Speculation rife over financial industry's rising death rate

January 31, 2015

Charles Waterstreet
Sydney barrister and author

Who is killing the Great Bankers of Europe? This was almost the name of a good Ted Kotcheff movie about a jealous chef (spoiler alert) who poisoned all his competitors in order to become the best. The person or persons behind the litany of mysterious deaths of bankers worldwide in the last two years must have their motives, but I doubt they are philanthropic. It has been said that the best way to clean up the legal system, as Shakespeare wrote in Henry VI, is to "Let's kill all the lawyers".

After the last global financial crisis, many believed the world would be better off without bankers. This week saw the 74th highly suspicious death of a top level banker since January 2013, when records, like meteorological charts, began to be kept.

The vast majority of those deaths have been "suicides", usually by jumping from high buildings which they probably helped finance. Many of the deaths are from JP Morgan or allied institutions, involving their current or former employees, and mostly by their own hand.

How many conspiracy theorists does it take to change a lightbulb? Answer – no one knows because governments are covering it up. It is impossible to disregard the growing number of deaths from the ranks of investment bankers, no matter how much they defrauded the world economy. What is a conspiracy theory one day is received wisdom the next. Many of the finest minds on earth firmly believed the world was flat until Magellan in 1517 said: " I know that the Earth is flat because I saw its shadow on the moon and I have more faith in a shadow than the moon". That means that the apostles, Jesus himself and Muhammad must have believed the world was flat in accordance with then currently held beliefs. Jesus from high on the cross could not have seen the curvature. The Kennedy family now believes that Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone.

There has been increased chatter amongst theorists since the beginning of 2013 as the number of suicides and suspicious deaths jumped – no pun intended – from 36 to double that figure in the last month. Like lemmings running over a cliff it is impossible to keep an accurate count because the trickle of deaths over the last few years has become a tsunami this year. A typical example is Citigroup managing director Shawn Miller,42, who was found dead with his throat slit in his bathtub. No weapon, murder or otherwise was found. A month earlier in November 2014 Edmund Reilly, 47, trader with Manhattan Vertical Group, threw himself in front of a Long Island Rail commuter train. In June 2013 James McDonald, President and CEO of Rockefeller and Co. died of a gunshot wound, a smoking gun nearby. Even the elite are not protected. Richard Rockefeller,66, a high level banker with JD Rockefeller America fell foul of the epidemic of strange deaths. JP Morgan IT specialist Richard Gravino died in America suddenly and weirdly. READ MORE