High finance
I was earwigging in a bar in Singapore recently, one popular with the managers in international finance. The levels of selfish narcissistic self-entitlement in there went beyond merely irritating and horrifying and had passed through some kind of unbelievability event horizon so that it had become hugely entertaining, sort of like watching footage of spectacular natural disasters that have passed out of the "too soon" category.

Two highly aggressive (and very drunk) managers were discussing who to promote to run the Hong Kong office. They were agreed that finance arsehole #1 was a much better fit than finance arsehole #2. #1 had been caught embezzeling shiteloads of money. #2 was "a bit too chinese", by which they meant that he negotiated equitable compromises that everyone was happy with. However #1 was an aggressive cock like themselves who continually left a string of defrauded and embezzled investors in his wake. This is apparently a good thing, as it kept the culture of fraud going which allowed them to continue to dip their wick in other peoples money, whereas #2's negotiation and compromise were a Sign Of Weakness and Very Bad For The Company, in other words, he didn't cheat people out of money like they wanted to.

The worst thing about it though was that the entire drunken conversation was carried out in a version of hyper-capitalist management Newspeak which allowed them to convince themselves they were operating on some sort of highly ethical plane for the greater good of everyone.

Complete cunts. Oh, this was shortly after the large bailouts.
(mousehats, Fri 26 Aug 2011, 11:16, 1 reply)

I've overheard similar from a suer* of lawyers.
All you hear is how well they shafted someone and how much they got to spend on their BWM (was a couple of years ago, think it's Audi now).
*must be the collective term.
(Me, I'm not... in any way intoxicated, Fri 26 Aug 2011, 18:08, closed)