Three Financial Suicides

I recently read about three suicides that were interesting because they had three things in common:

1. These guys were successful financially.

2. They suffered financial losses in the recent meltdown.

3. Instead of sleeping pills at night or carbon monoxide from a car in the garage, these guys killed themselves violently.

Thierry Magon de la Villehuchet, who was a money manager with a French aristocratic background, saw his money fund lose a lot in the Madoff scandal. He killed himself in his New York office by slashing his arms and wrists with a box cutter, and letting himself bleed out into his garbage can.

Here in Chicago, Steven Good, chairman and CEO of the real estate firm Sheldon Good and Co., was found dead in his Jaguar, in a forest preserve, from a single gunshot to the head.

Finally, German billionaire Adolf Merckle threw himself in front of a train. He lost a lot of money from both the global financial crisis and betting wrongly on Volkswagen shares. His body was so mangled, they had to use DNA to identify him.

It is a tragedy that these three people were so wrapped up in success, and failed failure, that they would rather die than be with their families, enjoying the wealth they had left.

I'm no psychologist, but I think the fact that they killed themselves so violently shows that they had self-imposed a lot of shame and self-loathing on themselves.