This is another of the human tragedies associated with the foreclosure crisis. I think the policy makers flying in their circles above us have forgotten that it is real people who need their consideration.
James Pilant
Surf’s Up, Condensed: Top Creativity Links for March 9, 2011 (via Creative Liberty)
I’m a big fan of the arts. I think Americans should pay a lot more attention to creativity. This blog talks about the arts and creativity. And it provides a good number of links with original information about these.
I read through them. It’s well written. If you are a patron of arts or creativity, go here.
James Pilant
via Creative Liberty
China Moves Aggressively on Indian Border (via The Times of India)
From the Times of India, an article by Rajat Pandit.
Apart from nuclear missile bases in Qinghai province which clearly target India, China has built five fully-operational airbases, an extensive rail network and over 58,000 km of roads in Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR).
People’s Liberation Army is also rapidly upgrading several other airstrips in TAR as well as south China, to add to the five airbases from where Chinese Sukhoi-27UBK and Sukhoi-30MKK fighters have practised operations in recent times.
Moreover, with extensive road-rail links in TAR, PLA can amass upwards of two divisions (30,000 soldiers) at their “launch pads” along the border in just 20 days now compared to the over 90 days it took earlier.
Why do I have to go to the Times of India to read about the Chinese building up their forces on the border?
What does this say about the security of American manufacturing and investment in Communist China?
China is never going to be the number one economic power on earth. They have territorial ambitions and scores to settle dating back hundreds of years.
In ten years, Americans confronted with the Chinese military ambitions will look back in astonishment that China was held in awe by scores of business commentators, politicians and what we laughingly call pundits.
Can you imagine the awe of future Americans that businesses in the United States thought it was a good idea to shift American jobs to China. .. that Americans built manufacturing plants and share technology including their latest patents with the Chinese?
Our relationship is already fraying in consideration of Chinese currency controls, their treatment of dissidents and a naval build up largely aimed at the United States Navy.
We will be dealing with China in the future, less economically and more as a military problem.
James Pilant
No One Killed Morality! (via Mythbroakia)
This is a well written, thoughtful article. (The title is great by itself.) Journalists are confronted by thorny ethical issues on a continuous basis. He discusses this in very much a reality based manner while still hanging on to virtue.
I liked it. By the way, the site is beautiful. A lot of thought went into the design and it’s visually stunning. So, go and read the article but if you don’t want to, click over just to have a look at the site.
James Pilant
via Mythbroakia
Comedian Mike DeStefano Dead
From Huffington Post –
Comedian Mike DeStefano has passed away following a heart attack on Sunday Punchline Magazine reports, and it is an enormous loss for the comedy community.
I like comedians. They are free to tell us things we wouldn’t take from anyone else. They are another window on reality. Don’t get me wrong – they can miss reality further than a rock thrown at the moon. But the good ones, they are our street philosophers.
James Pilant
Warning Strong Language – Very Strong Language – Biting, mean comedy – Tons of Racial Jokes
Happy House, Sad House (via Mike LaMonica’s Blog)
Mike LaMonica calls us to look at a single home, a beautiful home. I would guess another mortgage foreclosure. I’ve seen houses around here that have been for sale so long, that one of the two word supports has rotted and left the for sale sign in the grass.
I love houses. I like the old ones, brick and sturdy. The mid-sixties ranch house designs are my favorite. It’s a tragedy when a beautiful house goes empty.
LaMonica is right. It is sad.
James Pilant
Newspaper Business Pages – Wrong, Wrong, Wrong!
(A reprint of a previous column)
I search for people talking and writing about ethics and reform. Since we are discussing business ethics, a good place for me to hunt for these kinds of writers is on the business pages of large circulation newspapers. It’s not much fun. Fortunately not all business writers live in a cartoon like version of our world where noble business men are limited by government regulation from making us all rich and happy, where the chief problem with the stock market is pessimism, and where stupid home buyers ruined the economy, but many perhaps most do.
Look, I believe in free enterprise. I think a business man should be able to make a profit. But a lot of what got us into the current mess had more to do with gambling with other people’s money that it did with investing. Further, I have a strong prejudice in favor of actually making stuff and investing in this nation’s future instead of moving money around as if that was “God’s work.” And if you think, that after seeing how derivatives work, watching the colossal failure of the rating agencies, the incredible passivity of the SEC and other government regulators, and the inability of the government, various huge corporations and the business publications to predict, prevent or ameliorate the current crisis, that I am going to blame individual home buyers for this mess, you just aren’t getting me.
If we just remain optimistic the recovery will continue is a regular thought for many business pages. Jim Gallagher writing in St. Louis Today says that the principal danger from the Greek bail out and the crisis for the Euro is that investors fearing bad things will happen will behave irrationally and damage the market by selling. He provides reams of data to support his thesis. But in spite of all of his data, I have doubts. The European Common Market is a larger economy than the United States and many of their members are more question marks or problems than we like to acknowledge. I think fear is appropriate.
It’s all that home buying that brought us into this mess is an almost constant refrain. I can’t help but notice it was the collapse of a part of the derivatives market (a 600 trillion dollar gambling casino masquerading as an investment) that destroyed much of America’s economy. I also feel obligated to point out that those nasty, demented, foolish home buyers never seem to have figured out they could package their mortgages as securities, get them triple A status from compliant rating agencies, and then sell all over the world as if they were good investments relieving lenders of any responsibility for their decisions.
They say regulation is a bad idea. There is too much now. Golly Gee, looking over the ruins of the world economy and the thirty million American unemployed, you might think somebody did something wrong. But no, if anything bad happened it was not the fault of the huge investment banks (who got into a little trouble requiring trillions of dollars of bailout money), it was the fault of over regulation. Here’s Thomas Oliver from Atlanta Business News.
Well, so much for my pain. I have found in my searches many authors who inform, enlighten and motivate me.That makes it worthwhile.
James Pilant
Morally Right and Just
(A republish of an old column.)
“What is morally just and right – that’s not my job,” he said.
If a rapist, a murderer, an embezzler, any kind of criminal, had said this, we wouldn’t be surprised. If a corporate CEO said it here in the age of Milton Friedman and the Chicago School, I would not be particularly surprised but to hear it from the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court is a tragedy and an abomination.
Every human being and, in particular, every American has a responsibility to do what is right and hold others to moral responsibility. That is even more critical in the field of law where what must be a primary concern is justice.
What is particularly bizarre is that he spoke these words in a speech where he repeatedly praised President Lincoln. He said this:
Like most attorneys of his day, Lincoln didn’t go to law school and learned it by reading and working for other lawyers, Roberts said. He was a generalist who studied many things and was continually learning. He understood human nature and had a strong internal compass that allowed him to excel when he believed he was right.
What did President Lincoln say about morality? This is from the his Second Inauguration.
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.
Let us as Americans, as believers in one religion or another, as believers in any philosophy in which good is considered more important than evil, struggle to make this land a better place. Let us always remember that we have an affirmative duty to fight evil and a responsibility to do what is right and honor justice whether we are the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court or a simple citizen of a great nation.
James Pilant
Twitter and Facebook Dangerous for Your Pocketbook
$430k Love settlement shows tweets can be costly (via Yahoo News)
From Yahoo News –
Courtney Love’s settlement of a case sparked by online attacks on a fashion designer show that while Twitter posts may be short, they can also be costly.
The singer has agreed to pay Dawn Simorangkir $430,000, plus interest, to settle a lawsuit the designer filed in March 2009 over comments Love made on Twitter and her MySpace blog.
Many users assume that because the comments or brief or similar to casual conversation, that a lawsuit for libel is unlikely. No, it’s just as likely as for any other media. It’s hard to think of defamation in terms of a newspaper with a 20,000 circulation being similar to a twitter post, but that twitter post could go viral and be seen by 20,000,000 people.
Here’s more from the article.
“People are getting in trouble for Twitter postings on an almost daily basis,” said First Amendment Attorney Doug Mirell, a partner at Loeb and Loeb who did not handle the case.
“The laws controlling what is and isn’t libelous are the same regardless of the medium in which the statements appear,” he said.
From further down in the article –
“The fact is that this case shows that the forum upon which you communicate makes no difference in terms of potential legal exposure,” Freedman said. “Disparaging someone on Twitter does not excuse one from liability.”
When you communicate with Twitter or Facebook, pretend you are editorializing in a newspaper because legally, it’s very similar.
James Pilant
Four held for burning to death Orissa steel executive (via The Times of India)
From the Times of India
A group of workers Thursday set ablaze the vehicle of R.S. Ray, deputy general manager of a private steel company Powmex Steels near Titilagarh town, about 400 km from here when he was on his way home for lunch.
The irate workers allegedly first asked the driver and another company employee who were in the same vehicle to come out. When they came out, the workers poured petrol and kerosene on the vehicle and set it on fire with Ray inside.
Employer – employee relations appear to be more contentious in India. I am curious about how collective bargaining is done there and how extreme executive pay fairs as an issue.
I’ll have to look into it.
James Pilant
Pilant's Business Ethics Blog 
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