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‘Do we not see economists leaving out of account unconscious greed?’ It seems that this question, which Donald W. Winnicott and his colleagues asked some twenty-five years ago, is still relevant today. While economists still broadly emphasise self-interest as a driving force and rarely discuss the impact of greed, socio-analysts are increasingly interested in it. Taking Melanie Klein's earlier work on greed as a starting-point, I offer the notion of ‘capitalist greed’ and attempt to elaborate some of the unconscious dynamics in the realm of economy and finance. I see greed as a psychotic dynamic that inhibits thinking and limits reality to what is bearable and desired. Greed is neither a phenomenon that began with the onset of capitalism nor the decisive cause of the current crisis; it is inherent in the former and became most apparent in the latter. Subsequently, I will elaborate how competition is often fuelled by excessive greed that seeks to damage or even annihilate competitors and is the source of corruption and fraud. The mere pursuit of maximising profit, fostered and legitimised by economics for almost half a century, has had a major impact on the prevalence of greed in our contemporary economy and the financial service industry in particular. In concluding, I will offer some reflections on how thinking may be maintained in a world gone mad with greed.