The surprise lay more in his candour than in the content of what he said, because we know that the workings of financial capitalism depend on greed and fear as its instincts, and therefore must attract and foster personalities like his.
"Novelty-seeking is one of the traits that keeps you healthy and happy and fosters personality growth as you age," says C. Robert Cloninger, the psychiatrist who developed personality tests for measuring this trait.
There is also an overt comparison to Xi, who has fostered a personality cult of bold leadership that has echoes of the Russian leader's (though with less bare flesh).
The pirates talked a full-blooded language, even those on Caroline North, a second ship moored near the Isle of Man, who were keen to foster the personality of "zany": Jerry "Soopa" Leighton, Mick Luvzit, "Daffy" Don Allen, and they found an outlet for new creativity.
Called the "Dear Leader" by his people, Kim Jong-il presided with an iron hand over a country he kept on the edge of starvation and collapse, fostering perhaps the last personality cult in the Communist world even as he banished citizens deemed disloyal to gulags or sent assassins after defectors.
Will Mr Kejriwal, its charismatic leader, end up fostering a cult of personality, a bane of India's political parties?
He had shed his lower-middle-class origins for a de-luxe persona, and in all his public guises — songwriter, performer, playwright, personality — fostered the myth of a British talentocracy in which he was queen of the worker bees.
To do my part toward Zero Suicide, I and The i'Mpossible Project will commit to continuing as a public advocate, promoting and fostering suicide prevention speakers and personalities.
They accuse him of promoting his cronies, of fostering his own mini-cult of personality, and of wanting to cling to power into his dotage in the manner of Mao and Deng.
One reason is that Merrill has been slow to foster the oversized personalities necessary these days to attract high-profile, big-name clients.
