Jobless, despondent over financial losses…kills his family…and, oh yeah, alcoholic too (high probability)
Headline of the month:
"Jobless dad kills 5, himself"; also, "Father kills family and himself, despondent over financial losses"
We may as well get used to headlines like these which refer, in this case, to the murder-suicide by Karthik Rajaram, 45, as the unwinding of the great credit bubble proceeds. Unfortunately, they will be mostly misleading and thereby fail to help prevent future similar tragedies.
As regular readers know, almost all crime"especially murder"is rooted in alcoholism. Many suicides also have their source in this disease. Readers of "Drunks, Drugs & Debits" (with thanks to James Graham's "The Secret History of Alcoholism") also understand that desperate measures are sometimes taken to compensate for a deflating ego. As wealth contracts, leaving the alcoholic less able ...
