Financial world shaken by 4 bankers' apparent suicides in a week — RT Business

Financial world shaken by 4 bankers' apparent suicides in a week

Published time: February 03, 2014 12:16 
Edited time: February 04, 2014 09:00

Mike Dueker (Still from YouTube video/Russell Investments)

Tags

Accident, Employment

The apparent suicide death of the chief economist of a US investment house brings the number of financial workers who have died allegedly by their own hand to four in the last week.

50-year-old Mike Dueker, who had worked for Russell Investment for five years, was found dead close to the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in Washington State, says AP.

Local police say he could have jumped over a fence and fallen 15 meters to his death, and are treating the case as a suicide.

Dueker was reported missing by friends on January 29, and police had been searching for him.

A Sheriff’s spokesman said investigators learned that he was having problems at work but did not elaborate.

Jennifer Tice, a company spokeswoman declined to comment, however said, that Dueker was in good standing at Russell.

“We were deeply saddened to learn today of the death,” Tice said in an e-mail on Friday. “He made a valuable contributions that helped our clients and many of his fellow associates.”

Dueker joined Russell Investment in 2008. He wrote for Market Outlook financial services publications, forecasting the business cycle and the target federal funds rate. He is the creator and developer of a business cycle index that forecast economic performance published monthly on the Russell website.

He was previously an assistant vice president and research economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, and is ranked in the top 5 percent of published economists.

Over the past two decades he wrotedozens of research papers mostly on monetary policy, according to the bank’s website.

His most-cited paper was “Strengthening the case for the yield curve as a predictor of U.S. recessions,” published in 1997 while he was a researcher at the Federal Reserve.

“He was a valued colleague of mine during my entire tenure at the St. Louis Fed,” said William Poole, the bank's ex-president. “Everyone respected his professional skills and good sense.”

Dueker held an undergraduate degree in math from the University of Oregon, a master’s degree in economics from Northwestern University and a Ph.D. from the University of Washington.

Dueker’s apparent suicide was the fourth among financial experts in a week.

A 58-year-old former senior executive at Deutsche Bank AG, William Broeksmit, was found dead on January 26 in his home after an apparent suicide in South Kensington in central London.

The next day, January 27, Tata Motors managing director Karl Slym, 51, was found dead on the fourth floor of the Shangri-La hotel in Bangkok. Police said he could have committed suicide. Mr. Slym was staying on the 22nd floor with his wife, and was attending a board meeting in the Thai capital.

Another tragic incident occurred on January 28, when a 39-year-old Gabriel Magee, a JP Morgan employee, died after falling from the roof of its European headquarters in London.

The offices of JP Morgan in the Canary Wharf district of London (Reuters/Simon Newman)

While creating fortunes, City and Wall Street jobs are notorious for extra-long working weeks and huge amounts of stress. In a move to ease the tension some of the world’s biggest lenders like Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Credit Suisse have been telling junior staff to take more time off.

Some European countries like Belgium and the Netherlands have reduced the working week from 40 to 30 hours without damaging their economies, while in Germany an average worker puts in 35 hours a week and is the world’s fourth largest economy.

The economy is going to go bust and the apocalypse will ensue. These guys probably saw it coming from their vantage point and decided to opt out. I'm calling it!

http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/02/05/a-clear-and-present-danger-to-financial-stability/

An exerpt...

The Fed’s trillion cash injections have created a fantasy world of ever-rising stock prices that’s gradually giving way to the emerging reality of dismal earnings, chronic-high unemployment, droopy incomes, stagnant wages, swollen P/E ratios and a bloated financial sector that requires a larger and larger share of the nation’s wealth to avoid another devastating collapse. This is the situation we find ourselves in today, a situation that is papered over with propaganda about meaningless data points that fail to identify the real source of the problem, which is the gigantic capital hole created by the toxic assets that have not yet been written down, but are still sucking the life out of the bedraggled economy via debt servicing, rate and liquidity subsidies, and the reshaping of economic policy to preserve zombie institutions which need to be euthanized.

The problem is not hard to grasp, in fact, most people will understand what’s going on by just reading this two-paragraph excerpt from an article which appeared in Forbes magazine back in February, 2009. Here’s a clip from the piece titled “Zombie Firms and Zombie Banks”:

”Beginning in 1991, Japan experienced a financial crisis that has been documented and studied by many. Japan’s crisis was triggered by a real estate and equity price bubble followed by a collapse of equity and real estate prices. But unlike the examples I cited above, Japanese policymakers met the crisis with prolonged denial and then, when conditions forced recognition of the severity of the problem, very halting steps to address it. Banks were not forced to recognize the condition of their balance sheets and were encouraged to continue lending to firms that were themselves unprofitable. Anil Kashyap labels these “zombie firms.”

Zombie banks continued to direct capital to zombie firms. This charade continued for more than a decade, with the result that the once-powerful Japanese economy was completely stagnant for that period. The government’s main response was to dramatically increase spending on infrastructure and frantically try to get Japanese households to save less and consume more. The resulting “lost decade” of economic growth cost Japan more than 20% of GDP.” (“Zombie Firms And Zombie Banks”, Thomas F. Cooley, Forbes)

Sound familiar? This same phenom is playing out in the US today. The Fed has spared no expense to perpetuate the illusion that the zombie banking system is solvent and that the trillions of dollars in losses from worthless assets has somehow vanished into thin air. But they haven’t vanished. They are either hidden-away via accounting trickery, passed off to gullible, yield-crazed investors, or transferred onto the Fed’s bulging balance sheet. In any event, the debts are real, they’re impeding the recovery, they’re sucking the life’s blood out of the economy, and they’re clear and present danger to financial stability.

The red ink has to be purged, just as the rickety, Potemkin banking system has to be put out of its misery. We need a fresh start.

not worth stressing, you can't affect it!

:(

Nalod wrote:I have long suspected Nard=Playa.

You don't want to know how deep the bunnyhole goes....lol

And the Knicks didn't suck as near as only 15 years ago. Hardly an era's worth of time. I miss Spree...

Its deep.

You and Playa being one and the same.

The bunny hole and sluts have deep holes.

Is that personal? Who are we today? Nard or Playa?

GustavBahler wrote:

NardDogNation wrote:

GustavBahler wrote:You might be more right than you know. This writer accurately predicted the crash well before it happened.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/02/05/a-clear-and-present-danger-to-financial-stability/

An exerpt...

The Fed’s trillion cash injections have created a fantasy world of ever-rising stock prices that’s gradually giving way to the emerging reality of dismal earnings, chronic-high unemployment, droopy incomes, stagnant wages, swollen P/E ratios and a bloated financial sector that requires a larger and larger share of the nation’s wealth to avoid another devastating collapse. This is the situation we find ourselves in today, a situation that is papered over with propaganda about meaningless data points that fail to identify the real source of the problem, which is the gigantic capital hole created by the toxic assets that have not yet been written down, but are still sucking the life out of the bedraggled economy via debt servicing, rate and liquidity subsidies, and the reshaping of economic policy to preserve zombie institutions which need to be euthanized.

The problem is not hard to grasp, in fact, most people will understand what’s going on by just reading this two-paragraph excerpt from an article which appeared in Forbes magazine back in February, 2009. Here’s a clip from the piece titled “Zombie Firms and Zombie Banks”:

”Beginning in 1991, Japan experienced a financial crisis that has been documented and studied by many. Japan’s crisis was triggered by a real estate and equity price bubble followed by a collapse of equity and real estate prices. But unlike the examples I cited above, Japanese policymakers met the crisis with prolonged denial and then, when conditions forced recognition of the severity of the problem, very halting steps to address it. Banks were not forced to recognize the condition of their balance sheets and were encouraged to continue lending to firms that were themselves unprofitable. Anil Kashyap labels these “zombie firms.”

Zombie banks continued to direct capital to zombie firms. This charade continued for more than a decade, with the result that the once-powerful Japanese economy was completely stagnant for that period. The government’s main response was to dramatically increase spending on infrastructure and frantically try to get Japanese households to save less and consume more. The resulting “lost decade” of economic growth cost Japan more than 20% of GDP.” (“Zombie Firms And Zombie Banks”, Thomas F. Cooley, Forbes)

Sound familiar? This same phenom is playing out in the US today. The Fed has spared no expense to perpetuate the illusion that the zombie banking system is solvent and that the trillions of dollars in losses from worthless assets has somehow vanished into thin air. But they haven’t vanished. They are either hidden-away via accounting trickery, passed off to gullible, yield-crazed investors, or transferred onto the Fed’s bulging balance sheet. In any event, the debts are real, they’re impeding the recovery, they’re sucking the life’s blood out of the economy, and they’re clear and present danger to financial stability.

The red ink has to be purged, just as the rickety, Potemkin banking system has to be put out of its misery. We need a fresh start.

Even though I don't subscribe to conspiracy theories (the bulk of which are an insult to intelligence), I can't help but feel that something has been "up" for a long time. What confirmed it to me was the show of force during that incident in Boston the past year. It wasn't the incident so much, as it was the response that shocked me. When the hell did POLICE get ****ing anti-personnel tanks and the ability to outright shutdown a city? That made me feel as though there have been plans in the works to prepare for widespread civil unrest. The question becomes, why would the powers-that-be be concerned about widespread civil unrest? I think the answer involves the same things that were/are happening in Greece, the same things that were/are happening in Spain, and I believe the same things that will be happening here because of the market flat-lining. The only difference is that things would be worse considering how integrated international markets are with our own. I think it's a major reason why no one of any influence is concerned about global warming, income inequality or anything that the general population cares about. They know what's going to happen and none of that stuff will matter at that point. Right now, they are just focused on withering the storm.

I don't believe that the govt had a hand in what happened in Boston. I believe it was an opportunity to show off some of the military hardware the federal govt has been sending in large quantities all over the country, even to small towns. It was also an opportunity to normalize this type of response to a threat, real or imagined.

Neither did I; I'm not that crazy, lol. The response to it is what seemed odd to me. I had no idea that any one police department had the weaponry and ability to lock a city down, in a show of force like Boston PD did. They resembled more of a military, which seemed out of place for a largely docile population. You don't make those kind of investments unless you're preparing for or expecting something IMO.

playa2 wrote:Ha ha somebody else is waking up, ^5 to you NardDogNation !

LOL, I guess that I'm in the club now.

NardDogNation wrote:

GustavBahler wrote:You might be more right than you know. This writer accurately predicted the crash well before it happened.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/02/05/a-clear-and-present-danger-to-financial-stability/

An exerpt...

The Fed’s trillion cash injections have created a fantasy world of ever-rising stock prices that’s gradually giving way to the emerging reality of dismal earnings, chronic-high unemployment, droopy incomes, stagnant wages, swollen P/E ratios and a bloated financial sector that requires a larger and larger share of the nation’s wealth to avoid another devastating collapse. This is the situation we find ourselves in today, a situation that is papered over with propaganda about meaningless data points that fail to identify the real source of the problem, which is the gigantic capital hole created by the toxic assets that have not yet been written down, but are still sucking the life out of the bedraggled economy via debt servicing, rate and liquidity subsidies, and the reshaping of economic policy to preserve zombie institutions which need to be euthanized.

The problem is not hard to grasp, in fact, most people will understand what’s going on by just reading this two-paragraph excerpt from an article which appeared in Forbes magazine back in February, 2009. Here’s a clip from the piece titled “Zombie Firms and Zombie Banks”:

”Beginning in 1991, Japan experienced a financial crisis that has been documented and studied by many. Japan’s crisis was triggered by a real estate and equity price bubble followed by a collapse of equity and real estate prices. But unlike the examples I cited above, Japanese policymakers met the crisis with prolonged denial and then, when conditions forced recognition of the severity of the problem, very halting steps to address it. Banks were not forced to recognize the condition of their balance sheets and were encouraged to continue lending to firms that were themselves unprofitable. Anil Kashyap labels these “zombie firms.”

Zombie banks continued to direct capital to zombie firms. This charade continued for more than a decade, with the result that the once-powerful Japanese economy was completely stagnant for that period. The government’s main response was to dramatically increase spending on infrastructure and frantically try to get Japanese households to save less and consume more. The resulting “lost decade” of economic growth cost Japan more than 20% of GDP.” (“Zombie Firms And Zombie Banks”, Thomas F. Cooley, Forbes)

Sound familiar? This same phenom is playing out in the US today. The Fed has spared no expense to perpetuate the illusion that the zombie banking system is solvent and that the trillions of dollars in losses from worthless assets has somehow vanished into thin air. But they haven’t vanished. They are either hidden-away via accounting trickery, passed off to gullible, yield-crazed investors, or transferred onto the Fed’s bulging balance sheet. In any event, the debts are real, they’re impeding the recovery, they’re sucking the life’s blood out of the economy, and they’re clear and present danger to financial stability.

The red ink has to be purged, just as the rickety, Potemkin banking system has to be put out of its misery. We need a fresh start.

Even though I don't subscribe to conspiracy theories (the bulk of which are an insult to intelligence), I can't help but feel that something has been "up" for a long time. What confirmed it to me was the show of force during that incident in Boston the past year. It wasn't the incident so much, as it was the response that shocked me. When the hell did POLICE get ****ing anti-personnel tanks and the ability to outright shutdown a city? That made me feel as though there have been plans in the works to prepare for widespread civil unrest. The question becomes, why would the powers-that-be be concerned about widespread civil unrest? I think the answer involves the same things that were/are happening in Greece, the same things that were/are happening in Spain, and I believe the same things that will be happening here because of the market flat-lining. The only difference is that things would be worse considering how integrated international markets are with our own. I think it's a major reason why no one of any influence is concerned about global warming, income inequality or anything that the general population cares about. They know what's going to happen and none of that stuff will matter at that point. Right now, they are just focused on withering the storm.

Yea I find that the people who always try to deny this are the ones that's scared the most. LOL