Bankers' Deaths Shine Light on Stress in Industry, Tunnel Vision

By Ben Moshinsky Mar 24, 2014
Bloomberg

Coroners in London are preparing to investigate two apparent suicides as unexpected deaths by finance workers around the world have raised concerns about mental health and stress levels in the industry.

The inquest into the death of William Broeksmit, 58, a retired Deutsche Bank AG (DBK) risk executive found dead in his London home in January, will start tomorrow. The inquest for Gabriel Magee, a 39-year-old vice president in technology operations at JPMorgan Chase (JPM) & Co., who died after falling from the firm’s 33-story London headquarters, is scheduled for late May.

The suicides were followed by others around the world, including at JPMorgan in Hong Kong, as well as Mike Dueker, the chief economist at Seattle-based Russell Investment Management Co. The financial world’s aggressive, hard-working culture may be hurting itself, professionals advising on mental health in the industry say.

At greatest risk are “those who have not cultivated friendships, networks, outside of their company,” said Stewart Black, professor of global leadership and strategy at IMD, a business school in Lausanne, Switzerland.

“A lot of executives keep their nose down, work hard, do great work and don’t really cultivate extra networks,” he said. “Those broader networks act as safety valves.”

Banks are starting to realize the scale of the problem, said Peter Rodgers, chairman of the City Mental Health Alliance, which counts Morgan Stanley (MS) and Bank of America Corp. among its members.

Cultural Change

When the group was set up last year banks, law firms and accountants including Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS), Linklaters LLP and KPMG LLP, “no one in the City was really talking” about mental health, Rodgers said. Now they have 18 firms on their list, including the Bank of England, the central bank.

The banking sector has “seen a number of initiatives” to improve staff well-being but they “need to be accepted by a cultural change at the very top,” said Rodgers, who is also deputy general counsel at KPMG.

Magee’s family didn’t return a phone call seeking comment. Ed Adler, a spokesman for the New York-based Broeksmit Family Foundation, also didn’t return a call seeking comment. Kathryn Haynes, spokeswoman for Deutsche Bank in London, and Jennifer Zuccarelli, a spokeswoman for JPMorgan, declined to comment.

Finance “does tend to have a long-hours culture,” said Emma Mamo, who leads workplace initiatives at Mind, a U.K. mental health charity. “People can’t keep doing long hours; you need perspective and downtime.”

‘Finest Minds’

Broeksmit died on Jan. 26 at his home in Chelsea, west London, according to a memo to employees obtained by Bloomberg News. Police said he was found hanging and they aren’t treating the death as suspicious.

“He was considered by many of his peers to be among the finest minds in the fields of risk and capital management,” Deutsche Bank’s co-CEOs Anshu Jain and Juergen Fitschen wrote in the memo. They said Broeksmit was “instrumental as a founder of our investment bank.”

Dueker was found dead at the side of a highway that leads to the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in Washington state, according to the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department. He was 50.

The reviews into the deaths of Broeksmit and Magee will be overseen by a coroner, whose role is to question witnesses and police to determine where, when, how and why sudden or unexplained deaths occur, including suicides.

Magee’s inquest will be held by Mary Hassell, the coroner who said practices at Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s London office may have been a factor in the death of 21-year-old intern Moritz Erhardt from an epileptic seizure last year.

5 A.M. E-Mail

“It may be that Moritz had been working so hard that his fatigue was a trigger for the seizure that killed him,” Hassell said at the Nov. 23 inquest. “But that is only a possibility.”

Erhardt was found unconscious in a shower at Claredale House, a student residence in East London, on Aug. 15. His parents told the coroner that their son contacted them the day before his death in a 5 a.m. e-mail and that they were worried he was working too hard and sleeping too little.

Hassell questioned Juergen Schroeder, Erhardt’s development officer at Merrill Lynch, about whether working late was necessary in investment banking.

“There is a general expectation in our profession,” Schroeder said.

Weekends Off

Bank of America told staff on Jan. 10 its junior bankers should take some weekends off. Christian Meissner, head of global corporate and investment banking at the lender, said in a memo to employees that analysts and associates should “take a minimum of four weekend days off per month.”

JPMorgan, which has had at least two suicides so far this year, isn’t a member of the City Mental Health Alliance and hasn’t publicly announced measures to deal with the aftermath of the deaths.

“JPMorgan haven’t come forward to us and we haven’t approached them either,” Rodgers said. “There’s a period of mourning. The last thing they need is us sticking our heads in. I’m confident they will come forward.”

Related:

• JPMorgan Employee Falls to Death From Building Roof in Hong Kong
• Gorman Says Firm Reviewing Work-Life Balance of Junior Bankers
• BofA Says Junior Bankers Should Take Some Weekends Off

Lawmakers Vote to Keep Drone War Deaths Secret

Friday, November 22, 2013 by Common Dreams
House Intelligence Committee rejects provision that would count those killed in US bombings
by Sarah Lazare

The House Intelligence Committee on Thursday rejected 15 to 5 what supporters call a "modest" proposal to require that the Obama administration publicly report those killed by U.S. drone strikes overseas.

"By blocking transparency the House [committee] denies accountability for the slaughter committed against innocent lives in drone strikes," said Suraia Sahar of Afghans United for Justice in an interview with Common Dreams. "This is a gross disregard for human life."

The provision, proposed by Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), had already passed the Senate Intelligence Committee earlier this month. It would have required that U.S. agencies involved in drone wars produce annual reports in which they account for all deaths in U.S. drone strikes overseas and identify the civilians and alleged combatants killed.

"The production of this report will require minimal resources, but will provide a modest but important measure of transparency and oversight," said Schiff in a statement released Thursday. While the bill failed along party lines, with Republicans voting "no," Schiff said he plans to continue efforts to advance the legislation in the House. Supporters say that in order for this bill to move forward, constituents must pressure Republicans both in the House and Senate to get on board.

The bill failed despite a lobbying blitz earlier this week by attendees of a global summit demanding an end to Obama's ongoing drone wars. Groups including delegates from regions terrorized by U.S. drones, such as Yemen and Pakistan, appealed directly to Congress to end the deadly strikes. The groups charged that, at the very least, an increase in transparency and oversight is needed.

"People complain justifiably that the Obama administration is not being transparent," said Robert Naiman, policy director for Just Foreign Policy, in an interview with Common Dreams. "But Congress also is not being transparent. Every day this drone policy continues, Congress is voting through its inaction to do nothing."

While Obama administration officials have been famously secretive about the lives lost in U.S. drone attacks, they have repeated the unverified claim that civilian deaths have been minimal. Yet this is contested by experts and witnesses, including Bureau of Investigative Journalism researchers who have documented high numbers of civilian deaths in Pakistan and Yemen.

In a drone war that operates behind a veil of secrecy, critics charge that any step towards transparency, no matter how small, is a positive one.

"Even this defeat is a victory," said Naiman. "It is the first time in ten years of drone strike policy that there was any congressional vote on anything. Now we can see who is trying to do something and who is blocking. There has been a dramatic increase in transparency just as a result of this vote."

New survey shows almost a third of bee colonies in the US died last winter

Tuesday, May 7, 2013 by Common Dreams
Buzz! Buzz! Silence
by Andrea Germanos, staff writer

Results of a new survey released Tuesday paint another dire picture of the population of bees in the United States.

Nearly a third of managed honey bee colonies were lost this past winter, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), the Bee Informed Partnership and the Apiary Inspectors of America (AIA) found, a 42% increase in loss over the previous winter.

But USDA bee expert Dr. Jeff Pettis, who worked on the study, also noted that "the 31 percent figure likely under-represents the losses, as we saw many weak colonies that were not actually dead."

Rather than showing evidence of colony collapse disorder (CCD), Pettis said most colonies "dwindled away rather than suffering from the sudden onset of CCD."

70% of the survey respondents reported a loss over 15% — a loss percentage deemed "acceptable."

The 6 year average total loss is also far above that "acceptable" level, averaging 30.5%.

The analysis was done by a team of 11 researchers led by Dennis vanEngelsdorp, an entomologist at the University of Maryland and director of the Bee Informed Partnership.

“We are one poor weather event or high winter bee loss away from a pollination disaster.”

Dr. Jeff PettisVanEngelsdorp pointed to the Midwest's drought as being one of the possible factors, as the bees may have been forced to look to flowering crops for nectar rather than wildflowers, and those crops may have had "unusually high" levels of pesticides.

Also a potential factor, stated vanEngelsdorp, is the fact that high corn prices lead to cornfields replacing some prairie and shrubs.

In a separate report released last week by the USDA and EPA on honey bee health, multiple factors were cited as responsible for the declining bee population, including pesticides.

The study highlighted the need for bees for the nation's food security. With bee populations declining year after year, Pettis said, “We are one poor weather event or high winter bee loss away from a pollination disaster.”

Following the study, Paul Towers, media director with the Pesticide Action Network, told IPS that the EPA/USDA study shows that action does need to happen, and fast:

“The report makes a compelling case that multiple factors are at play and that we do need to take action, but this needs to be done far more quickly,” Paul Towers, media director with the Pesticide Action Network, an advocacy group, told IPS.

“The five-to-ten-year timeframe these agencies are now saying they will follow is not fast enough. In fact, there is great imperative here: bees are a clear indicator of the overall health of our agricultural system, so if we’re unable to protect the pollinators we’ll put our entire agricultural system at risk.”

++++++++++

If this trend continues, we are clearly seeing our own extinction event, unraveling in slow motion. 5 years after most of the bees are dead, we will die. Humanity ceases to exist because it killed the bees.--jef

Cornel West Names Obama as 'War Criminal'

Friday, February 15, 2013 by Common Dreams
'Let Us Not Be Deceived'
Like Nixon, Bush, and others the law is suspended for the president, but "applies for the rest of us"
- Jon Queally, staff writer

Philosophy professor, social critic and activist Cornel West says that like Richard Nixon and George W. Bush, there is no way to avoid the conclusion that President Obama—due to his execution of foreign wars and direction of clandestine military operations overseas resulting in the direct and foreseeable death of innocent people—should be called out for what he is: a 'war criminal'.

Appearing on Tavis Smiley's radio program on Thursday, West said: "We’ve been talking about this for a good while, the immorality of drones, dropping bombs on innocent people. It’s been over 200 children so far. These are war crimes.”

"I think we have to be very honest," he said.

"... dropping bombs on innocent people. It’s been over 200 children so far. These are war crimes.”

A once ardent supporter of the president—campaigning strongly for Obama during his presidential run in 2008—West has been critical of a number of aspects of the president's policies since taking office, including his refusal to adequately address poverty in the United States even as his administration acted mightily to save large financial institutions and Wall Street banks.

West's comments on US foreign policy came as Smiley spoke about the ongoing confirmation process of John Brennan, Obama's nomination to run the CIA and chief architect of the ongoing drone assassination program and what the radio host termed the president's "license to kill".

"Let us not be deceived: Nixon, Bush, Obama, they're war criminals," West said. "They have killed innocent people in the name of the struggle for freedom, but they're suspending the law, very much like Wall Street criminals. The law is suspended for them, but the law applies for the rest of us."

Just this week in Afghanistan, five children were killed and five more wounded when a suspected missile from a US drone exploded in Kunar province. Four adult women were also reported killed in the attack along with a number of adult males who may or may not have been the intended targets.

Making the point, West concluded, "You or I, brother Travis, if we kill an innocent person, we're going to jail. And we're going to be in there forever."

You can listen to the complete exchange between West and Smiley below:

Mitt's smirking disaster

Take a look at the smirk on Mitt Romney's face at the conclusion of his disastrous press conference basically accusing the president of sympathizing with the people who attacked and killed American embassy personnel in Libya:

That's the smirk of a very self-impressed man. He has no clue how deeply he's hurt himself.

Culled from various sources including:

Daily Kos
and Facebook

FDA scandal re: Approval of Deadly Drug by Board with Pharma Ties

Board members with drug maker ties voted to approve drug that's killing women

Thursday, March 15, 2012 by: Tony Isaacs


(NaturalNews) An investigation by the Washington Monthly and the British Medical Journal has found that at least four members of an advisory board which voted to approve a drug used in birth control pills had either done work for the drugs' manufacturer or received research funds from the manufacturer. Though the four committee members disclosed their ties to the FDA, the FDA decided that the ties did not matter and did not make the disclosures public. Tragically, the drugs the committee endorsed have been killing the women who take them.

The birth control pills Yaz and Yasmin contain a drug called drospirenone, which the FDA advisory committee endorsed last December. According to the Alliance for National Health (ANH), women who take drospirenone are nearly seven times more likely to develop thromboembolism (obstruction of a blood vessel by a blood clot, which can cause deep vein thrombosis, pulmonary embolism, stroke, heart attack, and death) than women who do not take any contraceptive pill. Women who take drospirenone have twice the risk of developing thromboembolism than women who take widely prescribed contraceptive pills containing levonorgestrel.

FDA OK's votes by members with financial ties to drug makers but not members who oppose dangerous drugs

Each of the four advisory board members with ties to the pills manufacturer voted in favor of the pills. The committee's decision that the drug's benefits outweighed the risks was decided by a four-vote margin. Interestingly, while the FDA allowed the four members with financial ties to vote on the drug, it barred another member and former researcher, Sidney M. Wolfe, from voting on the grounds that he had "an intellectual conflict of interest". Based on several years of data, Wolfe had advised his readers six years earlier not to take Yaz. Because of this "conflict", he was barred from voting.

In other words, the FDA apparently believes that there is no conflict when someone gets paid by a drug manufacturer but there is a conflict when someone has researched a drug and found it to be dangerous.

The FDA also failed to provide the panel with recently unsealed court documents which revealed that former FDA commissioner David Kessler had accused Bayer of hiding data on blood clot risks associated with the birth control pills. The court documents also revealed that Kessler reported that Bayer paid $450,000 to a high profile gynecologist to sponsor the pill, including off-label use of the drug, during her book tour.

It is far from the first time that the FDA has approved a dangerous drug or overlooked conflicts of interest. It is also far from the first time that drug companies have hid evidence of harm. Think of Vioxx, Fosamaxx, Avandia, and Gardasil to name just a few examples.

It is a common practice for drug companies to pay doctors and scientists to endorse their drugs, the same as it is common for drug companies to offer kickbacks and rewards to doctors who prescribe their drugs. Drug companies also pay doctors, researchers, and other medical experts for "consulting jobs" and speaking engagements to the tune of several hundreds of millions of dollars - which is considered legal despite the obvious blatant conflict of interest.

With Yaz being the top-selling birth control pill in the US, Bayer has quite the strong vested interest in getting endorsements for Yaz and Yasmin. Though thousands of women have filed lawsuits against Bayer, saying they were injured by Yaz or Yasmin, as we have seen with other highly profitable dangerous drugs, drug makers typically consider such lawsuits merely part of the price of doing business.

Sources included:

http://www.anh-usa.org/fda-huge-conflicts-of-interest-with-big-pharma/
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com
http://www.naturalnews.com/034443_FDA_advisory_panel_corruption.html
http://www.allgov.com

The Divine Right of Money

Is Western Democracy Real or a Facade?
by PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

The United States government and its NATO puppets have been killing Muslim men, women and children for a decade in the name of bringing them democracy. But is the West itself a bastion of democracy?

Skeptics point out that President George W. Bush was put in office by the Supreme Court and that a number of other elections have been decided by electronic voting machines that leave no paper trail. Others note that elected officials represent the special interests that fund their campaigns and not the voters. The bailout of the banks arranged by Bush’s Treasury Secretary and former Goldman Sachs chairman, Henry Paulson, and Washington’s failure to indict any banksters for the fraud that contributed to the financial crisis, are evidence in support of the view that the US government represents money and not the voters.

Recent events in Greece and Italy have created more skepticism of the West’s claim to be democratic. Two elected European prime ministers, George Papandreou of Greece and Silvio Berlusconi of Italy, were forced to resign over the sovereign debt issue. Not even Berlusconi, a billionaire who continues to lead the largest Italian political party, could stand up to the pressure brought by private bankers and unelected European Union officials.

Papandreou lasted only 10 days after announcing on October 31, 2011, that he would let the Greek voters decide in a referendum whether or not to accept the austerity being imposed on the Greek people from the outside. Austerity is the price charged by the EU for lending the Greek government the money to pay to the banks. In other words, the question was austerity or default. However, the question was decided without the participation of the Greek people.

Consequently, Greeks have taken to the streets. The conditions accompanying the latest tranche of the bailout have again brought large numbers of Greeks into the streets of Athens and other cities. Citizens are protesting a 20 per cent cut both in the minimum wage and in pensions larger than 12,000 euros ($15,800) annually and more cuts in public sector jobs. Greek taxes were raised 2.3 billion euros last year and are scheduled to rise another 3.4 billion euros in 2013. The austerity is being imposed despite Greece’s unemployment rate of 21 per cent overall and 48 per cent for those under the age of 25.

One interpretation is that the banks, which were careless in their loans to governments, are forcing the people to save the banks from the consequences of their bad decisions.

Another interpretation is that the European Union is using the sovereign debt crisis to extend its power and control over the individual member states of the EU.

Some say that the EU is using the banks for the EU’s agenda, and others say the banks are using the EU for the banks’ agenda.

Indeed, they may be using each other. Regardless, democracy is not part of the process.

Greece’s appointed–not elected–prime minister is Lucas Papademos, He is a former governor of the Bank of Greece, a member of Rockefeller’s Trilateral Commission, and former vice president of the European Central Bank. In other words, he is a banker appointed to represent the banks.

On February 12 the appointed prime minister, whose job is to deliver Greece to the banks or to Brussels, failed to see the irony in his statement that “violence has no place in a democracy.” Neither did he see any irony in the fact that 40 elected representatives in the Greek parliament who rejected the bailout terms were expelled by the ruling coalition parties. Violence begets violence. Violence in the streets is a response to the economic violence being committed against the Greek people.

Italy has formed a second democratic government devoid of democracy. The appointed prime minister, Mario Monti, doesn’t have to face an election until April 2013. Moreover, according to news reports, his “technocratic cabinet” does not include a single elected politician. The banks are taking no chances: Monti is both prime minister and minister of economics and finance.

Monti’s background indicates that he represents both the EU and the banks. He is former European advisor to Goldman Sachs, European chairman of the Trilateral Commission, a member of the Bilderberg Group, a former EU Commissioner, and a founding member of the Spinelli Group, an organization launched in September 2010 to facilitate integration within the EU, that is, to advance central power over the member states.

There is little doubt that European governments, like Washington, have been financially improvident, living beyond their means and building up debt burdens on citizens. Something needed to be done. However, what is being done is extra-democratic. This is an indication that Western elites–the Trilateral Commission, the Council on Foreign Relations, Bilderberg Group, the EU, transnational corporations, oversized banks, and the mega-rich–no longer believe in democracy.

Perhaps future historians will conclude that democracy once served the interests of money in order to break free of the power of kings, aristocracy, and government predations, but as money established control over governments, democracy became a liability. Historians will speak of the transition from the divine right of kings to the divine right of money.

Blackwater (renamed "ACADEMI ") mercenaries to return to Iraq

Source: Press Tv
December 13, 2011

With the US pulling out troops from Iraq this month, Washington plans to send Blackwater mercenaries to the Middle Eastern country under the new brand of ACADEMI.

New York-based USTC Holdings, the investment group that bought ex-Blackwater firm, Xe Services, in December 2010, announced on Monday ACADEMI as the new name for Blackwater/ Xe Services, AFP reported.

The development came as US President Barack Obama met with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to discuss the next phase of the relations between the two countries after withdrawal of US soldiers.

“We have had a year of extraordinary changes that have resulted in a new, better company," ACADEMI president and chief executive Ted Wright said in a statement.

In an interview published on Monday, Wright said he would like to take ACADEMI's business back to Iraq and went on to say that the firm had hired an external company to help it apply for an operating license in the country.

"I think eventually, we're going to get a license; we're going to do business in Iraq," he said.

Blackwater adopted the name Xe Services after Iraqi authorities announced in 2009 that they would not renew the security firm's contract because of a deadly incident in 2007 in which guards protecting a US diplomatic convoy opened fire in a busy district in the capital Baghdad killing 17 civilians.

Iraqi officials could not sue the Blackwater mercenaries as they had immunity from local prosecution and were not subjected to any Iraqi laws.

The US State Department had reportedly announced in August 2010 that the Pentagon would replace American troops in Iraq with private mercenaries, who call themselves private security firms or security contractors, on grounds of ensuring the security in the war-torn country.

The deployment of ACADEMI mercenaries is likely to cause outrage in Iraq where its predecessor Blackwater Worldwide mercenaries could kill civilians with impunity during their time in Iraq.

Iraqis will also take it as America's unwillingness to end the occupation of their country where since 2003 the US-led invasion and subsequent occupation caused one million deaths, according to the California-based investigative organization Project Censored.

FDA Rejects Merck’s Attempt to Expand Deadly Gardasil to Older Women

By Anthony Gucciardi
Activist Post

October 7, 2011

The Food and Drug Administration, a very pro-vaccine government organization, has stopped Merck’s attempts to increase the approved age range for death-linked HPV vaccine Gardasil to 45. It appears that even the FDA is concerned about the effects of the Gardasil immunization, which has been tied to over 49 deaths along with countless negative reactions that have led to hospitalizations and crippled health.

The FDA stated that clinical data presented by Merck, the creator of the vaccine, failed to show that Gardasil effectively prevented infections in women 27 to 45 years old. This is particularly shocking due to the fact that pharmaceutical companies oftentimes illegally alter the numeric turnouts of studies regarding the effectiveness and safety of their drugs and immunizations. What this means is that in the event Merck smeared the results, they were still unconvincing enough to pass by the FDA, an agency that allows for genetically modified foods to be consumed by United States despite the warnings of health experts and major studies worldwide.

The rejection will also lead to changes on the Gardasil label. The label will now state that the product ”has not been demonstrated to prevent HPV-related cervical intraepithelial neoplasia 2/3 or worse in women older than 26 years of age,” says Merck.

Gardasil is dangerous and ineffective at all ages

Gardasil, of course, is highly ineffective and unsafe at any age. One recently compelling piece of evidence against the Gardasil vaccine is the finding of rDNA inside the vaccine vials. SANE Vax, a vaccine research organization, tested vials of Gardasil to get a better understanding as to why the vaccine has resulted in so many deaths and adverse health reactions. What they found was that more than a dozen of the Gardasil vaccine vials studied were contaminted with the rDNA of the human Papillomavirus Virus (HPV).

This rDNA is not naturally occurring, and has serious implications. It is the result of genetically modified HPV virus, meaning a heavily altered form of HPV is actually added to the vaccine during its manufacturing process.

In addition, the vials were not only found within the United States. Vials were also collected from Australia, New Zealand, Spain, Poland and France.

Dr. Lee, the pathologist who ran the tests, explained:

Natural HPV DNA does not remain in the bloodstream for very long. However, the HPV DNA in Gardasil is not ‘natural’ DNA. It is a recombinant HPV DNA (rDNA) — genetically engineered — to be inserted into yeast cells for VLP (virus-like-particle) protein production. rDNA is known to behave differently from natural DNA. It may enter a human cell, especially in an inflammatory lesion caused by the effects of the aluminum adjuvant, via poorly understood mechanisms. Once a segment of recombinant DNA is inserted into a human cell, the consequences are hard to predict.

Children are being injected with genetically modified forms of the very virus that Gardasil seeks to “treat” with unknown consequence. With possible mutation of affected cells, the HPV rDNA may cause irrevocable damage to young bodies worldwide, in addition to the deaths and other side effects it has already been linked to. Stay away from this vaccine.