This is my new favorite explanation for the complete and utter collapse of financial capitalism as we know it:In the world of comic books any individual who has more than 5 million dollars in saving or assets immediately becomes bat-shit insane. It's a strange rule, but it seems that every independently wealthy individual in superhero comics decides that fighting/committing crime is the best way to spend their free time. They ignore possible hobbies like golfing, yachting, and collecting antique cars and go straight into wearing a mask and creating a global organization designed to save/destroy/conquer the world. The examples in comic book fiction are nearly limitless.
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This persistent pattern of a wealthy individual building a financial empire through shrewd economic skill and then destroying it almost instantly through costumed antics shows only one thing. In comic books, all money is coated with a powerful hallucinogen. When you aquire enough of it you go crazy and then act accordingly.
So far, the authors have been too modest in assessing the explanatory power of their groundbreaking new theory by limiting it to the comic book universe, but I am sure a book deal or two and a couple of appearances on CNBC and Charlie Rose will cure them of their diffidence posthaste. If not, I know a couple of Ukranian hookers who can buff their confidence to a blinding shine.
Coincidentally, I already possess warehouses full of documentation proving that anyone in the real world who accumulates more than $5 million in wealth automatically and immediately turns into a raving lunatic. It just never occurred to me that we could have avoided global financial meltdown by distracting investment bankers and commercial bank CEOs with a lifetime supply of green spandex and a few hundred crates of pumpkin bombs.
Hindsight, as they say, truly is 20-20. Or, in this case, X-ray vision.
Hat tip: Felix Salmon
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