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Take Bear Stearns. The top managers paid themselves enormous bonuses in January. Now the company is on its knees but not allowed to go bankrupt because it was bailed out by the US Fed.

Also the whole sub-prime credit crunch concept was completely delusional and dearranged yet the finance of the whole world got sucked into it.

I remember seeing an in-depth report on the prerequisites for financial success by a panel of industrial psychiatrists. Quite simply their conclusion was that basic sociopathic tendencies - placing self before any other consideration; doing anything to gratify self; having highly developed ability to manipulate people and bend them to your will; always being hungry for more; a love of power - were the tools for 'winning'.

All seriously rich people I've encountered have displayed those traits far more obviously than the rest of us. In any large company the people at the top are not necessarily the best or most talented: they're the ones who have been most successful in destroying their rivals to further their own self-interest. To a man (and they're virtually all men) the uber-wealthy are greedy beyond measure and have no scruples, despite frequently presenting themselves as pillars of the community and paragons of virtue. Branson and Green are both fine examples of men who love to be loved, despite having extremely dubious business practices in my opinion and low personal morality in areas like income tax.