These people are indignant and angry. I like them. We can use some anger.
I recommend the site. It should be read often.
James Pilant
Category: Capitalism
Can You Still Get Ahead In America?
Frank Rich is his column discusses what can be done to challenge the super rich. Here’s a quote –
… The president’s argument against extending the cuts for the wealthiest has now been reduced to the dry accounting of what the cost would add to the federal deficit. As he put it to CBS’s Steve Kroft, “the question is — can we afford to borrow $700 billion?”
That’s a good question, all right, but it’s not the question. The bigger issue is whether the country can afford the systemic damage being done by the ever-growing income inequality between the wealthiest Americans and everyone else, whether poor, middle class or even rich. That burden is inflicted not just on the debt but on the very idea of America — our Horatio Alger faith in social mobility over plutocracy, our belief that our brand of can-do capitalism brings about innovation and growth, and our fundamental sense of fairness. Incredibly, the top 1 percent of Americans now have tax rates a third lower than the same top percentile had in 1970.
The question I ask above is one that has troubled me for some time. Always, in my classes, there are students who say with complete confidence that, of course, they can get ahead. They say they will have great futures and advance up the class ladder.
I support them with everything I can. I teach them the tricks to beat most of the scams I see. I teach them to fight for their money. I teach to be kind to the weak, tough with the strong and merciless to the evil. I try to teach them the tricky politics of the upper class.
But I worry about them. It’s not a good time to be out in the job market. My numbers, economic and political, do not say kind things about this country. The numbers say that increasingly it is a cruel place where predatory fees are the new avenue to corporate wealth.
It makes me unhappy.
I get tired of seeing the great mass of Americans villified as too fat, too stupid, too irresponsible. They are constantly lectured by a media focused on the trivial and slavish in their devotion to upper class values. They are constantly lectured about their need to sacrifice by politicians and businessmen who wouldn’t sacrifice a sweet desert to save all the starving in the world.
They deserve better.
James Pilant
“Inside Job” The Director Speaks
Charles Ferguson directed the documentary “Inside Job.” He writes about his thoughts and conclusions from creating the documentary.
One of the things he found puzzling (as do I), doesn’t doing serious long term damage to the nation’s infrastructure like roads, bridges and education become a concern for the financial elites since over time it damages their American investments?
Here’s the answer. (from the article) –
The financial services industry and the most successful American multinational firms now obtain rapidly increasing fractions, often already the majority, of their investment, employees, and revenues from (a) other wealthy individuals and corporations and/or (b) outside the United States. Over the last two decades their political interests, contributions, and lobbying have gradually followed these larger trends. As a result, the political duopoly has overseen a massive disinvestment in the future of the United States and the American people, and a massive transfer of wealth from the bottom 90% of the population to the top 1%. Taxes on dividends, high incomes, capital gains, and estates have sharply declined, while tuition at public universities, hours worked per family, household debt, and government deficits have all increased.
They have no interest in the long term future of the nation. This nation is similar to the Wild West idea of Robbers’ Roost.
Robbers’ Roost is a town hidden in the hills where the outlaws go to hang out. There is no law there. They do what they feel like. They are safe from the sheriff and all those people they took stuff from.
The United States is going to be a great big friendly place for people with lots of money and few morals. One law for them. One law for us.
James Pilant
The trailer –
This Is Not A Recovery
I wrote this back in August. I haven’t changed my mind one bit. Whenever I read this nonsense about an economic recovery, I’m struck by how far away the commentator is from actual American life and how close he is to Washington.
So says Paul Krugman at the New York Times. And he’ right. This is the New Great Depression, the second in American history. It will always be remembered by future generations as Great Depression II, the second great depression. Just like the first world war failed to solve the problems that would eventually lead to the second world war, the same problems bit us a second time. The humiliating thing is that if we had continued with the protections from the first great depression we could have avoided much of the damage. But the claims and promises of an irresponsible and incompetent economic elite have led America and the rest of the world into disaster, a disaster these same creatures do not believe is happening since it has no effect on them except a persistent worry that their profession is being “demonized.” Demons would have had serious difficulty in doing more damage to more innocent lives.
James Pilant
Ho-Hyung (“Luke”) Lee – Realizing A Better World
One of the great pleasures of writing a blog is that you can say nice things about people. One of my friends on Facebook is Ho-Hyung (“Luke”) Lee.
This is from his web site, Realizing A Better World, –
In the Industrial Age, one plus one equaled two, using simple arithmetic. However, in the Modern Information Age, one plus one could produce 5, 10 or even 20, given the possibility of geometric progression. Such integration or synergistic effects can be achieved relatively easily with the increased communication capability that has resulted from the development of IT and networking technology. Moreover, the global information exchange enabled by the World Wide Web has made them more broadly realistic.
However, this increased communication capability has greatly influenced and brought major changes to all participants in the market. Almost all of the individual units on the supply side have greatly increased their productivity and efficiency. As a result, the ratio of employment to investment has been reduced. On the demand side, consumer knowledge and recognition have increased greatly, and this is directly linked to the abrupt escalation in consumer needs and wants. It is likely that this pressed the increase in consumer spending on the demand side.
He is a complex thinker, something of a specialist in markets. I enjoy his writing. I think you will too.
James Pilant
The Lively World Of Ethics!
Let’s take a little run around the internet and see what other blogs are saying about business ethics.
The web site, Modern Pensees, takes a very tough stand on society as a whole considered in the light of the cheating scandal at UCF Business School.
The Ethical Dilemma, subtitled as Life as a “do it all” deals with ethics from a Christian perspective.
Jayaribcm’s Blog is a very learned and well written. He has recently discussed corporate governance and corporate social responsibility in his blog. If you are a student writing a paper or a columnist looking for background, this is a good web site.
Homophilosophicus writes about business ethics from an Irish perspective. He subtitles his web site, “A commentary of the perplexed.” This guy writes well. He’s a teacher, and I would like to be one of his students. It’s obvious he believes in the importance of his craft. I appreciate that.
Ricks Picks is an interesting concept. Each day he lists three web sites he recommends. He recommends business ethics sites from time to time, which is why it came up on my search. It’s a fun approach and it makes sense when one has a busy schedule. I looked at his picks, they’re pretty good.
Leading In Context LLC is discussing business ethics as applied to ethical consumerism.
The web site, UH HUH HER, discusses the ethics of consumerism. It is written “by the girl.” “The girl” can write. It’s a little off beat, but she knows what she’s talking about. I’d give it a look.
Well, this is the different ways people talk about business ethics in their blogs. We ranged from very conservative Christianity to a CSR expert in India, to a dedicated teacher in Ireland and finally wound up reading a post “from the girl.” I’m glad you went with me. This was great fun, albeit very time consuming. Still I met some new people. Some of them are warriors in the field of ethics. They will probably become allies and friends. You can join the struggle, too.
James Pilant
Ireland’s Economic and Moral Crisis (via homophilosophicus)
This guy can write! I was scanning the net for business ethics sites and came across it. He writes with intelligence and passion. He’s often very indignant and appalled at what is happening in his country (similar to some one we know, right?).
I want to meet this guy. Like me he teaches. He talks about it with the same passion I bring to it. Read his stuff.
James Pilant
Foreclosure Freeze – The Best Sites
Absolutely number one – Foreclosureblues. The writing is excellent and they are doing very well on staying on top of the situation. Read it! Here’s a quote –
The failure to uphold fiduciary duties of even a few larger institutions will put the entire banking system in doubt. What we witnessed in 2008 and early 2009 was a loss of trust, faith, confidence. It was a classic solvency crisis masquerading as a liquidity crisis – with doubt about which specific institutions had engaged in reckless behaviour putting a cloud over every bank in the entire system and causing liquidity to dry up economy-wide. When banks engage in unsafe and unsound business practices, they put the entire economy at risk in a way that you see in no other sector of the economy. This is why regulators in the US are supposed to take prompt corrective action in closing insolvent institutions and those institutions with unsafe and unsound business practices.
Rortybomb is fantastic. Read it! This guy is sharp and he keeps an eye on the rest of the internet that I can only envy.
I think a simple dose of game theory helps with these things. Given that servicers are being sued by their investors, wouldn’t they want a moratorium, want the government to step in with a heavy-hand and lend credibility? Nobody believes them, and nobody has a reason to. And I can’t tell what is scarier: that Bank of America knows it isn’t credible here, and just wants to hope it goes away, or Bank of America is simply too large, complicated and poorly functioning to figure out and/or learn whether or not they have a problem here.
How’s that returns to scale in banking working out for everyone?
Another site I recommend you check regularly with is National Foreclosure News. They keep tabs on the news across the nation on the foreclosure crisis. It gives you a good feel for how the whole thing is playing out in the media. It doesn’t take long to scan one days entry. So, it’s a good place to go for a summary picture of the foreclosure mess.
The web site, Living Lies, is very good place to go. However, it’s really for attorneys. Nevertheless for the layman there is still a lot of interesting stuff there.
$hame the Banks is another good web site. It’s definitely got some teeth. I really like it. There is a lot of material on this site. Here’s a quote.
After years of high-flying success and millions of dollars in profits, the future suddenly looks grim for the Law Offices of David J. Stern. The firm, which was the subject of a long MoJo investigation published in August, used to be one of the nation’s most powerful “foreclosure mills,” those assembly line-like operations that handle hundreds of thousands of foreclosure cases for the nation’s largest mortgage companies.
(In 2009 alone, the Stern firm handled 70,382 foreclosure cases.) But in the past few months, the corner-cutting and alleged fraud in the foreclosure business, as described in my August story, erupted into a national scandal. As a result, the Stern firm has seen its fortunes plummet, with major clients, like Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Citigroup, cutting ties to Stern. Stern’s operation has also laid off hundreds of employees in recent weeks.
This is a realtor site but the guy has some independent thoughts. It’s a brand new site, so you might check it from time to time and see how it develops. It’s called Gilbertazrealtor’s Blog.
That’s my best advice at this time. As the crisis continues there will be other web sites dealing with the issue. I’ll try to get them up as quickly as I can.
James Pilant
BP Cleared By Presidential Inquiry
lol
Right! The President covered for the oil company for months. They restricted press access to the affected waters. The declined the recommendations of their own scientists. They underestimated the amount of oil leaking from the disaster.
We already know that BP was drilling deeper than they were supposed to. We know they had accumulated an awesome number of violations of regulations and had violated the regulations on a regular basis. We know their conduct in the 2002 gas explosion and their maintenance of the Alaska pipeline were disastrous. We know that they had good reason to believe their cement was substandard, this cement being one of the causes of the incident.
In short, the White House has a strong interest in giving British Petroleum a clean bill of health.
We also know that considering BP’s conduct that such a clean bill of health is not credible.
I am far more interested in the outcome of the lawsuits by the states and individuals harmed by this disaster.
The tragedy is that these findings may not be public for at least seven years. By that time, the heat on the government and that corporation will have long dissipated.
Whatever, you may think of the finding, in the long term it will be effective in blunting criticism and, more important, buying time.
Cynicism is merited.
James Pilant
Steven Mintz Comments On My Post – “Business Confidence Ratings”
Steven Mintz commented on one of my posts. The comment is below. I pass on comments from time to time, and my suspicion is that I will have the pleasure of doing so many times in this gentleman’s case. He has his own web site.
I just saw the movie “Inside Job” that explores the failures in the banking industry and how it created the financial services-driven recession in 2008. I highly recommend the movie to learn more about how and why the banking and financial services industry was able to bring down the economy. After seeing the movie I wonder why the bank confidence level isn’t even lower!
I have recommended the film myself. Here is the trailer –
You should read Steven Mintz, he knows his subject. He fights for ethics. He calls his site, The Ethics Sage.
James Pilant
Pilant's Business Ethics Blog 
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