Fred the Shred

It's easy to put the boot in after the event.  But they never dare make their instant judgements at the time.  But still they cluster round the corpse.  The Independent reports:

... what role did the obsessive streak in Goodwin’s character play in RBS’ eventual downfall?

Professor Malcolm Higgs, a leading occupational psychologist at the University of Southampton, toldThe Independent it certainly can’t have helped matters.

“You occasionally find this narcissistic tendency in CEOs,” he said. “They want to control everything, they don’t want to know that they’re not perfect. It’s not conducive to successful leadership of a company.”

Lehman Brothers boss Dick Fuld had similar tendencies, Professor Higgs said.“The big question is: how do these ‘corporate psychopaths’ get to the top? They’re actually quite engaging people, they can appear very visionary. But they can’t take any negative feedback, so they lose contact with reality.”

For some of us, the professional vultures are just as loathsome as their subjects.