High profile suicides.......

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-18-2000
High profile suicides.......
6
Wed, 01-14-2009 - 9:14am
Are you surprised to hear of these suicides?
Billionaire kills himself over financial crisis
Family of Germany's Adolf Merckle says the financial meltdown 'broke' him

BERLIN - German billionaire Adolf Merckle committed suicide after his business empire ran into trouble in the financial crisis, throwing himself in front of a train near his home, authorities and his family said Tuesday.


The 74-year-old’s business interests ranged from pharmaceuticals to cement, and its troubles had recently been compounded by losses on shares in auto maker Volkswagen AG. More....


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28522036/


Real estate power broker dead of apparent suicide

One of Chicago's most well-known real estate moguls appears to have shot himself to death, police said.


The body of Steven L. Good was found in his Jaguar on Monday. The car was spotted in a parking lot of a wildlife preserve in Kane County, Illinois, just outside Chicago, authorities said.


No note was found, and police say they do not know how long the 52-year-old had been in the vehicle.


Good was the chairman and chief executive officer of Sheldon Good & Co., a major U.S. real estate auction company.


The death comes amid great turmoil in the country's real estate industry. In his role as chairman of the Realtors Commercial Alliance Committee, Good commented on tough conditions last month at a business conference. More... http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/01/07/illinois.realestate.death/index.html


The myth of post-crash pavement suicides


http://www.thestar.com/News/article/568446


There's a lineup of pinstriped bankers at the windows of offices on Wall Street. They're waiting their turn to escape their losses, leave the godforsaken index behind, and leap to their deaths.


It's Thursday, Oct. 24, 1929: a black day in economic history. The New York Times reports that 11 speculators have taken their lives amid the onset of a market meltdown. But wait. Of those 11 suicides, none actually involved a plunge onto Wall Street. And yet, bankers dropping from bank towers has become the stuff of legend, mimicked this week by Adolf Merckle – formerly one of the richest men in Germany – who leapt in front of a train after losing his fortune.


This just two weeks after another high-profile suicide – that of Rene-Thierry Magon de la Villehuchet, who slit his wrists in his New York office after losing $1.4 billion (U.S.) in Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme.


In October, the World Health Organization warned that the global economic crisis was likely to cause an increase in suicides and mental illness as people struggle to cope with losing their houses, their livelihoods or, in the case of de la Villehuchet and Merckle, their fortunes.


But where does this concern about suicide come from?


The U.S. rate did increase during the Great Depression, but the number of suicides during October and November 1929 was actually lower than that for the preceding summer, when the Dow Industrial Average peaked. In his 1955 book, The Great Crash, economist John Kenneth Galbraith credited the lore of the pavement-suicide banker to the penny press in London, which had reported that pedestrians in New York had to pick their way among the bodies of fallen financiers during the crash.


"The weight of the evidence suggests the newspapers and the public merely seized on such suicides as occurred to show that people were reacting appropriately to their misfortune," Galbraith summarized.


That most of those who committed suicide after Black Thursday did so in less dramatic fashion is a fact lost in the mythology. Domestic gassings, hangings and shootings were the methods of choice.


That said, two distraught bankers who did leap onto Wall Street have helped perpetuate the fable.


As have reports from the likes of Winston Churchill, present in Manhattan during the crash, who wrote in the Daily Telegraph that he was awoken one night after a man in his hotel had jumped 15 storeys. In 1987, when the market last experienced a major crash, notable suicides were again reported. Like that of Arthur Kane, a civil servant, who shot two Merrill Lynch executives (one of them fatally) and then took his own life after losing millions in the stock market.



A wave of suicides in South Korea in 1997 and October 2008 were also blamed on the grim economy.


It's in disregard of these facts, and perhaps an indication of society's relishing of the myth, that some people, including commentators on the Star's own website, have been calling for today's bankers on Bay and Wall Streets to follow the lead of those who leapt before.


So as a former billionaire is put to rest, we're left asking: What is it about financial calamity that spawns the suicidal urge?


Often we don't know what other factors might have been at play. Perhaps Galbraith said it best:


"Like alcoholics and gamblers, broken speculators are supposed to have a propensity for self-destruction. Suicides that in other times would have evoked the question, `Why do you suppose he did it?' now had the motive assigned automatically: `The poor fellow was caught in the crash.'"

Photobucket  The WeatherPixie


What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?


Mahatma Gandhi (1869 - 1948)

 


Photobucket&nbs

iVillage Member
Registered: 12-10-2008
Wed, 01-14-2009 - 2:00pm

I was not surprised, no.


From your 3rd item:


"Often we don't know what other factors might have been at play. Perhaps Galbraith said it best:"... Suicides that in other times would have evoked the question, `Why do you suppose he did it?' now had the motive assigned automatically: `The poor fellow was caught in the crash.'"


My dad did it during a time of personal financial panic during the 1970's recession.

Kate

iVillage Member
Registered: 01-04-2009
Wed, 01-14-2009 - 3:56pm

I am not surprised.

 

iVillage Member
Registered: 12-10-2008
Wed, 01-14-2009 - 9:23pm
Good point (as usual :)

Kate

Kate

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-18-2000
Thu, 01-15-2009 - 9:07am

How upsetting for your family.


My GF lost her DH to suicide & she said, at the time,

 


Photobucket&nbs

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-18-2000
Thu, 01-15-2009 - 9:14am

If he'd been serious he'd have gone down with plane.


"Sometimes when companies fail (investments bottom), fear of investigation and possible criminal charges/jail drives people to do the

 


Photobucket&nbs

iVillage Member
Registered: 01-04-2009
Thu, 01-15-2009 - 9:20pm
Yes...he sure did leave a trail of crumbs.