To: [email protected][[email protected]]; Epstein, Jeff[[email protected]] From: Ed Sent: Thur 5/17/2012 1:53:20 PM Subject: How Crazy Is Wall Street (at least in the New York times) psychos.odf How Crazy is Wall Street? By Edward Jay Epstein The New York Times published an article on May 14, 2012 concerning the question of whether the rich, from a moral standpoint, are good or bad. The story reported that A recent study found that 10 percent of people who work on Wall Street are clinical psychopaths and that they exhibit an unparalleled capacity for lying, fabrication, and manipulation. The vivid term clinical psychopath brings to mind the berserk buzz-saw wielding investment banker played by Christian Bale in the film American Psycho. Since some 3.9 million people work in the financial services industry, a clinically-diagnosed horde of lunatics numbering almost 400,000 people would certainly be a matter of public concern, though it might only confirm some journalist s view of American capitalism. It is fair to ask what is the provenance of this incredible study. The New York Times cites its source as a March 12, 2011 story in THIS WEEK, which attributes the psychopath data to an estimate made by free-lance writer Sherree DeCovny in CFA Magazine, in an article entitled T <http://www.cfapubS.Org/doi/abs/10.2469/cfm.v23.n2.20>he Financial Psychopath Next Door. She wrote that studies conducted by Canadian forensic psychologist Robert Hare indicate that about 1 percent of the general population can be categorized as psychopathic, but the prevalence rate in the financial services industry is 10 percent. The problem here is that Hare never conducted a clinical study of the financial service industry, and never did a research that 10 percent of its members were psychopaths. John Grohol, the editor of World of Psychology, after the publication of DeCovny s article, asked Hare about the putative study. Hare told him, I d