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Psychopathic Ultra-Rich Power Elites, Financial Vultures and Corporatist Slime Balls of the New World Order Their Diabolical Neo-Fascist Authoritarianism and Irrationalism By JR, July 16, 2020 Human beings are by nature social animals, naturally bonded to their families and communities of other fellow human beings. Consequently there is a natural inclination for the common good. Even very young pre-school children sense when an adult is in dire stress or psychological pain and even in their powerlessness, want to do something to mitigate the problem. They also seem to have what is an innate sense of injustice, moral sensibility, understanding of the golden rule and other minimalist ethical principles which are all too soon driven out of them by their capitalist education, prosperity gospel churches and the toxic culture of selfishness and exploitation that prevails throughout the globe. Sadly, despite the endless covid-19 marketing propaganda peddled on television by duplicitous self-serving corporations that “We’re all in this together”, the reality is the exact opposite. We have been transmogrified into media bombarded distracted self-serving automatons - entrepreneurs of the self. Most of us don’t even know our next door neighbors and don’t care to know them. And “social distancing” comes quite natural for most 21st Century homo saps as they “drive” their cars and walk about with their faces planted in their cell phones like solipsistic zombies, oblivious to the external world and the existence of other humans, even their own children. The sense of community, solidarity and being a good neighbor disappeared with the compromised social “democracies”, capitalist states with a human face that still existed in the 1980s. Those days are gone for good, thanks to neo-conservative and latte liberal crypto-fascist creeps like Ronald “Trickle Down Economics” Ray Gun, Margaret “There is no such thing as Society” Thatcher and Lyin’ Brian “Bagman” Mulroney. As compellingly argued by existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980), human beings are born to freedom, autonomy and thus able to see themselves as free to act. Humans are “condemned to be free”, as Sartre proclaimed, and assume responsibility for those acts that impact others. Freedom without responsibility is vacuous and like the anarchist who rightly believes “power corrupts”, it enables any freedom loving person to reject obedience to authorities that are invariably illegitimate. The truly free human being has the power within to refuse and reject all forms of authoritarianism and hierarchy. Although there are compelling philosophical and biological arguments that free will is a delusion, we feel compelled to accept that we are still free to act or to have acted otherwise. Without this understanding and acceptance, morality and responsibility to holding ethical principles would not be possible. Equipped with these seemingly innate capacities, we humans, as the Scottish Enlightenment philosopher David Hume noted, should by sheer numbers alone, be able to stand up to a small group of ultra-rich and anti-human authoritarians, tyrants and bosses that have prevailed throughout history. It seems axiomatic that whether human socio-economic societies are medieval theocracies and monarchies, fascist dictatorships or the capitalist financial dictatorships that prevail today whose leaders pray to the deities of “The Market”, we are predisposed to confront these forms of hierarchy and tyranny. The ruling corporatists have peddled everything, including their vicious anti-democratic, anti-community neo-liberal New World Order (NWO) of profit before all else, privatization, deregulation, debt as a form of control and domination [1], austerity, wage erosion, evisceration of the public sphere and predatory globalized finance capitalism, arguably the most authoritarian, tyrannical and diabolical agenda and system ever to exist in history. If you peruse through the vile biographies of the so-called power elites of world history from politics, religion, economics, military, police and big business it reads like an encyclopedia of pure “psychopathology”. The Canadian criminal psychologist, global expert in psychopathology and University of British Columbia professor emeritus Robert D. Hare in his groundbreaking books “Without Conscience” and “Snakes in Suits” lists a total of at least 20 criteria in his Psychopathology Checklist (PCL). The book “Snakes in Suits” applies the psychopathological criteria to capitalism and its corporate and financial hierarchies. The books are revealing and disturbing research. Here is a small sampling of the characteristics for psychopaths: Glib insincere persuasive con artists with superficial charm and charisma, prone to ennui and yet exhibiting considerably exaggerated self-esteem (Dunning-Kruger Effect), malignant narcissism and manipulative parasitism, an inability to postpone gratification to support generally unrealistic long term goals, subject to fundamental attribution error, self-serving bias, pathological lying, fraudulent manipulative behavior, lack of conscience and adherence to moral principles, lacking in empathy, remorse or guilt, emotional callousness, obsessed with power over others, impulsive, unwillingness and ability to take responsibility for one’s own actions, sexually exploitive lifestyle, marital and friendship challenges, etc., etc. [2] There is at least one of these amoral selfish assholes in every neighborhood and workplace. Some psychopaths have been diagnosed with serious traumatic brain injuries or having suffered from dysfunctions in the prefrontal cortex and amygdala regions of the brain that have been associated with specific learning impairments in psychopathology. Researchers have linked head injuries with psychopathic behaviors, including violence. Since the 1980s, scientists have correlated traumatic brain injury, such as damage, not only to the prefrontal cortex, but the orbitofrontal cortex, leading to psychopathic behavior and a deficient ability to make morally and socially acceptable decisions, a condition that has been termed "acquired sociopathy", or "pseudo-psychopathy". Moreover, individuals with damage to the area of the prefrontal cortex known as the ventromedial prefrontal cortex show remarkable similarities to diagnosed psychopathic individuals, displaying reduced autonomic response to emotional stimuli, deficits in aversive conditioning, similar preferences in moral and economic decision making, and diminished empathy and social emotions like guilt or shame. These emotional and moral impairments may be especially severe when the brain injury occurs at a young age. Children with early damage in the prefrontal cortex may never fully develop social or moral reasoning and become psychopathic individuals characterized by high levels of selfishness, aggression and antisocial behavior performed without remorse or empathy for their victims. Sociopathic behaviors are similar to those of the psychopath but the cause is generally associated with prior traumatic experiences. According to Professor Robert Hare who spent most of his academic career researching people with this personality disorder are not only overrepresented among criminals and those in prisons, but even more so in authoritarian and hierarchical domains and environments such as the military, police, religious leaders and corporate executives, about six times more than the general population, which includes those in leadership positions such as management, politicians and on the job bosses. Psychopathic behavior and the widespread failures of not only ethical oversight and human decency, but rationality, logic and moral reasoning are widespread in corporate boardrooms and the penthouse suites of banks and brokerage houses throughout the world such as Goldman Sachs where profit overrides everything and anything that makes democracy and justice possible. These corporate vultures also control our compliant governments throughout the world, thus destroying state sovereignty and the responsibility they have to caring for its worst off citizens. Otherwise, why have the state at all if its only function is to satisfy the dictates of corporate profit, greed and exploitation. As in the economic global debacle in 2007-09 when millions of people lost their homes, trillions of dollars were funneled to Wall Street, as is the case today (but even worse). Parasitic capitalism called neo-liberalism (globalized financial predatory capitalism) has become the enemy, not only of humanity as it is now devouring its host and the futures for our children and grandchildren. As massive uncontrollable debt is inflicted on post secondary students and the masses overall, it is also rapidly destroying the planet’s ecosystems. Using our finite world and its people as an object of plunder and the planet as a trash heap is resulting in chaos and widespread resentment and anger that include a disquieting rise of new irrationalities not only on social media and elsewhere including the corporate media, but in rabid religious fundamentalism, far right wing authoritarian governments and fascist regimes throughout the world. For the past century or more, the values of the Humanist Enlightenment and especially the dreams of genuine bottom up democracy have been dying a horrifying death by a thousand cancerous cuts. We are closing in on a tipping point to a day of reckoning, the end game following the creation of a corrupt tyrannical socio-economic global capitalist ideology and the emergence of moral monsters such as Donald Trump. It’s likely an event that is now inescapable. Witness the massive swindle (Version 2 – even worse than Version 1 from 2008-09) of trillions of dollars from our corporate controlled governments that appear mysteriously from cyberspace to once again replenish the casino chips of wealthy plutocrats and financial mafia. Donald Trump and his copious pathologies are one shocking manifestation of a disturbing reactionary trend that is surely leading us to an apocalyptic ending. Been there, done that - in 20th century Germany, Italy and Spain. For hundreds of years Christians have been predicting the “Rapture” or “Second Coming” of their guru Jesus Christ that will restore goodness and sanity to a greed ridden, demented and irrational world. It would appear that The Second Coming has arrived. His name is Donald Trump – a racist misogynist neo-fascist narcissist huckster and pathological liar - with the full moral and political support of most Christians. Is this pathetic excuse for a human being really Jesus Christ reincarnate? Do Christians sincerely embrace the psychopathological behaviors and other egotistical pathologies that Trump consistently displays such as winning at all costs, conflation of ends and means, lack of empathy or compassion and basic attributes of what it means to be human? Am I missing something? In the words of 19th century abolitionist, Frederick Douglass: “Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.” Joel Bakan, a law professor or at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada argued in a compelling documentary called The Corporation that if corporations were real people, they would be psychopaths and at least in recent history, placed in a mental institutions like the one in the movie One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest to protect the rest of us – and from one another. In fact corporations are now legally defined to have more rights than flesh and blood humans as enshrined in the SCOTUS decision called Citizen’s United. Following his research and logic, the global expert in psychopathology, Professor Hare, in one of his research papers, said: “He’s not robbing a bank; but rather he’s going to be a bank president” The Indian lawyer, moral teacher, social activist, anti-colonialist and pacifist Mahatma Gandhi, from whom the quote originates, was able to show the world in the last century what a person with an unbending will and moral sensibilities can achieve. The Indian independence movement, of which he was the spiritual and political leader, embraced the ideas of non-violent action and civil disobedience and in August 1947 achieved the end of brutal murderous British colonial rule over India. Why should we, the slavish citizens of today, not succeed in this? On the role of the individual in a situation perceived as hopeless, the writer and philosopher Albert Camus wrote in a “Letter to a Desperate Man” shortly after the outbreak of the Second World War: “Every human being has a more or less large sphere of influence.… You can convince ten, twenty, thirty people that this war was not and is not inevitable, that not all means have been tried to stop it, that one must say it, write it if possible, shout it out if necessary! These ten or thirty people will pass it on to ten others, who in turn will pass it on. If you are held back by inertia, start again with others“. [3] Thus, what is going on right now – and again - with the deplorable corporate bailouts is the agenda of nefarious psychopathic authoritarian financial oligarchs and their sock puppets in government that are using a global pandemic to justify attempting to rescue an unsustainable, failed, deeply corrupt, exploitive, environmentally destructive and immoral capitalist world order. As Douglass, Gandhi and Camus have shown, we citizens no longer have to be enslaved by wealthy billionaire plutocrats, corporate oligarchs, bank mafia and other financial parasites [4] with their compliant bought-and-paid-for neo-fascist politicians and rabid armed and dangerous cops who serve and protect their interests, but must do whatever we can to ensure that these human parasites will not succeed with their planned totalitarian dictatorships of capital and debt. This includes the phony corporate co-opted environmental groups such as The Sierra Club and fraudulent “Green New Deal” with extinction levels rapidly rising (with the exception of humans), pollution and global heating out of control and ecosystems in free fall. The survival of our kids and grandkids depend on our acting resisting it. Notes: [1] As anthropologist David Graeber has asserted, it is difficult to talk about how the financial system really works because it’s masked by layers upon layers of obscurantism, mystification, abstraction, jargon, error, deceit and prevarication. There is, for example, the rhetoric of finding the money to prime or bail out the “economy” to ostensibly help the people, although the object is to preserve and rescue the corporate capitalist system that serves and protects the privileges of the 1%. Money is not some kind of a limited commodity that needs to be discovered, extracted or produced. It is literally being created out of thin air, mostly debt – but whose? Such mythologies and mystifications are crucially important to maintain, in the interests of the ruling oligarchic capitalist classes. Surely almost all the traditional justifications for capitalism as in any way democratic and just have been refuted. Wealthy people and the governments that serve and protect them do not believe in debt, at least not in their own debt. They certainly do not think that paying off their debts is a matter of honor or moral responsibility. After all, most employers would not pay their workers at all if they could figure out a way not to without resorting to outright slavery as it was in the first 200 years of capitalism. However, if you’re in a position of weakness, debt is a moral obligation whereas if you’re in a position of strength, debt is power. There is an old adage that: “If you owe a bank one hundred thousand or even a million dollars, the bank owns you. On the other hand if you owe the bank several billion dollars, you own the bank. Debt is all about power and who holds it. If Sierra Leone or any other Third World country (even Greece that was economically humiliated by the IMF and ECB) owes billions of dollars to the United States, Sierra Leone is in deep trouble. If the USA, the biggest debtor nation on the planet, owes South Korea billions of dollars, South Korea in deep shit because the USA has a powerful military machine that can, as it has done many times, demolish any weaker country. But the moral shell game is incredibly effective considering no moral equivalency between an oppressor (power) and the oppressed (powerlessness). Otherwise decent people think it’s totally justified to refuse food to hungry children because their former government took out a bad loan. This is why so many of us have been trying to figure out a way to popularize the notion of “odious debt”, not a very effective phrase. The term was concocted by an American court after the US seized Cuba from the Spanish Empire following the Spanish-American War. The Spanish government insisted the US was now responsible for the Cuban government’s outstanding debts to Spain but American courts ruled Cuba didn’t really owe the money because its loans were taken under unfair circumstances. This is what they meant by “odious debt”: a loan that nobody would have taken if he had been a really free agent acting in its own best interest. Perhaps the corona virus pandemic will help us see more clearly that what we call the “economy” and “finance” have always been just other people’s debts, and these debts are intentionally created by collusion between private banks, financial corporations, central banks, and government, between ostensibly public and private institutions that are in reality increasingly difficult distinguish. What we call economics, finance and the economy is more like a giant con, a shell game or rigged casino in which the house (banks and corporations) have an unlimited supply of chips supplied by the state. I like to use the example of J. P. Morgan Chase, the largest bank in the United States of America. It’s my understanding that something like 76 percent of their profits flows from ridiculous unjustifiable fees and penalties. Think about it; they make their profit if you make a “mistake”. So they have to set up a system which is confusing enough that they can be sure a large percent of people will make some mistake, but not so confusing that they can’t say “Hey, it’s not our fault; you can’t balance your checkbook.” Increasingly, the entire apparatus of government and the financial system is becoming a giant scam and swindle (like the multi-trillion dollar public bailouts) designed to drive us into debt that cannot and will not ever be repaid. Since most of the profits being extracted on Wall Street or the Nikkei index or FOOTSE are coming from financial manipulation and con games, not productive industry. This is what capitalism has become – a massive casino and global Ponzi Schemes. Just witness the rising stock markets in the face of devastating economic news - including the exponential rise in covid-19 cases - for the vast majority in addition to unprecedented negative GDP. [2] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_D._Hare [3] Marin, L. (ed.) (2013). Albert Camus – Libertarian writings (1948-1960). Hamburg, p. 273 [4] Consider this article titled Psychopaths on Wall Street from November 9, 2025 The March/April issue of the CFA Magazine has a fascinating article titled “The Financial Psychopath Next Door.” A shocking statistic jumped out at us. From the article:
Studies conducted by Canadian forensic psychologist Robert D. Hare indicate that
about 1-3 percent of the general population can be categorized as psychopathic, but
the prevalence rate in the financial services industry is 10 percent. And
Christopher Bayer believes, based on his experience, that the rate is much
higher since charismatic psychopaths are able to convince others to mimic their
toxic behaviors. The type of psychopath the author is writing about is characterized by compulsive gambling. And the Wall Street psychopath doesn’t necessarily show up to his or her first day of work in this condition. From the article: Taken to the extreme, some traders become compulsive gamblers. The behavior is often latent–neither they nor anyone else knows they have this propensity. They hide small losses and keep doubling their position to try to eliminate them. When those trades turn sour, they dig themselves into a deeper hole and deny any wrongdoing or failure. They rationalize by telling themselves that poor investment decisions are an occupational hazard. They lie to family members or others to conceal the extent of their involvement with gambling and commit forgery, fraud, theft, and embezzlement to support their habit. A little more color on these particular types of psychopaths: These “financial psychopaths” generally lack empathy and interest in what other people feel or think. At the same time, they display an abundance of charm, charisma, intelligence, credentials, an unparalleled capacity for lying, fabrication, and manipulation, and a drive for thrill seeking. A financial psychopath can present as a perfect well-rounded job candidate, CEO, manager, co-worker, and team member because their destructive characteristics are practically invisible. They flourish in fast-paced industries and are experts in taking advantage of company systems and processes as well as exploiting communication weaknesses and promoting interpersonal conflicts. Unfortunately, the author writes, the best candidates for many Wall Street jobs exhibit the traits of a financial psychopath. Specifically, as stated in The Psychopath Next Door documentary, “some bank executives went so far as to use Robert Hare’s psychopathological checklist to recruit employees.”
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