It would normally make little sense for a Banker & Tradesman columnist to read a publication called “Wealth.” What would be the point? It would just fuel my jealousy of the editors and publishers and dishwashers and other such people who make so much more than I do.
But the slick publication, an add-on to the Financial Times newspaper, caught my eye with a recent column full of words such as “Machiavellian” and “psychopaths” and “personality disorder” and “predatory.”
I assumed that columnist James MacKintosh was writing about newspaper editors, but, no, the column was wondering about the sanity of the kinds of readers who, perhaps, read Banker & Tradesman.
The column cited studies and interviewed experts that suggested the banking world may be populated with a higher than the normal percentage of crazy people – especially during times of economic sluggishness and real estate crises, if you can imagine such a time.
As one professorial expert on psychopaths told the columnist, “the banking industry is an ideal target for psychopaths. These areas are tailor-made for the psychopath. Where things become chaotic and the normal rules don’t apply, enter stage right the psychopath.”
This is a good news/bad news development for the editorial staff at Banker & Tradesman. While we may be fearful of attending industry cocktail parties full of psychopaths fueled by whiskey, the apparent Human Resources strategy for financial services enterprises (“he’s nuts; make him a vice president”) will lead to many interesting business stories about banking and related news from the asylum.
As the Financial Times columnist explained, “If banks are indeed full of psychopaths, this has serious implications for regulation. New rules and tougher enforcement are likely to be met by more outright deceit; psychopaths are all but immune to threats of punishment.”
Massachusetts may become much more interesting, as Bank of New York Mellon Corp. begins to transfer 400 new and used jobs from Rhode Island to Westborough, enticed by both a state tax credit and a stable supply of mental hospitals.
Even more frightening is the heavy concentration of all manner of retail, investment, custodial and other “banking” services in the Boston-Cambridge colossus. Assuming that workforce contains the typical elevated population of psychopaths, it might well be multiplied further by the nightmare of living in an urban environment. A new study just published in Nature magazine by researchers at the University of Heidelberg found that folks who live in cities have a 21 percent higher risk of developing anxiety disorders than do the country bumpkins.
The bottom line: Boston faces the prospect of dealing with armies of psychopathic bankers, who are even more anxious than the average psychopath.
The Nut In Charge
All this does raise the usual causation question: Does banking attract more than its fair share of psychopaths, or does a successful career in banking simply doom you to an eventual mental peculiarity? The famous, frightening Citicorp Chairman Walter Wriston began his career as a junior lockbox inspector. From such beginnings, madness is born.
Some corporate stars have been willing to admit that a little crazed, manic behavior may be good for the bottom line. Andy Grove’s book about his Intel days was titled, “Only the Paranoid Survive.” He was just kidding. Maybe.
If, in fact, the banking world is over-weighted with psychopaths, this might have severe implications for internal audit and outside regulatory folks. As the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston’s Eric Rosengren told a conference on “safe and sound banking,” “Most banks use risk-sensitive approaches for internal audit and risk function activities, including mental health screening for the senior executives.”
Actually, he didn’t say that last part, but it might come up some day. As the Financial Times columnist suggested, “Perhaps, along with bank stress tests, financial regulators should be screening traders and executives for psychopathic traits.”
This is not to suggest that amoral over-enthusiasm and related mental tics are necessarily bad for business; after all, the bottom line wasn’t invented in seminaries. But especially in the financial services marketplace, a dollop of trust is essential.
I’m sure that the bankers who read Banker & Tradesman are just fine. Right?
