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Sunday’s New York Times has a lengthy article titled The Talented Mr. Madoff. It inventories the talents that have now made Bernard L. Madoff almost a household name. We’re so fortunate we don’t have any public officials or quasi-public officials with Madoff’s talents here in Coeur d’Alene. |
Here are a few of Bernie’s talents and traits represented in the Times article.
- Ability to be placed on important boards and commissions where he could influence decisions on how other people’s money is spent.
- Narcissistic with a strong sense of entitlement.
- Needs to appear smarter than everyone else.
- Skilled at impression management, “managing the impression you receive of them.”
- No fear of getting caught, in part because of a belief of being “above the law.”
- Ability to manipulate regulators. (Sun Tzu: Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.)
- Did not trust subordinates.
- Held himself aloof, “wrapping himself in an Oz-like aura, making him even more desirable to those seeking access.”
- “…so hungry to accumulate wealth that he did not care whom he hurt to get what he wanted.”
- Displays traits associated with psychopath.
- Lying
- Manipulation
- Ability and willingness to deceive
- Feeling of grandiosity
- Callousness and indifference to effect on victims
The article is lengthy but quite thorough.
We DON’T? lol 🙂 Are you sure he is not related to———oh never mind.
Comment by concerned citizen — January 25, 2009 @ 11:05 am
concerned citizen,
Just consider this post to by my contribution to the Sunday comics.
Comment by Bill — January 25, 2009 @ 12:23 pm
Bill, I’m reading “The Great Bridge” by David McCullough, about the building of the Brooklyn Bridge back in the 1870s, just after the Civil War. I wanted to get away from political books and thought this would be interesting. But there’s just no escaping political corruption, it seems to ooze out of every nook and cranny.
There’s a whole section in this book about Tammany Hall and the overt and audacious corruption of the Boss Tweed Ring. Boss Tweed ran New York and his “ring” was city hall. His methods were simple. Anyone who had a contract with the city was told to increase the total by 50%. The city would pay the bill and then the contractor would return half the money to Boss Tweed. It was estimated the Tweed Ring made off with over $75 million. (And those were 1870s dollars!)
Tweed was also mixed up with the Brooklyn Bridge project, skimming money from that operation as well. He denied it along with his cronies, and claimed they were just helping people, but a death bed confession showed all the suspicions to be true.
Here’s what one observer of the bridge corruption said back then: “Although the bridge from every element of its use and from the source of its finances, is considered a public enterprise, yet it is entirely a private corporation in which the public has no voice…”
Comment by mary — January 25, 2009 @ 4:07 pm
Mary,
Corrupt public officials (and organized crime figures trying to legitimize their illegal actions to win public opinion) often point to how much “good” their corrupt behavior did for the community. Of course, they never acknowledge their own corruption until there is no longer any plausible denial. Until that time, they will mount an us-against-them campaign, “us” being the supposedly diligent, altruistic (albeit corrupt) public officials, and “them” being the bad, evil citizens, regulators, or law enforcement who the corrupt officials try to pigeonhole in distracting and unflattering terms.
Pigeonholing is a form of psychological misdirection. Misdirection, both physical and psychological, fools the public in both magic acts and public corruption. A good friend of mine was a magician and member of The Magic Castle in Hollywood. I spent many a night there watching the magicians and the people in the audience.
The psychology of magic is fascinating. Corrupt public officials use the same tricks. The difference is that the audience goes to a stage magic show knowing they are going to be deceived. They expect in, and in fact, they actually enjoy it. It entertains them.
But the audience for a manipulative politician or corrupt public official listens to her or him hoping to hear accurate and even truthful information. This audience does not expect the sleazoid on stage to use the same tricks of deception a stage magician uses.
Comment by Bill — January 25, 2009 @ 4:55 pm
In another installment from “The Great Bridge” (see comment #3), it seems the directors of the Brooklyn Bridge project were some influential men with supposedly impeccable reputations. One newspaper defended their intertwined contracts and profit-taking by saying, “If you can’t trust these people, who can you trust?”
A group of citizens called for an investigation and asked serious questions about the bridge finances, contracts and budget overruns. The citzens were admonished by the bridge directors in publicly printed letters and were called “vagabonds and scoundrels” for asking questions and implying that everything might not be perfect. The citizens were accused of being “against the bridge, and to be against the bridge was to be against Brooklyn and against progress.”
(Even though the leader of the citizen group had been a Congressman who heavily supported the bridge proposal, but later wanted an investigation of the use of public funds.)
In a death bed confession years later, the kingpin director of the bridge admitted all the corruption of these highly “trusted” men.
Comment by mary — January 26, 2009 @ 2:30 pm
Mary,
I’ve never accused local officials of being original in their ideas. The tried and true ways of manipulating and deceiving the trusting and honest people in Coeur d’Alene work as well here and now as they did for Bernie Madoff or Boss Tweed in New York. The Madoff behavioral profile in yesterday’s New York Times really could apply to many corrupt public officials, both those who are in prison and those who are going to be.
Comment by Bill — January 26, 2009 @ 2:50 pm