Third Banker, Former Fed Member, "Found Dead" Inside A Week
January 31, 2014
If the stock market were already crashing then it would be simple to blame the dismally sad rash of dead bankers in the last week on that - certainly that was reflected in 1929. However, for the third time in the last week, a senior financial executive has died in what appears to be a suicide. As
Bloomberg reports, following the deaths of a
JPMorgan senior manager (Tuesday) and a Deutsche Bank executive (Sunday),
Russell Investments' Chief Economist (and former Fed economist) Mike Dueker was found dead at the side of a highway in Washington State.
Police said the death appeared to be a suicide.
Via Bloomberg,
Mike Dueker, the chief economist at Russell Investments, was found dead at the side of a highway that leads to the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in Washington state, according to the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department. He was 50.
He may have jumped over a 4-foot (1.2-meter) fence before falling down a 40- to 50-foot embankment, Pierce County Detective Ed Troyer said yesterday. He said the death appeared to be a suicide.
Dueker was reported missing on Jan. 29, and a group of friends had been searching for him along with law enforcement. Troyer said Dueker was having problems at work, without elaborating.
Dueker was in good standing at Russell, said Jennifer Tice, a company spokeswoman. She declined to comment on Troyer’s statement about Dueker’s work issues.
But as
Michael Snyder noted recently, if the stock market was already crashing, it would be easy to blame the suicides on that. The
world certainly remembers what happened during the crash of 1929...
Historically, bankers have been stereotyped as the most likely to commit suicide. This has a lot to do with the famous 1929 stock market crash, which resulted in 1,616 banks failing and more than 20,000 businesses going bankrupt.
The number of bankers committing suicide directly after the crash is thought to have been only around 20, with another 100 people connected to the financial industry dying at their own hand within the year.
Dueker had also been a research economist at the St. Louis Fed:
He published dozens of research papers over the past two decades, many on monetary policy, according to the St. Louis Fed’s website, which ranks him among the top 5 percent of economists by number of works published. His most-cited work was a 1997 paper titled “Strengthening the case for the yield curve as a predictor of U.S. recessions,” published by the reserve bank while he was a researcher there.
So, with stocks a mere 4% off their highs, are so many high ranking and well respected bankers committing suicide?
Under Investigation, American Title CEO Dead In Grisly Suicide
February 7, 2014
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, 57, 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.
Also unclear is whether Talley's suicide was related to the investigation by the Colorado Division of Insurance, which regulates title companies.
The division is a part of the Department of Regulatory Agencies.
DORA spokesman Vince Plymell confirmed that the investigation was focused on Talley and the company but would not provide additional details.
Before coming to Colorado, Talley was a former regional financial officer at Drexel Burnham Lambert in Chicago, where he met his wife, Cheryl, a vice president at the company. The two married in 1989.
Talley had formed a number of companies, some now defunct, according to the Colorado secretary of state's office. Among them: American Escrow, Clear Title, Clear Creek Financial Holdings, Swift Basin, Sumar, American Real Estate Services, and the American Alliance of Real Estate Professionals.
In addition to its headquarters in the Peakview Tower near Fiddler's Green Amphitheatre in the Denver Tech Center, American Title has offices in Pueblo, Brighton, Boulder, Westminster, Lakewood, Wheat Ridge and Fort Collins, according to its website.
Talley's 1989 wedding announcement in the Chicago Tribune noted he was a graduate of the University of Miami and had a graduate degree from Northwestern University's Kellogg Graduate School of Management.
It also said he was "a member of the 1980 U.S. Olympic swimming team." A spokeswoman for USA Swimming on Thursday said Talley was not on the team.
A funeral mass is to be held at 12:30 p.m. Saturday at St. Thomas More Catholic Church in Centennial.
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