Ruined financiers committing desperate acts!

by Gursant Singh , Espanola New Mexico, Sunday, February 15, 2009, 07:01
edited by Gursant Singh, Tuesday, November 03, 2009, 07:27

This article really sums up how some people deal with their success, and failure, pleasure and pain. One ruined investor described his despair like this,

"We don't know what we're going to do," "We find ourselves at night, with the lights out, crying, asking, `What are we going to do?"'


"The Saint who always holds the thought of God in his mind sees this world only as a mere show. Pain and pleasure, success and failure are only God's play and when we see this true reality we are always in bliss."

Meanwhile back in India the birds are singing and the sun is just coming up over the Himalayas. It is another beautiful day and I wonder what awe inspiring beauty God has in store for us.



http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29195955/

MSNBC.com

Ruined financiers committing desperate acts
Facing financial ruin, some attempt suicide, others run from the law
The Associated Press
updated 2:50 p.m. ET Feb. 14, 2009
In the abyss of financial ruin, faced with sure disgrace and possibly prison, some of the newly scandalized rich have taken desperate measures in these despairing times.

The black hole of hopelessness can be overwhelming. A man who lost $1.4 billion to Bernie Madoff sits down in his Manhattan office and carefully writes a series of suicide letters to family and friends, then swallows a fatal dose of pills and conscientiously places a wastebasket under his bleeding arm, after slicing it with a box cutter.

Others are mind-boggling in their brazenness. A financier accused of stealing from his investors boards his private plane alone, sends a fake distress call over Alabama saying his windshield has shattered and he is bleeding profusely, then parachutes from the still-moving Piper Malibu, which is later found in a Florida swamp with no signs of blood or an imploded windshield.

In the past year, there have been more than 10 such incidents, from points across the country and beyond, executed by men whose finances disintegrated, sometimes into greed and possible thievery — with the same dizzying speed of the roller-coaster global market.

'Suicide does not discriminate'
In January alone, three cases surfaced. German billionaire investor Adolf Merckle, who lost a fortune in shorted Volkswagen stock, threw himself under a commuter train. Patrick Rocca, an Irish property investor who lost millions when the real estate market bottomed out, waited until his wife took their children to school before he shot himself in the head. Outside Chicago, real estate mogul Steven L. Good was found dead in his Jaguar, apparently from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

"Suicide does not discriminate on the basis of social status," said psychologist Alden Cass, who treats financial traders. "The ego of the successful person ... is not used to failure, not used to being wrong. They're perfectionists. They don't allow for the gray in life. They don't allow for second place. When that is taken away, they're stripped of everything they know."

Three days before Christmas, after writing his farewell notes, Rene-Thierry Magon de la Villehuchet killed himself in his 22nd-floor office in Midtown. He'd lost his entire savings, and his clients' money, to Madoff's alleged Ponzi scheme, which may have swallowed $50 billion from investments made by the very rich and the pension plans of everyday people.

The 65-year-old Frenchman, an aristocrat and professional investor, was deeply shamed and depressed, friends and family said. He felt he had ruined the lives of his clients, many of whom were friends. His brother, Bertrand, called his brother's suicide an honorable act. "At first he thought he'd be able to get the money back," Bertrand said in a Paris phone interview with The Associated Press after his brother's death. "Gradually he realized he wouldn't be able to. He trusted Madoff completely."

The black dog of depression gnaws at these men. "They see no answers," said Cass. "There is no hope. There is no way out."

Running and hiding is an entirely different reaction. Those who fake their deaths are "people with sociopathic and narcissistic tendencies," Cass says. "They believe they're smarter than everyone else. They think they're untouchable. They don't believe they have to abide by the rules."

Not so smart
In hindsight, Marcus Schrenker's plan to disappear doesn't appear particularly smart. The 38-year-old Indiana businessman, accused of betraying investors by not telling them about hundreds of thousands in fund fees — and facing a $533,000 legal judgment — bailed out of his plane, authorities say, two days after losing his court case.

See website for the remaining part of the article.http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29195955/