19 Feb 2014

Financial Sector “Suicides” Mounting

Banking, Conspiracy 46 Comments

Yet another JP Morgan employee has apparently committed suicide:

A third JP Morgan employee has died under mysterious circumstances in a matter of few weeks. A still unidentified “Chinese male in is thirties” jumped from the roof of Charter House, the 30 floor Hong Kong headquarters of JPM.

An eyewitness told the South China Morning Post he saw a man climb onto the roof of the skyscraper shortly after lunchtime on Tuesday.

The unidentified man, aged about 33, was a junior employee who served a supporting function at the bank and wasn’t involved in investment activity, according to Bloomberg. Rumors circulating in the media say that his last name was Li.

A colleague of the man said that before the suicide he had complained about heavy work-related stress, though police say no suicide note has been found.

“Out of respect for those involved, we cannot yet comment further. Our thoughts and sympathy are with the family that’s involved at this difficult time,” JP Morgan said in an e-mailed statement.

The latest apparent suicide marks the 3rd sudden death at JP Morgan and the 6th in the global financial world in just a few weeks.

In my earlier comments on this trend, I wished for someone to tell us the context; after all, there are a lot of people in the financial sector around the globe, so how many would you expect to commit suicide in a given month?

No matter what, I think we can all agree that this particular case is extremely suspicious:

The founder and CEO of American Title Services in Centennial was found dead in his home this week, the result of self-inflicted wounds from a nail gun, according to the Arapahoe County coroner.

Richard Talley, 56, and the company he founded in 2001 were under investigation by state insurance regulators at the time of his death late Tuesday, an agency spokesman confirmed Thursday.

It was unclear how long the investigation had been ongoing or its primary focus.

A coroner’s spokeswoman Thursday said Talley was found in his garage by a family member who called authorities. They said Talley died from seven or eight self-inflicted wounds from a nail gun fired into his torso and head. [Bold added.]

Really? I could conceivably believe that a guy who had wrecked his company would punish himself by firing a nail gun into his torso once, before turning it onto his head. But wouldn’t he have to be James Bond to shoot himself “seven or eight” times? (I tried finding out how many of the shots were to the head, but couldn’t come up with a breakdown.)

If you want to see a more explicitly conspiratorial explanation of these events, try this piece (HT2 Frank C.).

46 Responses to “Financial Sector “Suicides” Mounting”

  1. Matt M (Dude Where's My Freedom) says:

    Perhaps it was just a REALLY poorly conceived plan of suicide? Maybe he somehow thought the first nail would kill him relatively quickly and painlessly? Imagine the sequence. Fire one nail into torso. Unbelievable pain, but still alive. Fire another nail into head. Pain much worse, still alive. At that point, I imagine you keep firing the nails until you’re dead, because that’s the only way you get any relief?

  2. Gene Callahan says:

    The nail gun is actually very good evidence that it was a suicide: if evil world-dominating bankers were wiping out inconvenient employees and trying to make it look like suicide, don’t you imagine they could do a much better job than using a nail gun? I can even come up with a dozen better ways of faking a suicide just from watching TV and movies.

    • Matt M (Dude Where's My Freedom) says:

      But that’s just what people would EXPECT them to do! You’ve fallen into their trap!

      • Major_Freedom says:

        Bingo. I know my history. The art of assassination is to always stay a step or two ahead of investigators and inquirers. Sometimes cases with seeming clear cut suicide, were murders.

        • Ken B says:

          Yup. If he died of cancer that would be suspicious.

    • Bob Murphy says:

      Gene unless you’re just poking fun, I think you’ve done the flip side of the stereotypical move of the unflappable conspiracy theorist.

      I mean, suppose the coroner said he ran over himself 32 times with an SUV. You’d be CERTAIN it wasn’t the bankers then, right?

      • Ken B says:

        Bait and switch. You argue psychological implausibility. Gene rebuts. You retort with physical impossibility.

      • Ken B says:

        Damn these conspirators are good.

        http://boingboing.net/2011/08/12/suicide-by-nail-gun-more-common-less-successful-than-you-might-guess.html

        They planted a story back in 2011 in preparation. And they arranged for google to find it right away. Scary.

        • Bob Murphy says:

          Ken B., I’m being serious. Please calmly listen for one minute to what I am trying to say here:

          (1) I write a post saying that I find it very improbable that someone would shoot himself 7 or 8 times in the torso and head with a nail gun. I didn’t say it explicitly, but my point was that this is physically unlikely, unless the guy is James Bond (from Casino Royale who can laugh while a guy bashes his bare testicles through a cut-out chair seat).

          (2) You then post an article talking about a case where a guy shot himself ONCE in the head with a nail gun, sarcastically implying that this somehow blows up my point. [ADDED: And the guy didn’t even die! Meaning he presumably stopped after the first nail because it hurt like hell. And the other people mentioned in the news account often didn’t die, either.]

          No Ken, that IS EXACTLY my point. Someone who is going to kill himself with a nail gun is not going to shoot himself 7 or 8 times in the torso and head. That doesn’t make any sense.

          This is not the first time you have totally misunderstood my point. I’m not bringing this up because you’re annoying me (though you are), but rather that I imagine you do this with a lot of people. Others aren’t quite as idiots as you seem to think, Ken. I bet you would find the world a richer place if you dropped your forcefield of cynicism and zingers.

          (And yes I will try to do the same.)

          • Ken B says:

            Um, no Bob I linked to an article which linked to a boatload of such things.

            You write how absurd 7 or 8 nails in the head is. One of the cases linked to is a guy with 8 nails in his head. What was he doing? Testing the theory that YouOnly Live Twice? Playing truth or dare at Casino Royale?

            Here’s the embedded link
            specifically, intentionally self-inflicted nail gun wounds—are a lot more common than you might expect. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=%22nail%20gun%22%20suicide

      • Gene Callahan says:

        Well, Bob, if you are a 100 billion dollar banking concern and you want to kill the guy and make it look like suicide, can you please explain why you would use a nail gun? Especially when, having overpowered him (to get him to sit still for the nails gunning) you could now hang him, or shoot him in the head point blank, or feed him fistsfull of sleeping pills? Why in the world did you pick up the nail gun?

        • Bob Murphy says:

          To send a message to others?

          I’m not saying I know what happened, just like I don’t know who shot JFK. I’m saying in both cases, the official story sounds preposterous to me.

          • Dan says:

            Who’s to say they had any intention of making it look like a suicide, or to be described as one. They may have just wanted this guy to turn up brutally murdered and the police came up with the suicide story to keep their murder numbers down, or for who knows what reason. For all we know, the people responsible are cracking up at this being described as a suicide.

          • Keshav Srinivasan says:

            Bob, in a previous blog post you claimed that your examination of the evidence led you to conclude that all the bullets couldn’t possibly have come from Oswald’s gun. Can you explain your reasoning?

            It’s just hard for me to get past the computer modeling which shows all the bullets coming from the book depository.

            • Bob Murphy says:

              Keshav, no I can’t right now. It would take too long. Back when I was hip-deep in the books and online testimony, I should’ve bitten the bullet and written it up. But I didn’t.

              It would take me a week to get back into a position where I’d want to walk through it again.

              • Keshav Srinivasan says:

                Well, in an old blog post you said that there was a diagram in Josiah Thompson’s book “Six Seconds in Dallas” which if turned into a computer shot would demonstrate that the single-shooter theory is wrong. Can you at least tell me what page that diagram is on?

              • Bob Murphy says:

                Sorry Keshav it would take me a while to go through it.

        • skylien says:

          FWIW: Hanging someone to make it look like suicide may sound much easier than it actually is.

          • skylien says:

            Hint: It is hard to overpower somepne without leaving traces..

          • skylien says:

            The same counts for sleeping pills and shooting him in the head with a gun after having him overpowered. It is an additional problem if the victim doesn’t possess a gun at all.
            Then a nail gun might be opportune if the victim has one. Of course the overpowering problem counts for the nail gun as well, which would explain the 7-8 shots in torso! and head! if you tried to kill him right away without overpowering him first so he kept still for the single aimed shot in the head.

            That doesn’t mean that I think that was murder. I just acknowledge Bobs point that it is very unlikely that someone shoots himself 7 or 8 times with a nail gun (they are not automatic!), though maybe not impossible.

            However what I do think is that you grossly underestimate the difficulty of creating the genuine appearance of suicide (nail gun not exempted). I guess the best method is to throw people of high buildings which would destroy possibly any traces of overpowering and that is what people often do when going for suicide. However that leaves you much more open to be spotted..

            So in my view there are two very unlikely explanations available, since I know there happen the weirdest things when people try to kill themselves, I actually think it is more likely to be suicide. But it should not be a taboo to ask questions in such a weird case.

            • Gene Callahan says:

              “It is an additional problem if the victim doesn’t possess a gun at all.
              Then a nail gun might be opportune if the victim has one. ”

              Ah! So the bank is sending assassins to kill inconvenient employees, but some of them forget to bring weapons!

              • Matt M (Dude Where's My Freedom) says:

                It’s a unique challenge for the best assassins! No bringing your own weapons! You must kill the target with whatever happens to be lying around at the time.

              • Silas Barta says:

                I think the argument was that you have to kill them with a weapon *the victim is likely to have for other reasons*, but I guess that was easy to miss when you’re so careful not to strawman others.

              • Bob Murphy says:

                I’m sorry Gene but I have to award points to Silas on this one.

            • skylien says:

              Gene,

              Well, obviously that is not what I meant… It is hard to stage a suicide by gun shot if the victim doesn’t possess a gun, does it? Guns usually are registered….

              • Gene Callahan says:

                Guns are usually registered?! Something like 80% used in crimes are unregistered.

                “No one knows where he got the gun.” Done.

              • skylien says:

                Maybe you are right there. I would just guess that even unregistered guns can be traced to a certain degree.

              • Matt M (Dude Where's My Freedom) says:

                Call me racist if you want, but my guess is that investment bankers aren’t typically the people who own unregistered guns for the purposes of using them in crimes…

    • Silas Barta says:

      Rationalism in faked suicides?

  3. Gamble says:

    I don’t think the Colorado incident is any related to the global bankers. The guy in Colorado was in personal trouble. Whether he committed suicide, his wife, loan shark or drug dealer killed him is fairly irrelevant in my opinion.

    Now the global bankers is fascinating because this could be the canary in the coal mine. Meaning they have come to realize there is not enough new demand for new loans, not enough old loans to refinance, etc. There job and career is doomed. Collapse is imminent.

    I think Yellen and central bank can always print more money but the public outcry against monthly trillion dollar injections may prevent this?

  4. Gene Callahan says:

    Attempted suicide by nail gun is apparently fairly common:
    http://boingboing.net/2011/08/12/suicide-by-nail-gun-more-common-less-successful-than-you-might-guess.html

    And hard to achieve! You might need to shoot yourself more than you thought.

    • Bob Murphy says:

      Gene,

      See my comment to Ken B. Don’t you see that the article you linked to is exactly what I need to bolster my position?

      This is so frustrating.

      • Ken B says:

        Geez louise.

        8 nails in the head http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19999553

        6 nails in the head http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20726759

        These from the link that I gave and that later Gene gave.

        Can we please get past this absurd claim that people don’t use nail guns, or lye, or strichnine, or other painful lousy ways to kill themselves.
        I had a friend who set himself on fire. Bob will think it a conspiracy because careful rational considered thought suggests there are better ways to kill yourself? Shesh.

        • skylien says:

          “I had a friend who set himself on fire. ”

          Did he protest against something? Usually self-immolation is used for political protest. See:
          http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_self-immolations

          Since the crisis in Europe they even added a new category which is called “Economic self-immolations” with the first one in Sept. 2011 in Greece..

          • Ken B says:

            Oh I doubt it. I was 10 at the time. He was the elder brother of a friend, 15 or 16 at the time, and the only older kid — that’s a huge age difference at that age — who had time for us pipp aqueeks and who would do thing with us. I have little doubt he was sending a message but I suspect it was to his poor parents.

            • Gamble says:

              Sorry to hear that Ken. Hopefully you have come to terms with what had to be a terrifying and confusing event.

              • Ken B says:

                Luckily enough I didn’t learn about the self immolation at the time, just that Doug was dead. It was later we learned the details. Tough on my friend though. At a reunion an old friend asked about Doug and got a polite “He died when I was a child but thanks for remembering him. I didn’t pry.

              • Ken B says:

                I’m definitel getting vaught in a flter Bob as I cannot post with my email

              • Bob Murphy says:

                Oh they were going to my Spam folder (which I never usually check). I guess WordPress is wiser than I am!

        • skylien says:

          Ken,

          You are not entirely fair here. It wasn’t Bob’s point that someone wouldn’t use a nail gun to kill himself. His point was that noone would be (physically) able to shoot himself multiple times.

          You have clearly made the point that you actually can be James Bond and be physically able to inflict multiple nail gun shots on one self.

      • Gene Callahan says:

        You didn’t read past the first sentence before posting that comeback, did you?

        • Bob Murphy says:

          Gene, if you’re talking to me, then yes I read past the first sentence. I read the entire link Ken gave, and clicked on the first link it had as well. (I was in a coffee shop on my iPhone though so maybe I missed something.)

          Obviously I didn’t see the cases of multiple shots, but now that Ken brought it to my attention, I devoted an entire post to it.

  5. skylien says:

    It seems we have devised the perfect way to stage a suicide. Don’t bother with overpowering the victim to hang him and leave tons of traces this way. Just grab a nail gun (which obviously is a common tool for suicide) and just surprise your victim by shooting him multiple times from very close distance in an angle he could have done himself. It will always look like suicide.. After all it might be easier than I thought.

    😉

  6. Gamble says:

    I think Bob was correct to note the banker suicide trend. It is disturbing and like I said before, could be the canary in the coal mine. I have been hearing so many stories of kids in debt up to their eyeballs with no end in sight. No emergency fund, no savings, low paying jobs. Most 50 year and older people with no hope what so ever of retirement. The 1% crying they are being treated like Jews at a concentration camp, etc.

    I really think the crash is near. I know I have said this highly controlled, global digital fiat system can never crash, because it is all contrived, but I am reconsidering this position. I think it is crashing as we speak. I know most of us here are smart with money, have savings, and to us , our future looks okay but all these other people are gonna drag us down with them, there will be no refuge. People cant service their loans, credit has been over extended in way never known to mankind before. Inflation is out pacing wages, property neglect is slowly creeping in. Car tires are bald. This ones gonna be big.

    Here is a link to the 8 banker suicides.
    http://politicalvelcraft.org/2014/02/18/8th-banker-commits-suicide-jp-morgan-hong-kong-30-stories-down/

    • Tel says:

      The bald car tyre economic metric… I like it.

      When you start seeing expensive cars with bald tyres you know we are hitting the wall.

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