Alessio Restani, a self-described London-based independent trader and motivational speaker, went viral today after a video was posted online of an interview with BBC News in which he declared, among other things, that he dreams of another recession.

In the video, Restani explains that he doesn't believe there is any hope for recovery in the battered world equity markets, explaining that the big money has moved on to investing in less-risky assets, particularly U.S. Treasuries.

When asked to gauge the effect government rescue plans proposed by European officials this week could be, Rastani candidly dismissed the actions, noting the governments don't rule the world, Goldman Sachs rules the world.

A day after the interview, amidst accusations that he was not a trader, but part of a hoax, Rastani insisted to Britain's The Telegraph that he was being serious. I'm an attention seeker. That is the main reason I speak. That is the reason I agreed to go on the BBC, he told the paper.

As if cued to provide a reasonable explanation to Rastani's jaw-dropping frankness, a study released by the Swiss University of St. Gallen and cited on Germany's Der Spiegel newspaper concluded that traders tend to behave more egotistically and sadistically than criminal psychopaths. The study, performed by two forensic experts at the research university, had a group of 28 professional traders perform the same battery of tests as a group of convicted psychopaths. It found the traders' behavior to be more reckless and manipulative.

They behaved more egotistically and were more willing to take risks than a group of psychopaths who took the same test, Thomas Noll, one of the research paper's author told the German newspaper.

It was most important to the traders to get more than their opponents. And they spent a lot of energy trying to damage their opponents, Noll explained to the paper, using the metaphor of a man who, seeing his neighbor has bought a new car, decides the most appropriate course of action is to take after it with a baseball bat so [he] could look better.

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