STOCK MARKET WATCH -- Wednesday, 29 May 2013

[Demeter]

17. The ‘cult of capitalism’ and U.S. moral decline: America is being led astray by narcissists

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-cult-of-capitalism-and-us-moral-decline-2013-05-29?siteid=YAHOOB

Capitalism is now a cult, and Jamie Dimon is the self-appointed leader of the “cult of capitalism.”

That message is gleaned from a Huffington Post column by Mark Gongloff, whose headline stated that not only is the J.P. Morgan CEO and chairman a cult leader but a “very dangerous” one. Why? Because apparently shareholders have signed “a billion-year contract” to join the cult, notwithstanding portrayals of Dimon as a greedy egomaniac and poster boy for everything wrong with capitalism.

His is a monster of a cult: Warren Buffett is a member. So is CNBC’s Jim Cramer. Says Gongloff, who labels Cramer a “shouty man”: “Cramer joined Warren Buffett and many more VIPs in singing Dimon’s praises and warning of the woe that would befall shareholders” if they split his roles. Still, “the media played along, helping ... Dimon keep both of his jobs” as J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.’s chief executive and chairman.

Dimon, meanwhile, was doing what any self-respecting egomaniac under such a threat would do: acting like a petulant teenager and threatening to quit.

Today, reconfirmed as leader of the cult of capitalism, Dimon could serve as the perfect example of what psychologist Ernest Becker wrote about in his Pulitzer Prize–winning classic, “The Denial of Death,” a favorite from my years at Morgan Stanley. Dimon fits the cult-leader profile: charismatic narcissist, uncompromising, manipulating and threatening to his co-conspirators in the “cult of capitalism” and to the masses marching to the drumbeat of his destiny, off another economic cliff, bigger than 2008’s.

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