Bankers in drunken game of Monopoly, scary economics indeed.

[Rheghead]

Frightening scenario indeed

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/financialcrisis/8081594/Bankers-caused-credit-crisis-for-kicks.html

[John Little]

Reggie - sometimes I think you are a man of dark genius. This is one of them.

Thankyou.

[theone]

"Dr Crosthwaite claims his anthropological study of investors and traders found evidence of an element of masochistic satisfaction in running up losses"

So they like to fail? That's a human trait I really don't understand.

[Rheghead]

"Dr Crosthwaite claims his anthropological study of investors and traders found evidence of an element of masochistic satisfaction in running up losses"

So they like to fail? That's a human trait I really don't understand.

Well I likened it to me playing a game of Sim City. I had built a wonderful city, very wealthy and clean etc, aura was great. Then it got boring so I just started to cause earthquakes and storms to see the poor city suffer.

It is easy to do that if isn't actually real or you alienate yourself from reality.

[theone]

I thought I was the only one that did that.....

But I still really don't understand that mindset unless, as you say, they are not seeing it as reality.

[scotsboy]

............and the NHS?

http://aworldofprogress.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/operation-game.jpg

[scotsboy]

I thought I was the only one that did that.....

But I still really don't understand that mindset unless, as you say, they are not seeing it as reality.

...........or they know they can build it up again............

[Rheghead]

When it comes down to it, I suppose banking in the 21st century is much like playing a video game, the mindset and body movements are the same when bankers are sitting at a video display screen and keyboard.

[crayola]

Well I have just read Paul Crosthwaite's essay and I would have written a very different summary compared with the one that appeared in the Telegraph.

Most of Crosthwaite's essay is a summary of other people's speculatory ideas and the potlatch mentioned by the Telegraph writer is clearly not directly relevant to the recent financial crisis. Most of these ideas are old and Crosthwaite adds very little to them or to anything else in my opinion.

The Telegraph says.....


In Blood on the Trading Floor: Waste, Sacrifice and Death in Financial Crises, Dr Crosthwaite claims his anthropological study of investors and traders found evidence of an element of masochistic satisfaction in running up losses. As far as I can tell he has not studied investors and traders. His essay relies on the thoughts of others. Some of you may not be surprised to learn that two of his main sources and influences are Marx and Freud, and that the word 'post-modern' is used with some profligacy in the early pages.

Overall his essay was disappointing although an anthropological study of traders and investors of the form the Telegraph claims he has already done would be interesting in my opinion.