"Sigmund Freud would have been a wonderful witness here. He would have explained the use of derivatives as denial and rationalization—the pretense that we are doing one thing when we really mean to do something else; the relationship between the banker and its client as one of ambivalence and reliance on the father figure; the use of accounting conventions as repression and the absence of reality testing; the work environment as the pleasure/pain principle—current pleasure for future damage, let someone else pick up the pieces; leveraging and doubling our bets as counter-phobic behavior; termination therapy as what happens when the CFO and Treasurer get caught; and, of course, transference—how the trader seeks to shift responsibility to his or her superior when the string runs out."
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Testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs., 23 June 1994
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Eugene_Rotberg
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Eugene Rotberg
Gene Rotberg (January 19, 1930 – October 6, 2025) was an American lawyer and international investment banker and was an expert on risk taking, interest and exchange rates, financial market regulation, and the role of international development institutions. He served as vice president and treasurer of the World Bank from 1968 to 1987, responsible for overall funding and investment operations.
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