on whatever their diet demands.  They are naturally drawn to positions of power, frequently faking their credentials and results, and are often verbally acute, willing to say and do almost anything to get their way.  They may be able to buy their way into positions of power and manage their environments very effectively, except their family relationships and children would rarely be described as normal.  Psychopathy breeds a multitude of other disorders.  And they seem to be gaining traction, getting better, and finding kindred spirits in the growing partnership between corporations and the government."

Jesse, Psychopaths Among Us and the Necessity of Law, 9 September 2011

"In principle the war effort is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation. The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects and its object is not the victory over either Eurasia or East Asia, but to keep the very structure of society intact...

If leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupified by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realise that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away. In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance."

George Orwell, 1984

"If there are damned souls in Hell, it is because men blind themselves."

E.A. Bucchianeri, Faust: My Soul Be Damned for the World

"It is hard to say whether he was overwhelmed by the mere idea of such an immense and wicked enterprise, or whether he feared that the rot went deeper and that resistance on his part might spell death.  In any case, he gave many people the impression that he was in the plot.  The other tribunes and the centurions also preferred the advantages of the moment to the incalculable risk of being honourable.  Their mood may be summed up thus: a shocking crime was committed on the unscrupulous initiative of few individuals, with the blessing of more, and amid the passive acquiescence of all."

Tacitus, The Murder of Galba 

 

The markets were understandably edgy today, putting their portfolios in order for a weekend fraught with exogenous risk.

The major stock index futures declined, and actually went out at the bottom, declining further after the bell.

Gold and silver initially rallied strongly, but were whittled back as the day wore on.

The metals shorts may be giving way, but they are drawing a line in the sand at gold $2000.

If that resistance is broken, gold may run.

VIX maintained its elevated level.

The Dollar chopped sideways finishing essentially unchanged, but at an elevated level relative to recent history.

Obviously the disorder in the Congress amongst the bickering and stiff-necked Republican tribesmen is adding to the unease domestically, but make no mistake that the growing war clouds in the Mideast are raising the fear levels, even among the congenitally greedy.

And then there is the ongoing war in the Ukraine, which our ADHD news media has temporarily misplaced.  

"Everywhere and always demonic powers lurk in the dark, waiting for the moment when man is weak; when of his own volition he leaves his place in Creation, as founded for him by God in freedom; when he yields to the force of evil, he separates himself from the powers of a higher order; and after voluntarily taking the first step, he is driven on to the next and the next at a furiously accelerating rate."

White Rose, Munich 1942

Have a pleasant weekend.

 

Bill Moyers With Matt Taibbi and Yves Smith on the Banks - The Psychopathy of Wall Street

"Too many people hold the idea that psychopaths are essentially killers or convicts.

The general public hasn't been educated to see beyond the social stereotypes to understand that psychopaths can be entrepreneurs, politicians, CEOs and other successful individuals who may never see the inside of a prison."

Dr. Robert Hare

Source

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Pushing Towards a New High

"Lying, deceiving, and manipulation are natural talents for psychopaths. When caught in a lie or challenged with the truth, they are seldom perplexed or embarrassed— they simply change their stories or attempt to rework the facts so that they appear to be consistent with the lie. The results are a series of contradictory statements and a thoroughly confused listener.

Psychopaths have a grandiose self-structure which demands a scornful and detached devaluation of others, in order to ward off their envy toward the good perceived in other people.

Robert D. Hare, Without Conscience

Stocks closed within 'spitting distance' of a new high today.

At least that is what the spokesmodels said.

Let's see if they can make it, and stick a close for a new high.

And how long after that it takes to set up and initiate a fourth 'blow off top.'

Gold and silver were mostly unchanged today along with the Dollar.

The metals made it through another Non-Farm Payrolls report reasonably well.

I will not be surprised at all to see the gold bulls take a sharp gut check at least once next week.

But gold has been holding with remarkable tenactiy to a trend line, on the closes at least.

Need little, want less, love more. For those who abide in love abide in God, and God in them.

Have a pleasant weekend.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Go Go Godzilla - Metals Options Expiration Monday

 

""Psychopaths often come across as arrogant, shameless braggarts—self-assured, opinionated, domineering, and cocky.  They love to have power and control over others and seem unable to believe that other people have valid opinions different from theirs.  What makes psychopaths different from all others is the remarkable ease with which they lie, the pervasiveness of their deception, and the callousness with which they carry it out.

Wherever you find money, prestige and power you will find them.   We are far more likely to lose our life savings to an oily-tongued swindler than our lives to a steely-eyed killer."

Robert D. Hare, Without Conscience


"Maintaining silence about a dirty truth is another way of lying, a common practice in high places."

Michael Parenti


"The market ideology is now the new form of imperial power and many of us, without any critical reflection, have signed onto that and organized our lives in that way so we do not have any time, energy or capacity for the things that are rightly important to us."

Walter Brueggemann

Fear can turn to greed in a second, and concerns just melt away n the passion to gamble and not miss out.

The markets *finally* got together and gave us an impressive bear market rally that they were able to take out near the highs.

If all goes well this weekend then we *might* be able to see them extend the gains next week.

All bully has to do is take out that second high on the charts.  

And as you might expect the risk averse plays retreated somewhat, such as the Dollar, gold and silver.  

Gold and silver took a sharp hit this morning, no doubt with a nod to their Comex option expiration on Monday.

And the meme today was wow, look at that Consumer sentiment number and its implications for inflation expectations.

And besides, the recession is already here and its not so bad, right?   

Why, it's practically over already.

Don't ask why, time to buy.

I seem to recall that they said the same thing a couple of weeks ago.  

Wash, rinse, repeat.

Earnings season dead ahead.

Have a pleasant weekend.