Rogues and Psychopaths

Abstract

From the previous chapters, we have learned there is a statistically significant higher percentage of psychopaths present in the financial industry. The study by researchers at St. Gallen’s presented in chapter 3 found that traders were more willing to damage their competitors than a group of known psychopaths. Are traders a more aggressive, less compassionate white-collar version of criminal psychopaths? Thus far, we have examined the traits of psychopaths and the culture of finance, including specific aspects of it. We have traced the evolution of finance education and key theories in finance over the past 20 to 30 years. Now it is time to see if it is possible to discern, with the advantage of hindsight, potential financial psychopaths. For each person selected, a brief synopsis of the crime that brought the person into the public consciousness will be presented, along with a short description of the person’s background. We will seek to determine if each person met the criteria for Antisocial Personality Disorder as defined in the DSM-V, in addition to meeting Hare’s short version for psychopathy. There are inherent dangers and ramifications in any “long-distance” psychological evaluation, and the purpose here is not to diagnose. Rather, this chapter is an attempt to determine whether these individuals could possibly have psychopathic personalities or whether they were influenced by external factors that resulted in behaviors that appear to casual observers to be psychopathic in nature.