Category: ethics

Have You Been Charged Mystery Fees Through Your Phone Bill? It’s Called Cramming.

On By southwerkIn ethics

From Huffington Post –

The Senate Commerce Committee is investigating several little-known companies for charging consumers mystery fees through their phone bills in a practice known as cramming.

Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John D. Rockefeller, D-W. Va., sent letters to three companies Friday asking them to explain unauthorized charges that they or affiliates have placed on landline phone bills. Those charges, Rockefeller said, were often for services that are available for free online, such as e-mail, or are already bundled with regular phone service, such as voice mail.

Just when I think I have all the different scams figured out, there is another one. I can’t even figure out (the committee is asking) how they would get my data from my cell phone company? Are they selling me out? Do they get a cut? I hope not.

If you read the article these companies appear to independent entities set up for the purpose of “cramming,” so I can’t complain about a company failure of business ethics. They didn’t have any to begin with. This is unconscionable behavior, the kind the law should be upset about. Instead we have a Senate Committee sending them a letter.

I hope something comes of it.

James Pilant

A 12 Cent Credit Card Fee?

On By southwerkIn business ethics, Capitalism, Corporate Social Responsibility, ethics, Philosophy of Business

From the Houston Chronicle –

A proposed cap on the fees that banks charge for debit card transactions would substantially reduce the cost for businesses. But it’s started a death watch for debit card rewards and renewed predictions that free checking is done for.

At issue is who will ultimately benefit from the savings? The Federal Reserve’s proposal to cap these fees, officially known as interchange fees, at 12 cents per transaction would enable retailers to pass on annual savings of $10 billion to $13 billion to consumers. But banks and card networks maintain that retailers will pocket the savings. This would leave consumers to bear the brunt of the new law through higher costs for banking and reduced rewards programs.

In releasing its proposal Thursday, Fed staff members said they found the cost to banks for processing is between 7 cents and 12 cents per transaction. Yet every time a customer swipes a debit card, the average fee is 44 cents.

The banks are making out like bandits and then telling us it’s for our benefit. I always worry when someone says they are doing something for my own good. I can’t help but feel that someone is going to hit me.

Banks love to bill as if some dedicated employee was carefulling examining the transaction, which was undoubtedly true in 1947. The actual current circumstances is a high speed computer instantly calculating the transaction.

We can adjust for the times.

James Pilant

Commerce Department Calls For Internet Privacy!

On By southwerkIn business ethics, Corporate Social Responsibility, ethics, Philosophy of Business

From the Star Tribune –

The Commerce Department is calling for the creation of a “privacy bill of rights” for Internet users to set ground rules for companies that collect consumer data online and use that information for marketing and other purposes.

The proposal, outlined in a report Thursday, is intended to address growing unease about the vast amounts of personal information that companies are scooping up on the Internet — from Web browsing habits to smart phone locations to Facebook preferences. That data is often mined to target advertising.

The new report is intended to guide lawmakers, industry and a White House group looking at the issues surrounding Internet privacy.

Absolutely necessary.

There’s enough tracking software on my computer to slow it down (and I play Fallout 3, that means power). We don’t even know who these people are. Who is playing with our data? Who’s selling it? And for what purpose? Scammers? Is is the Russian Mafia, the Communist Chinese or the North Koreans operating in the only area where their technology is equal to the West (there might be another exception for counterfeiting, they’re really good at that)?

This proposal is important and I hope something comes of it.

James Pilant

Did You Know My Religion Was Reform Judaism?

On By southwerkIn business ethics, Capitalism, ethics

Did you know that I was a Reform Jew?

Well, you can forget it as quick as you learned it. I am a Methodist, but Reform Jew is what my Facebook Profile says.

I don’t want people who I don’t know anything about to have access to my actual data. Besides Reform Judaism sounds kind of neat.

(I considered Islam, but I didn’t want to wait an extra couple of hours to board a plane.)

Loren Steffy writes about internet privacy and specifically about Facebook privacy in a recent column.
From the Column –

We’ve allowed self-indulgence and technology to override common sense when it comes to what we share with the world.

A birth date and a name can yield a driver’s license number and address in about 30 seconds. From there, it’s relatively easy to get a Social Security number, a list of legal judgments or convictions, information on gun permits, pilot licenses and voter registration, among other things.

You can, of course, just put the month and a day of your birth, but profile photos and school information can make it possible to guess the year.

Either way, it may be enough information to, say, fill out a credit card application in your name. For minors, this is particularly dangerous because identity theft can go undetected until they’re old enough to establish credit, and by then their credit is already ruined.

Facebook, of course, isn’t the culprit. It simply provides the platform from which we feel a need to talk about ourselves. Much of the same information can be found elsewhere with a little effort, of course. Facebook merely wraps it in a tidy package for lazy online scofflaws.

Facebook has added privacy controls, but the typical user doesn’t really know who all their friends are, or how much they value the friendship. Would all your “friends” turn down, say, $50, to let a someone have a look at your profile?

Chinese Ghost Cities

On By southwerkIn ethics, Government Failure

From Business Insider –

The hottest market in the hottest economy in the world is Chinese real estate. The big question is how vulnerable is this market to a crash.
One red flag is the vast number of vacant homes spread through China, by some estimates up to 64 million vacant homes.
We’ve tracked down satellite photos of these unnerving places, based on a report from Forensic Asia Limited. They call it a clear sign of a bubble: “There’s city after city full of empty streets and vast government buildings, some in the most inhospitable locations. It is the modern equivalent of building pyramids. With 20 new cities being built every year, we hope to be able to expand our list going forward.”

I am indebted to Luke H. Lee for bringing this story to my attention.

I am often told how China will be the next superpower. I point out the numerous dangerous border situations, the rampant corruption, and the inherent inefficiency of a communist government. Yet, I fail to make a dent. The conventional wisdom is too strong.

This evidence is hard to dismiss. The United States was considered to be foolish when there were unoccupied developments, housing and commercial, but cities? That’s a disaster. And it’s ongoing.

James Pilant

Jayaraman Rajah Iyer Comments On “Who will regret giving insider minnows free lunch?”

On By southwerkIn business ethics, ethics, Philosophy of Business

I am pleased to reproduce my comments I posted at Reuters: It is a case of `Matsanyaya’ matsya means fish nyaya means justice, where big fish swallows the smaller ones. I agree with you, Hedge Fund managers may feel lucky this time but they are always vulnerable, waiting for the tsunami with patience. But please address the issue direct – what’s wrong in getting the insider information and what’s the need for insider probe? The system provides for such misfeasance. It is like match fixing. The team member is bribed to act in a manner the fixer walks away with the loot in a speculative market.

What’s the solution? Fix the system. Correct the situation at the core corporate level. We allow legally loopholes within a balance sheet and then yell about the misuse. It has happened before and continues to happen i.e. Intangible Asset, an oxymoron. This in my opinion singly sucked all the money in the banking system to unproductive enterprises creating a bubble of speculative transactions. Hedge Funds is the outcome of the intangible asset enterprise stoking the fire of greed.

IASB-IFRS is repeating the same error, like the person who sold Eiffel Tower twice, to introduce Hedge Accounting. Please see Exposure Draft Hedge Accounting http://wp.me/p18MVb-5u and comment upon it directly to IASB.

My suggestion is to bring the inside information out, twice over to the public arena by Governance Reporting on a real-time monitoring basis identifying the critical areas: Please see HACCP of Governance http://wp.me/p18MVb-5i and other areas I have covered in my blog.

I do not know whether giving reference to my blog would be considered by Reuters as infringing the House Rules. If so, please do not hesitate to advice me for my knowledge.

Jayaraman Rajah Iyer

Extreme Inequality Helped Cause Both The Great Depression And The Current Economic Crisis (via Washington’s Blog)

On By southwerkIn business ethics, Capitalism, Economic measurement, ethics, Government Failure1 Comment

From Washington’s Blog –

Most mainstream economists dismiss the idea that wealth inequality causes economic crises.

Of course, some ideologues will argue that even discussing inequality is waging class warfare, and smacks of an attack on capitalism.

However, the father of modern economics – Adam Smith – disagreed.

And as Warren Buffet, one of America’s most successful capitalists and defenders of capitalism, points out:

There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war ….

(And as I have previously noted, radical concentration of wealth actually destroys capitalism.)

More to the point, most mainstream economists do not believe there is a causal connection between inequality and severe downturns.

But recent studies by Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty are waking up more and more economists to the possibility that there may be a connection.

Washington’s Blog is an interesting web site full of writing you will not see else where. Here’s the link.

I lean toward the argument that inequality is a factor in economic downturns.

Read their post. I can’t do it justice in a few paragraphs. It’s full of graphs, multiple references and good writing. I’ve got this on my favorites.

James Pilant

Will Tax Cuts Spur the Economy? (via The Ethics Sage)

On By southwerkIn business ethics, ethics, Government Failure2 Comments

Steven Mintz takes out a sharpened pen and ridicules the notion of a cut in social security taxes as a stimulant for the economy. (I ridicule it, too and I’m less polite.) He suggests a better alternative but you are going to have to click on the link to see it. Visit the web site and while you’re there, look around and enjoy the writing.

From the Ethics Sage –

By now you’ve heard about the plan to cut the payroll tax on employees that funds Social Security and Medicare by 2%. Once again the fiscal irresponsibility of those in Congress and President Obama shines through any effort to get control of federal spending and reduce the national debt. The plan is put forward at a time when many have warned about the potential bankruptcy of social security in the not too distant future. How can our “leaders” possibly defend the proposal?

The explanation seems to be that the 2% extra in workers’ paycheck each pay period will stimulate the economy. We’ve been down this road before with little positive effect on spending. In past economic stimulus plans the workers largely saved the money or paid off bills. What makes the government think the result will be any different this time around?

The Ethics Sage, the whole web site, is found here.

James Pilant

From The Web Site – Realizing A Better World

On By southwerkIn Capitalism, Economic measurement, ethics

Luke H. Lee has a friend, John McCoy, who wrote him a letter as an endorsement. I include the first two paragraphs of the letter. I hope you read the rest by clicking on the link.

It has become customary to bash big government, and for good reason. Government gets in the way when it tries to interfere with the private sector. But things got so bad in 2008 that everyone turned to the Fed, the Congress and the President, and his Treasury Secretary, to do something to avert the train wreck we all saw coming. They did do something; and most people were grateful, including the business community and the financial community. But in allowing them to intervene as they did, we – and I mean business leaders — shirked our responsibilities. It was our mistake in the first place. Now it is the turn of the business community to take drastic steps. We need to start by telling our government leaders, “Thanks, but no thanks” to their further efforts to jumpstart the economy. They simply don’t know how to do that, and why should we expect them to do what they are not designed to do?
So, what is the next step on the road to recovery? The first step is a painful one; it is the recognition that we in the business community erred. What kind of error am I talking about? I am talking about a failure of imagination. We pride ourselves in the business community for our ingenuity, our creativity, our willingness to think outside the box. We have done nothing of the sort. If we had, we would have avoided this train wreck long ago.

Mr. Lee is interested in solutions to global problems and he worries that a dangerous downturn is possible. So, reading his web site, Realizing A Better World, might well be a good step for you.

James Pilant

Privacy is the Person of Last Year

On By southwerkIn business ethics, ethics

From Reuters –

Whether either Facebook or WikiLeaks will live up their leaders’ divergent, but comparably idealistic, hopes is questionable. Extra status updates can bring friends closer or just irritate, and personal data shared online can reveal more than is healthy. Likewise, making ambassadorial dispatches public can shine a disinfecting light on a government’s role in unsavory deals — or hurt efforts to forestall damaging conflicts and put undercover agents in harm’s way.

Both organizations are gaining status and so are their leaders, as the Time selections attest. This may, however, be their golden hour. Technology has made it much harder to keep things hidden or to hush them up once exposed. But the costs of bringing formerly private things to light are likely to become increasingly evident. Even the relatively benign-seeming Mr. Zuckerberg, now in command of vast amounts of personal information, is likely to face calls for far greater accountability from Facebook’s mass of users – if not regulators one day.

In a Reuters’ opinion column, Robert Cyran writes about privacy and the role of Facebook and Wikileaks. It’s a tale of the ongoing saga of privacy or lack therof. The two paragraphs I culled from the larger do not really do the article justice. I recommend you follow the link and read it in its entirety.

James Pilant