HSBC, crooked doings, and the self-pity of psychopaths

Google “Sociopath + self-pity” and you’ll get in excess of 39,000 hits. It turns out that sociopaths – people who lack empathy for the pain and suffering they inflict on others – are pretty sensitive and self-serving when it comes to pain that others inflict on them.

Which brings us to HSBC, the big international bank.

Reuters this morning reports that HSBC’s chairman, Douglas Flint, is bleating pitifully about the pain he and his fellow bankers at HSBC are currently feeling.

The bank, uh, “warned” “that a growing body of international regulations was putting its staff under unprecedented pressure and discouraging them from taking risks,” according to Reuters. The report goes on to say Flint whines that the poor banking staff is “fearful of retribution.” 

O, the pitiful buggers! This is the same bank that according to another Reuters story, paid a $10 million settlement “ to settle U.S. government charges that it defrauded taxpayers by submitting inflated bills to process residential foreclosures.”

It’s the same bank that a Mexican drug lord – you know, Mexico, where the drug lords decapitate people they don’t approve of and leave headless bodies in the street? – a Mexican drug lord endorses HSBC as “the place to launder money.”

In fact, it’s the same bank that pisses off its own shareholders (Disclosure: I'm one of those shareholders) by paying fat bonuses for failure that costs the shareholders money. “More than a fifth of HSBC's shareholders opposed the bank's pay policy on Friday in the latest show of anger that banks have not reined in bonuses enough in the wake of the financial crisis,” Reuters reported back in May.

And the bankers are now outraged that government regulation is making them fearful? They ought to be grateful – grateful that they’re not doing time.

Cross-posted at The New York Crank