The Epic Failure Edition

I am referring, of course, to Wells Fargo.

Today we begin with a business ethics post from the blog, Lead Today. If you read yesterday’s post, you will note that both Mr. Keating and I are on the same page on this issue. Of course, as one business ethics blogger has complained, I’m shrill. Perhaps Mr. Keating my be considered more measured in his approach. In any case I was delighted with his take on the Wells Fargo Ethics disaster and I’ve included the first four paragraphs from it. However, you really must go and read the whole thing. And please like it and rate it, etc. Give the guy some attention for a fine piece of writing and a willingness to talk ethics in a business climate where people give you knowing smirks while occasionally rolling their eyes when you say words like morality or accountability. 

There is then a post about the loss of black teachers followed by some excellent writing from Eslkevin’s Blog. Next, a writer ridicules mainstream economics, a sentiment I very much share. There is a quick link to a clever post from “Hello Kitty, Some Blog,” a site I visit often. 

And we close with a remarkable business ethics disaster, the F-35A. Did I say remarkable? Really I’m thinking “legendary.” It’s going to make the Sgt. York Air Defense system, the M-16 and the F-111 into minor footnotes in the Pentagon’s long history of financial and military disasters. 

James Pilant

As usual, Please LIKE, Please Share and please subscribe.

 

This is Steve Keating writing in the blog, Lead Today

We have been presented with two options to choose from. Either the executive team at Wells Fargo is as corrupt as an executive team can be or they are the dumbest group of people ever to run any organization. 

5300 Wells Fargo employees were terminated last week for creating millions of fraudulent accounts to meet what has been described as nearly unbearable pressure and demands to add new customer accounts. Progress at some branches was reviewed as many as 4 times a day. The pressure was relentless. 

Nothing, not morales, not ethics, not even those little things called laws could slow down the relentless push to meet the Wells Fargo corporate initiative known as “Gr-eight Initiative.” Wells Fargo has a goal that every customer should have eight separate accounts with the bank.

Apparently goals are more important than anything at Wells Fargo. In order to meet the goals of the initiative employees opened new accounts for current customers without the customer’s approval or knowledge. This required forging signatures, creating fake email accounts, and moving customer’s money between these accounts without their knowledge, sometimes causing a customer’s real account to go into the red.

….

The loss of black teachers

Rizga focuses on the story of one teacher, Darlene Lomax. But the story she tells is about the widespread shedding of black teachers, women and men who were the backbones of their communities. In Philadelphia, almost 20% of black teachers are gone; in New Orleans, 62%; in Chicago, 40%; in Cleveland, 34%. School closings have been concentrated in historically black communities. Black teachers have been disproportionately displaced by “reform.”

There’s still hope according to Eslkevin’s Blog! (I think so, too. jp)

(This is really a good piece of writing – this is another one you really should go to the original blog and read the whole thing while browsing all the other writing there. jp) 

I say all this because, as a journalist in this crazy year of our lord 2016, on a good day the temptation is to tilt toward cynicism. It’s our job to rake the muck and expose the trolls, to cast light on the wrongdoing and the failings in our society, but it’s up to others to set them right. Today, at this site, Bill Moyers writes about the greatest failing, the true disaster, of our time: the scourge of growing inequality, economic and political. He describes it as “a despicable blot on American politics,” as the very wealthy convert their financial might into political power to guard that wealth while exacerbating inequality further. The statistics Moyers deploys are chilling. Consume enough of them and you’re liable to feel a bit gloomy. But like those undergraduates, Moyers (very distinctly a post-graduate of our difficult political world) holds onto the hope, as today’s piece suggests, that Americans can still fix our world, make it a better place.

Paul Krugman Wrong

The only economic analysis that Krugman and other mainstream economists accept is the one that takes place within the analytic-formalistic modeling strategy that makes up the core of mainstream economics. All models and theories that do not live up to the precepts of the mainstream methodological canon are pruned. You’re free to take your models — not using (mathematical) models at all is, as made clear by Krugman’s comment on King, totally unthinkable —  and apply them to whatever you want – as long as you do it within the mainstream approach and its modeling strategy. If you do not follow this particular mathematical-deductive analytical formalism you’re not even considered doing economics. ‘If it isn’t modeled, it isn’t economics.’

That isn’t pluralism.

That’s a methodological reductionist straightjacket.

 

British fat cat gets average annual wage in 45 minutes

New American Fighter may need to be rescued by older fighters should it enter combat. 

The 16-page memo,first reported by Tony Capaccio at Bloomberg and then by others, details just how troubled this program is: years behind schedule and failing to deliver even the most basic capabilities taxpayers, and the men and women who will entrust their lives to it, have been told to expect.

The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program is the most expensive procurement program in Pentagon history. It’s been plagued by schedule delays, gross cost overruns, and a slew of underwhelming performance reviews. Last month the Air Force declared its variant “ready for combat,” and most press reports lauded this as a signal that the program had turned a corner. But a memo issued from the Pentagon’s top testing official, based largely upon the Air Force’s own test data, showed that the Air Force’s declaration was wildly premature.

Below is the memo referred to above. Frankly, this is an upper class version of a lower class male frothing at the mouth administering a obscenity laden diatribe that would make an old sailor blush. This is a rain dance of hatred written in officialese. 

 

 

Let me utterly simplify its conclusions – The plane is not as good as current serving aircraft. 

That’s an incredible statement particularly when discussing 400 billion dollars worth of plane. jp

(The document shows perfectly in tests but it looks like it doesn’t always appear when the site is accessed – my apologies. jp)

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3035572-DOT-amp-E-AF-IOC-Memo.html