I’m a little doubtful about this stuff. I read that first body language paperback some thirty years ago and it was riddled with errors. Nevertheless I have posted about lies on occasion and this seems on point. So go here and look at the seven ways.
Category: ethics
Iraq Not Rebuilt – $Billions Wasted
Just wonderful! Of course, it’s not much of surprise, there were already news stories and photographs of disastrous building projects and corporate contractual malfeasance. But here we are, billions in the hole, no doubt costing American lives as the Iraqis looked around and waited for us to fulfill promises our private contractors had little intention of doing in the first place. As long as the money rolled who cared about results. Here’s the lead in from the AP report –
A $40 million prison sits in the desert north of Baghdad, empty. A $165 million children’s hospital goes unused in the south. A $100 million waste water treatment system in Fallujah has cost three times more than projected, yet sewage still runs through the streets
As the U.S. draws down in Iraq, it is leaving behind hundreds of abandoned or incomplete projects. More than $5 billion in American taxpayer funds has been wasted — more than 10 percent of the some $50 billion the U.S. has spent on reconstruction in Iraq, according to audits from a U.S. watchdog agency.
That amount is likely an underestimate, based on an analysis of more than 300 reports by auditors with the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction. And it does not take into account security costs, which have run almost 17 percent for some projects.
Business Ethics NEWS – Governor Rick Perry Has Accumulated A Cool Million During Twenty Years Of Government Service?!
How do you do that? I guess you could be really clever. Or you could take some ethical shortcuts. I remember reading Milton Friedman, he says you are supposed to make the maximum profit for shareholders within the rules of the game. Now, I find ole Miltie utterly contemptible. However, that phrase “within the rules of the game” has always troubled me. What does that mean? Here is a situation in which the rules appear to be very flexible. What’s more – How vigorously can you fight or maintain the public interest with such “close” friends?
The Houston Chronicle suggests it might be like this –During two decades of full-time government service, Gov. Rick Perry has accumulated a net worth of about $1 million – perhaps through good investment timing.
However, almost everyone who steered Perry to his money-making deals has seen rewards from Texas government.
Six received key state government appointments or jobs. Two benefited from government actions that had the potential to enhance their real estate holdings. Another was poised to get a state grant for his business until the deal fell through.
The bottom line is, all of the real estate deals that made Perry money occurred because of an insider’s tip. The profits mostly go into a blind trust outside of public view or scrutiny.
“Every transaction I have been involved in has been at arms length, has been transparent and it has been reported on so many cotton-picking times that, if there was something there, it would have been reported on,” Perry said recently.
Southern Methodist University political scientist Cal Jillson said Perry’s real estate deals remind him of the story of Texas oilman Sid Richardson hiring future governor John Connally as a lawyer. Richardson told Connally his salary would not be big, but “I’ll put you in the way to make some money.”
The Number One New Story In Australia!?
That’s right, click over to News.com.au and Paris Hilton is the lead story. Good Grief, they are in the aftermath of an historic election.
They’ve got a guy who held a another guy as a slave turn himself in. If you want gaudy, strange news, isn’t that good enough? They have a nuclear reactor that spewed poison gas for hundred of miles from Sydney to Melbourne, and Paris Hilton is the top story. (By the way, they didn’t tell the public about the poison gas for fear of causing alarm. I don’t guess it would have been a big deal anyway. After all, the citizen of Melbourne who went to the internet for news would have had to read about Paris Hilton before he drifted down the page to the headline, Poison Gas Drifts Toward City.)
Has all news got to be on the level of short attention spanned five year old?
James Pilant
Banks Created Fake Demand To Keep Home Sales Going
Back in 2006, when the housing market began to slow banks began to have difficulty moving their CDO’s (collateralized Debt Obligations). So, they created an artificial demand by selling them to each other.
Tens of billions of dollars in deals were exchanged between the banks. The CDO’s were becoming increasingly risky as solid mortgage investments disappeared. But the banks had strong influence over the managers who created the CDO’s and how couldn’t they? A billion dollar CDO made the manager a millionaire off that once transaction.
Without these deals keeping demand high and luring new investors into the game, the housing market would have slowed much earlier with much less damage.
Investment firms like Merrill Lynch cultivated the CDO managers –
As the head of Merrill’s CDO business, Ricciardi also wooed managers with golf outings and dinners. One Merrill executive summed up the overall arrangement: “I’m going to make you rich. You just have to be my bitch.”
The mortgage debts varied in risk, so the banks kept the top 80% and marketed the high risk bottom 20%. But bizarrely, the banks bought each others CDO’s. That’s right, the bottom 20%. But remember, a one billion dollar deal results in five to ten million in fees. That’s a lot of incentive to make bad deals. Bad for your bank but very, very good for you.
The banks were so successful in creating this artificial demand that in 2006, the amount being traded doubled in spite of the cooling real estate market reaching a value of 226 billion dollars.
These were the kind of toxic assets the banks were holding. The banking industry would have you believe that home buyers got in over their heads looking for easy loans. How does that figure when the banks are buying each others’ mortgage investments? How does that work when the banks are creating artificial demand?
And you know the end of the story, how the federal government used tax money to buy those toxic investments which the banks bought from each other knowing they were toxic investment. Do you feel good?
This is isn’t about overenthusiastic home buyers, this New Depression is the result of financial mismanagement and naked greed.
James Pilant
Not Quite Equal Yet!
This memo from the Nettleton Middle School divides student offices by race.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
(There are new reports that two of the four school administrators are black and they are saying it was a misguided attempt at affirmative action.) I’m not buying it. Limiting the blacks to a handful of seats and determining the race by the race of the student’s mother are not the elements of affirmative action. And, in particular, the fact (at least according to the news) that some administrators are black has no effect in my mind on whether or not it’s discrimination. Someday, people are going to have to wake up and decide that blacks have actual individuals in their midst who have their own points of view, do bad things, do good things, believe wonderful things, believe moronic things and just generally do that human being thing. That a black person says something about other blacks does not make it okay. That a (fill in the blank) says or does something that involves the (fill in the blank) race does not make it okay. Got it?
James Pilant
High Performance
One of the things that keep me in a perpetual state of outrage is the self help movement particularly the self esteem part of it, you know, affirmations, think positive, the “secret,” and other crap.
You feel good about yourself when you accomplish things, when you do actual work and when you have concerned yourself with living in harmony and joint support with other human beings.
But that’s difficult. That’s hard. That would mean you would have to have some kind of perception of responsibility or, gasp, duty.
So, we tape stuff to the mirror, convince ourselves that our thoughts draw money, love and other goodies to us, and a host of other activities designed to make us feel momentarily content without justification.
I was reading an article by a fellow named Tony Schwartz. This is what he says:
In work with thousands of people, we’ve found that it’s possible to build any given skill or capacity in the same systematic way you do a muscle: regularly push past your comfort zone, and then rest. We’ve seen people dramatically improve skills ranging from focus, to empathy, to creativity, to summoning positive emotions, to deeply relaxing.
He then lists the six elements of achieving success.
You might give his short essay a read. Of course, you could always tape something to the fridge.
James Pilant
Gross National Happiness
Jigme Singye Wangchuck, the former king of Bhutan decided to develop an economic model more in tune with Bhuddist teachings. The result was a new measure call Gross National Happiness. This measure is designed to have a different emphasis than the economic measure, Gross National Product. Quoting from the first Global GNH Survey:
1. Economic Wellness: Indicated via direct survey and statistical measurement of economic metrics such as consumer debt, average income to consumer price index ratio and income distribution
2. Environmental Wellness: Indicated via direct survey and statistical measurement of environmental metrics such as pollution, noise and traffic
3. Physical Wellness: Indicated via statistical measurement of physical health metrics such as severe illnesses
4. Mental Wellness: Indicated via direct survey and statistical measurement of mental health metrics such as usage of antidepressants and rise or decline of psychotherapy patients
5. Workplace Wellness: Indicated via direct survey and statistical measurement of labor metrics such as jobless claims, job change, workplace complaints and lawsuits
6. Social Wellness: Indicated via direct survey and statistical measurement of social metrics such as discrimination, safety, divorce rates, complaints of domestic conflicts and family lawsuits, public lawsuits, crime rates
7. Political Wellness: Indicated via direct survey and statistical measurement of political metrics such as the quality of local democracy, individual freedom, and foreign conflicts.
Jewish Business Ethics
The rules of the Jewish faith do not begin and end at the door of the synagogue. In the Talmud, it is written that the first question you are asked by God on entry into heaven is, “Did you conduct your business affairs honestly?” The great commentator, Ramban, wrote that you can obey all the rules of the torah to the letter, and still be repulsive and pathetic human being. The spirit of the law must be followed not the letter.
Business ethics is the arena where the ethereal transcendent teachings of holiness and spirituality confront the often grubby business of making money and being engaged in the rat race that often comprises the marketplace. It is the acid test of whether religion is truly relevant or religion is simply relegated to an isolated sphere of human activity. It is business ethics, one could posit, above all, that shows God co-exists in the world rather than God and godliness being separate and apart. From Jewish Business Ethics: An Introductory Perspective by Rabbi Yitzchok Breitowitz
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