I found this site while cruising the internet looking at business ethics blogs. They are reporting a “clandestine recall” of 88,000 defective Motrin tablets. They haven’t been around very long but they have some good stories and I like their style, so stop by and give them a look!
James Pilant
The Serpent and the Wolf
Sometimes, I think we fail our college students in business schools across the country because we fail to teach them the habits of the upper classes. These may well be more important to business success than any actual talent, witness the disastrous behavior of Wall Street firms if you don’t believe in the success of style over substance. We probably ought to combine the serious elements of subjects like accounting with less technical but often more critical skills like upper-class mannerisms and expectations.
I want you to understand clearly that I hold the practice of judging people by whether or not they have the “look” of the right social class to be utterly contemptible. As a matter of ethics and intelligence at its most mundane level we should hire based on competence. This has mutated into something now called emotional intelligence. I kid you not. In this country, there is a philosophy that says getting along is more important than competence, than knowing how to do your job. Imagine American history without difficult people, John Adams, Andrew Jackson, Harry Truman (27% approval rating), and Lyndon Johnson. Every one of them was difficult to get along with as a person, but they had contributions to make just as employees do.
Well, these current philosophies have results and in my judgment we’re due for another set. Business philosophies come and go like the fabled length of skirts and with less reason and intelligence. These fashions would be less important if more thinking were done.
But as I was saying, business fashions, trends and much other nonsense has a lot to do with success or failure, hired or unemployed. It is a nasty world full of stupid and incompetent people. I don’t want to have to teach students that talent, intelligence, courage and hard work are often irrelevant to business success but I cannot deny objective reality.
We should teach students to dress, eat, socialize and converse in the manner of the “successful” people. We should teach them what elements of the truth are acceptable in business practice. We should teach that to do good and act honorably and justly according to the tenets of your religion are often elements of ridicule in the world of business. Now, immediately someone will throw the example of some bible toting business manager who proclaims that all of his business is conducted according to God’s law. Right. His reading of it. What’s more, one of these types is just that: a type, not the kind of businessman we expect.
If you tell someone in business of your respect for honor, justice and truth; you will be immediately considered naive and there will be chuckles as you walk by. This is because sold out despicable lamebrains without morality or soul have to sleep at night. Their belief that they deal with the “real” world gives them a juicy rationalization for their lack of moral judgment and comfort with wrong doing.
Matthew reports that Christ said, “Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves; so be shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves.” Matthew 10:16
I think this is a good saying for the honorable both Christian and non-Christian.
I (of much less status) send forth my students the same way. I want them to uphold high moral values and to try to do the right thing but I also want them to survive and succeed in the business world. The two goals are not incompatible but they are difficult.
James Pilant
The Goldilocks zone is the comfort zone for planets, not too hot, not too cold, the right distance from a planet to have a stable orbit. It is also in the right temperature belt to have water.
Our civilization has located Gliese 581G, a planet inside the comfort zone.
It would support life. The gravity is about the same as it is here.
What’s the big deal?
From the article in the Christian Science Monitor –
“Personally, given the ubiquity and propensity of life to flourish wherever it can, I would say, my own personal feeling is that the chances of life on this planet are 100 percent,” said Steven Vogt, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, during a press briefing today. “I have almost no doubt about it.”
Not only that, we might be able to live there. We might be able to have an interstellar colony. Even if the environment is very different from ours,by the time we are able to get there, our ability to manipulate genetics will enable us to modify humans and others of Earth’s creatures, like grazing animals, to function normally.
Getting there will be tricky. Look at this article from Slate – Gliese 581 g or Bust!
What are the implications for us here on our planet now? If there is one planet capable of supporting life withing twenty light years, it follows that if this is an average distance, one habitable planet to another, our galaxy is crowded with millions of habitable planets.
That’s a big deal.
Out here on spiral arm on the edge of the milky way, we live where the stars are far apart. Imagine dozens of habitable words with one light year of each other as the stars grow thicker toward the middle of the galaxy.
What are the implications for humans, no longer the center of the universe? Many religions have long assumed that this was the only blessed planet, the only place the scriptures explained.
Job 22:12 “Is not God in the heights of heaven? And see how lofty are the highest stars!
Psalm 147:4 He determines the number of the stars and calls them each by name.
Do the phrases carry more meaning than they did a few days ago?
James Pilant
When you file a foreclosure the law favors the bank. All the bank has to prove is that they have personal knowledge of the case. This eliminates the need for proving each individual mortgage.
So all they had to do to meet their legal requirements was to have someone review the file. Guess what? In their hurry to foreclose on as many homes as possible (tens of thousands), they just didn’t do it. Since they didn’t do it, there is no way to know how many homes they took wrongly, or if the amounts were right, etc.
This isn’t just sloppy work, it’s a case where these large companies, in particular, GMAC and Chase, violated the law by asserting that they had fulfilled their legal requirements when they had not. But to them that wasn’t important only that they close the cases by thousands a month. Can you conceive of anything more contemptuous of the law?
I’d been reading reports of homeowners who owned their homes outright being foreclosed on by these companies and having to hire attorneys to get it stopped. I just thought they fouled up here and there. No, they didn’t even try to do what they were supposed to do and as long as the courts accepted that they had “personal” knowledge, the machinery of foreclosure went on whatever the actual circumstances were.
If you want to know why people have been unable to renegotiate their mortgages, look no further. The bank suffered little or no expense from a high speed unwitnessed foreclosure. Renegotiation would have required work, personal knowledge and a concern for the customers. Those three things were not about to happen and I believe will not happen.
From the New York Times article –
The missteps stemmed from the affidavits the lenders file as they seek a quick or summary judgment in thousands of foreclosure cases. The affidavits state certain facts about the case, including the amount owed, which the signer indicates he has personal knowledge of. Without the affidavit, the lender would have to prove the facts at trial.
In depositions taken by lawyers for homeowners, executives at GMAC and Chase said they or their teams signed 10,000 or more affidavits and related documents a month. That did not give them time to review the cases.
Defense lawyers say the disclosures are symptomatic of the carelessness, if not outright fraud, that lenders have been exhibiting for years in their rush to file cases. Many necessary documents have disappeared, with defense lawyers saying the lenders often do not even have standing to foreclose.
Callousness, cruelty, pure injustice, contempt for the law, an apparent total complete lack of concern for the hundreds of thousands of mortgage holders – this is all here.
Now, the big question, are they going to be penalized? And I don’t mean that they have to do the mortgages over again, I mean contempt citations, I mean state’s attorney generals filing lawsuits to recover the sums illegally taken from homeowners, I mean a forced reconsideration, re analysis of every single mortgage, these blackhearted villains did.
You say, James, calm down, they just messed up on their procedure. No, they took thousands of people to court based on NO knowledge of the case. They didn’t know what the people owed, the history of the loans or, in fact, whether they owned the home or not!
And get a load of this – their attorneys signed on to it, put their names on it. Let’s see a little action there. Let’s see what the state bar associations think about this.
There’s a lot more to say and I want to get this up, so more later. People have to know.
James Pilant
Well, it looks like India is catching up with America in terms of corporate financial scandals. What makes this blog really interesting, is that it’s from one of the people involved in breaking the case. It has a little bit of the detective in it. That’s rare in a business blog.
Further, our intrepid writer launches into a fairly lengthy discussion of business ethics, my turf. It’s a perceptive piece.
Please give it a read. Remember business ethics is a worldwide issue.
James Pilant
This is an excellent thorough analysis of what happened and is happening. I’m delighted to have come across this kind of work. If you have any kind of interest in the gulf disaster or want to keep a link to where you can get ready information, I strongly recommend this article. It shows a lot of work and its cites demonstrates considerable effort.
James Pilant
Watch him eat up the screen in this scene from Some Like It Hot with Jack Lemmon and Marilyn Monroe.
Of all the people I could wish would never grow old, it’s the people that made us laugh.
James Pilant
I wish there were more direct references to business ethics in the speeches of our politicians, and not just our politicians, the voices of the pulpit and law office are too often silent in this regard.
The is from a speech by the President of India, Shrimati Pratibha Devisingh Patil.
Finally, I would like to mention that business is for profit but it cannot be divorced from ethics. This basic principle should be the guiding principle for business houses and their management. For corporate India to become a credible partner in India’s progress, a trust based relationship between – government, organizations and society at large, is a must.
One of my good friends suggested I look at a short (20 page) article that is basically a lecture by Shaikh Saalih bin Fawzaan Al-Fawzaan. (Yes, that’s all one name. Shaikh” is a title given out of respect to any scholar or elderly person in Arabic. His name is “Salih” and “bin Fawzaan” means the son of Fawzaan.)
This is a great summary of the teachings of Islam as applied to business ethics. It is most impressive. This civilization has a lot to say about what is a legitimate business practice, and they don’t shy away from the concept of right and wrong.
Listen to this –
Also, the scholars of Fiqh have stated that what falls under Najash is when a seller tells his customer: “I bought this item for such and such price”, lying about the price, so that the buyer may be fooled and buy the item at an increased value. Or it is when the seller says: “I was given this product at this price” or he says: “I received it for this much”, lying about the price. He only wants to fool the customers into bidding the price up to reach this alleged and false price, which he claims he spent for the item. This is from the Najash, which Allaah’s Messenger (sallAllaahu ‘alayhi wa sallam) forbade. It is a treachery and deception of the Muslims, and it is lying and disloyalty, for which he will be accountable for before Allaah. So what is obligatory on the seller is that he reveals the truth if the buyer asks him how much he got it for. He must tell him the truth and not say that he attained it for this much money, lying about the price. What also falls into the definition of An-Najash is if the people of the marketplace or the storeowners agree to not outbid one another when an item is presented for sale, for the purpose of forcing the owner to sell it for a (discounted) cheaper price. So therefore, they are all participating in this act, which is Haraam. And this is from An-Najash. It is also a form of taking the people’s money unjustly.
Where do we in this culture have the courage to call the continuous wall of “PR” lies and distortions, treachery and deception? That’s wonderful teaching. Now there is much in this that is not in accordance with the common beliefs in the United States, but is not every single branch of the Christian religion committed like the religion of Islam to avoid the things of this world and not to be worldly? Is that not repeatedly stated in the New Testament?
A dose of of the business ethics teaching of Islam would not be to the detriment of this country, it would be a blessing.
James Pilant
During the campaign two years ago, Obama repeatedly stated his support for net neutrality – Watch!
Did you hear that – “I will take a backseat to no one.” Backseat! He might as well be in the trunk for all the help he’s been.
“I am a strong supporter of net neutrality.” Okay, that’s good. How about NOW? Where is he?
“I’m a big believer in net neutrality.” Still nice, but how about saying something now?
“I remain firmly committed to net neutrality.” Is he still? I don’t have anyway to know.
Okay, guys, probably you’ve seen enough. I can find more clips. I’ve already seen them. The open internet is under attack right now at the FCC and in Congress. A bill was considered a few days ago, that would have essentially ratified the agreement between Google and Verizon dividing up the internet and giving broadband to corporations. The attacks are well funded and continuous. The President referred to the danger of large companies getting control in his many speeches.
Where is he now? Where is the President of the United States? Where are all his pretty words? If he doesn’t speak soon, he will only be commenting on the division of the web into corporate sectors after it’s done.
If there is no net neutrality, this web site may become so slow as not to be viable or simply not deemed worthy of band width. Under the new rules, the FCC cannot issue any regulations but can hear complaints. Thus, if I am treated wrongly I will be able to complain to the FCC and should they decide in my favor after months during which my audience has gone away to other sites approved by the great media companies, that will fix everything, right? I’ll be all whole and returned to where I was. Right?
There are tens of thousands of sites like mine. And these voices cry out for advocacy for the poor, or the environment, etc.., some cry out for political action, …., some broadcast every crazy theory you can imagine, … and some are people just crying out that they are there – they are significant – they are important – they plead for attention and recognition.
And soon, these voices will be silent, their bandwidth divied up for movie companies and media channels and, of course, the occasional lapse where they allow a semi-independent voice to speak.
Pretty words are not the same as action. Eloquence is not the same as standing up for your beliefs. Political expedience cannot be an excuse of inaction where action has been repeatedly promised.
Where is the President? Did he mean any of that stuff he said? Is there time left for him to do or say anything?
James Pilant
Pilant's Business Ethics Blog 
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