Author: southwerk

I am a 53 year old teacher. I have double major in Speech and Criminal Justice resulting in a Bachelor's degree from Northeastern State University in Oklahoma and a law degree.

System Rigged Against Small Investor.

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics

Facebook IPO: Retail Investors Lose Out While Wall Street Clients Make Profits

In case a reminder was needed, the fallout from the Facebook IPO illustrates that Wall Street appears to be designed to serve the well-connected at the expense of ordinary people.

Ordinary investors may have lost as much as $630 million collectively from the plunge in Facebook’s stock following its public debut, Bloomberg reports. These are the same people who used hundreds or even thousands of dollars of their prized savings to bet on the stock only to have its value drop to way below its opening price of $38 per share.

Facebook IPO: Retail Investors Lose Out While Wall Street Clients Make Profits

Is it moral or ethical to have a rule system which allows the large institutional investors to thrive while penalizing the small investors? Does this encourage responsible investment and make Americans better people?

I think not.

This kind of thing drives people away from investment and it should. That the game is rigged is obvious to the most casual observer. It takes an enormous amount of advertising and badly written text books to get people to buy stock.

Now let’s differentiate here. I heartily approve of investment, that is, buying stock in a company to collect regular dividends and over time have the value of the company go up. That is investment. It carries some risk but it is not the kind of risk carried by those that believe they can buy and sell stock hour by hour, day by day, and make a profit thereby. That is speculation and speculation is inherently risky.

But not all speculators are equal. Let Facebook be a warning to all small investors. Whether you win or lose, investment banks will win.

This is wrong.

It damages faith in the system because the system doesn’t deserve it. If people don’t believe in the basic fairness of society than they will begin to act in ways that are detrimental to that society.

More simply, if playing by the rules doesn’t work, they’ll try something else.

Justice and fairness are for everybody and when they are denied we all suffer.

We should always have in the back of our minds the basic concept of fairness in our dealings. That is how you build a just and fair society.

You punish the wicked and protect the innocent. Is it hard to understand that rule?

James Pilant

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Rational Choice Beats Patriotism?

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics

Chuck Schumer Denounces Eduardo Saverin Defenders, Nazi Comparisons As ‘Appalling’ (UPDATE)

Grover Norquist, the head of Americans for Tax Reform, said Schumer and Casey’s legislation was similar to laws the Nazis wrote before World War II to make Jews pay to leave the country. “He probably just plagiarized it and translated it from the original German,” said Norquist, according to The Hill.

Schumer, taking to the Senate floor, called the comparison outrageous.

“I know a thing or two about what the Nazis did. Some of my relatives were killed by them,” he said. “Saying that a person who made their fortune specifically because of the positive elements in American society, in turn, has a responsibility to do right by America is not even on the same planet as comparing to what Nazis did to Jews.”

Chuck Schumer Denounces Eduardo Saverin Defenders, Nazi Comparisons As ‘Appalling’ (UPDATE)

I remember watching the film, Gettysburg. At the high water mark of the South, Pickett’s Charge, the confederates are almost to the top of the ridge, then the Union troops stand up to meet the charge, the American flag unfurled in the wind. I was so proud, my heart beat fast, and I wanted to be with those troops to fight that fight.

Eduardo Saverin is abandoning the United States. The United States has showered him with benefits and protections during all the time that he has lived here. He owes his enormous fortune to the opportunities and the laws found here.

This seems to be less than apparent to some commentators who have likened laws meant to punish those who discard their citizenship and duties as a form of Nazism. These men have also said that Saverin is merely exercising “rational choice” in his behavior.

I am enraged by this.

Memorial day is next week. Several hundred thousand Americans died often in the most ghastly ways so that this person could have the benefits of citizenship.

Every single day, he was protected by millions of serving Americans who live as soldiers, sailors and airmen.

Locally, he was protected by harm by police, fireman and ambulance services – all paid for directly or subsidized by taxes.

For all the time that he lived in this country, he drove on public roads, walked on public sidewalks, and benefitted from the kindness and law abiding nature of the good and great people that make up this country.

By his actions he makes it clear that these mean nothing to him – they are responsibilities that get in the way of profit and profit is the only “rational” choice.

In this kind of morality, patriotism is merely a burden, an inconvenience, an obstacle on the path of financial maximization.

This person has renounced his American citizenship, an honored status for money.

There is no sum worth giving up being an American. Not now – not ever.

James Pilant

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America’s Financial Sector, Infested with Criminals?

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics

Charles Ferguson: How Financial Criminalization Crashed the Economy, and the Culprits Got Off Scot-Free

It is no exaggeration to say that since the 1980s, much of the American (and global) financial sector has become criminalized, creating an industry culture that tolerates or even encourages systematic fraud. The behavior that caused the mortgage bubble and financial crisis was a natural outcome and continuation of this pattern, rather than some kind of economic accident.

It is important to understand that this behavior really is seriously criminal. We are not talking about neglecting some bureaucratic formality. We are talking about deliberate concealment of financial transactions that aided terrorism, nuclear weapons proliferation, and large-scale tax evasion; assisting in concealment of criminal assets and activities by others; and directly committing frauds that substantially worsened the worst financial bubbles and crises since the Depression.

Charles Ferguson: How Financial Criminalization Crashed the Economy, and the Culprits Got Off Scot-Free

I agree with Charles Ferguson. I’ve been following our financial disasters over the last five years and they are in many ways criminal enterprises, not that the Obama Administration seems to care.

We live in a nation with two standards of justice, one for the little people and one for a privileged elite.

I do not think I need to tell you of the horrible effects of injustice. The criminals will break the law again. The criminals will gain in power. The criminals will become even richer.

That is quite the lesson for our children and the larger society. Don’t work. Don’t labor. Steal. That’s the way of American Investment banking.

James Pilant

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25 to 1, Is this Democracy? Walker Allies flood State with Money

On By southwerkIn Politics

Scott Walker Recall Leaders Prep Final Push In Effort To Regain Momentum

Scott Walker Recall Leaders Prep Final Push In Effort To Regain Momentum

Walker, who has raised $25 million, has been blanketing Wisconsin with broadcast advertising touting his handling of the economy. His Democratic opponent, Tom Barrett, who did not win his party’s primary until May 8, has raised only $1 million and not been able to match the blitz. The most recent public poll on the race released last week showed Walker leading by 6 points.

Tom Barrett and Family

A moving wall of money threatens democracy by the people. Corporatism is being birthed even as we speak. The fruit of Citizen’s United is a nation where corporations struggle for influence against each other while the public is simply a mass of pawns manipulated by the massive power of an owned media.

Look at the numbers. They are more eloquent than anything I can say – 25 to 1.

James Pilant

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Zach from http://www.studentloandebtforgivenesshelp.com/ comments on a previous post.

On By southwerkIn Economic Justice

The post commented on was Student Loan Debt a Lifetime Burden for Middle Class but Major Money Maker for Goldman Sachs.

Here’s Zack!

While the student loan problem needs to be addressed in some way, I don’t think giving student loans dischargeability in bankruptcy is the right way. I think bankruptcy courts should be able to modify student loans, but not completely whipe them out. Whiping out student loans would lead to just a lot of abuse. All of us would pay in the way of higher interest rates and fewer students would qualify for loans. I could get a full education without paying a cent knowing I can just declare bankruptcy and by the time I would have paid off my student loans (10 years), the bankruptcy would be off my credit report by then.

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I Knew from the Trailer that Jack and Jill was a Loser!

On By southwerkIn Opinion

The trailer was scary bad. I thought Sandler playing both the female and male leads was the most foolish idea I had ever seen on film since the brave earthlings beat up the aliens in Plan 9 from Outer Space. If only Sandler had the grace to burn up in upside down pie plate like the alien invaders.

Film poster Plan 9 from Outer Space
Film poster Plan 9 from Outer Space (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

James Pilant

Sandler’s “Jack and Jill” goes downhill at Razzies – Yahoo! Movies

The Golden Raspberry Foundation said the cross-dressing comedy, in which Sandler played both the male and female lead parts, was the first film in the 32-year history of the Razzies to sweep all 10 dishonorable categories.

(and from further down in the same article)

Sandler, 45, was voted worst actor and worst actress, and shared the award for worst screen ensemble. “Jack and Jill”, which he also helped to write, was voted worst picture, worst re-make, worst director and worst screenplay.

Sandler’s “Jack and Jill” goes downhill at Razzies – Yahoo! Movies

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What Do Our College Students Learn?

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics

I wrote a three part series (part 1) (part 2) (part 3) on the latest study showing that college students are not learning critical thinking skills. I pointed out that the study was another in a series of little publicized media events. In truth, the public, the colleges and the business world have little desire for critical thinking.

But what do students learn in college?

A faculty member once had a class of students who were not wealthy, not even close. Not all of the students in his class were able to afford textbooks. So, given a choice of textbooks for the next year’s class, he chose one that cost about seventy dollars. The next year, all of his students had the textbook. The very next semester the price of the textbook rose to one hundred and ten dollars. And then two more years slid by and it went up to one hundred and fifty dollars.

This is not an unusual situation with textbook prices. It is, in fact, the common, everyday experience of teachers and students in colleges and universities all over the United States.

Students may not be learning as much critical thinking as some would like, they may not get that much cultural literacy, and they may have only the vaguest concept of the term “civic duty”, but they do know about pricing. I get it in class essays, “You charge as much as you can get.” To them, it is an ethical rule – You must pursue the highest return possible under any circumstance. The students don’t know any other rule. The deeper philosophical concepts of just price and two thousand years of contrary philosophy are not factors here.

I believe I am a good teacher but there is no amount of teaching skill that can equal the cutting edge of another textbook price increase every year. They may not grasp the “statute of frauds” in my business law class but they understand the phrase, “what the market will bear” with perfect clarity.

What are we teaching our students?  Is there any lesson more naked about the nature of the American idea of free enterprise than what students endure each year at the bookstore?

James Pilant

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Football Pain

On By southwerkIn Opinion

From a Salon article called

The NFL: An indictment of America

by Ethan Sherwood Strauss –

True fans possess an enormous capacity to live through their football heroes, but they retain an even greater capacity to do so without empathy. Just last week, Bears quarterback Jay Culter was all but put in stocks for leaving a game due to a torn MCL. Fans burned his jersey as though Cutler “quit” out of feminine frailty, as though this professional QB had concocted some elaborate, cowardly, fan-jobbing conspiracy. The public violently, irrationally demands that a player play, even with knee ligaments dangling. No wonder so many of these athletes gobble painkillers in a manner that would trump a toilet-bound Elvis.

I’ve spent my life wondering what people saw in football. NFL football, I get that. That’s entertainment. What I don’t get is college or high school football. There’s this strange story line that football builds character and teamwork. I imagine there is some development there – “playing fields of Eton” and the other charming and nonsensical tales of our culture. But for almost all colleges, football loses money all the time every year. In high school it is at best a distraction from the real purpose of school and worse, a money drain diverting resources from other programs.

But the author here is right. It is the pain. It is the harm the sport does to the players. And the fans. There is some strangeness there. Many years ago I was in high school and the NFL players went on strike. My fellow students deprived of their television pacifier were outraged. My father subscribed to Sports Illustrated and I read about the strike. I discovered that the average life span of an NFL player was 58 years and the injury rate was 100%. That’s a lot to give up so that people can be entertained.

The author continues –

At a certain point, we are — in part — defined by this tendency. That America endorses the NFL’s pain party starts to say something about the country. Such as: American culture is replete with couch-jockeys who feel more masculine for having watched other people destroy themseves. Or: American culture is fine with perpetuating a system of destruction, so long as a few, mostly poor people are involved. In many ways, our attitudes towards fetishized athletes mirror our attitudes towards those glorious troops whom we only support with platitudes. This is not good.

I agree.

James Pilant

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Marcus Aurelius From The Virtual University (MICHAEL SUGRUE)

On By southwerkIn Philosophy
The 1% and the climb to the top.
Marcus Aurelius, emperor over the last generat...
Image via Wikipedia


This is a lecture, the first of a series about Marcus Aurelius. I’ve read the Meditations a couple of times and I’ve read Epictetus as well. However, a good teacher can put all this in context and that is what is happening here. Unlike many You-Tube teaching videos, the sound is good and the teacher is easy to give your undivided attention to. I enjoyed the lecture. I believe there are three more. Once you are watching this one, the follow ups will be listed on the right hand side of the screen.

I personally find this philosophy compelling but I’m older and more skeptical. So, let’s see where this material takes us.

James Pilant

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Benjamin Franklin, Business Ethics And How To Approach An Opponent!

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics

An excerpt from The True Benjamin Franklin

Author: Sydney George Fisher

Franklin was by nature a public man; but the beginning of his life as an office-holder may be said to have dated from his appointment as clerk of the Assembly. This took place in 1736, when he had been in business for himself for some years, and his newspaper and “Poor Richard” were well under way. It was a tiresome task to sit for hours listening to buncombe speeches, and drawing magic squares and circles to while away the time. But he valued the appointment because it gave him influence with the members and a hold on the public printing.

The second year his election to the office was opposed; an influential member wanted the place for a friend, and Franklin had a chance to show a philosopher’s skill in practical politics.

“Having heard that he had in his library a certain very scarce and curious book, I wrote a note to him, expressing my desire of perusing that book, and requesting he would do me the favour of lending it to me for a few days. He sent it immediately, and I return’d it in about a week with another note, expressing strongly my sense of the favour. When we next met, in the House, he spoke to me (which he had never done before), and with great civility; and he ever after manifested a readiness to serve me on all occasions, so that we became great friends and our friendship continued to his death. This is another instance of the truth of an old maxim I had learned, which says ‘He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another, than he whom you yourself have obliged.’” (Bigelow’s Franklin from his own Writings, vol. i. p. 260.)

Some people have professed to be very much shocked at this disingenuous trick, as they call it, although perhaps capable of far more discreditable ones themselves. It would be well if no worse could be said of modern practical politics.

I confess to have done similar things myself having been a student of Franklin since I was in high school. (It took me an age to figure out what venery was!) 

There was a mail service in the building where I worked. The mail often contained items of some confidentiality so I asked the our version of a postman to give the letters only to me. Well, a few days passed and the office gossip brought in the letters after having gone through them. I was enraged and decided to go out and tell off the guy. Fortunately this thought passed away instantly as I realized that the busybody would have the letters from then on.

So, the next day I went over and told him how much I appreciated his giving the mail to me only, how it helped me with my work and how few people who did his work would have realized its importance and helped me in the matter. The office busybody never got the mail again. (And the postman and I were buddies from then on.)

Needless to say, I don’t consider Franklin’s action a mean trick. I think it is just a good way to get to know someone.

James Pilant

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