MBA Follies : The Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Corporate Environmental Ethics

Of course the quick and dirty summary on corporate environmental responsibility is there is no reason a corporation should waste a minute of its time on the environment since that is the responsibility of government and the public (cities, towns, states, etc). Corporations operate on the principles of profitability and on the separation of function/roles between corporation and government. This means the corporation is soley concerned with making use of the environment hence generating profits, taxes (lessened by clever use of loop holes)and jobs. This is the foundation of good business and America should wake up to this. This is not to demonize business, but to say that the public, by its ignorance or preferences or laziness, shares responsibility for whatever evils corporate behavior generates.

That a corporation might ruin an environment or deplete a non-renewable resource is not its responsibility...although any reasoned person would quickly point out that a depleted resource automatically equates to an end of corporate profitability sooner or later so corporations should pay attention to these matters. But, a corporation is focused on near-term bottom line profits so any consequence further out in time than 90 days or 6 months, and usually just 30 days, is not a primary concern relative to the pressures of "now", at least in America's business world.

A sigificant case illustrating the nearsightedness of corporate attention (British Petroleum and its subcontractors, including Halliburton) has to be the huge oil spill about to swamp the coasts of the southern U.S.. Apparently, BP decided not to install full drilling safeguards against blowout and explosions. What is certain though, is BP lobbied hard along with other oil companies for the relaxation of regulatory requirements that many believe would have prevented this accident.

Did BP do wrong to fight more stringent regulations? This blogger thinks "NO"!. In the context of the saved cost of extra strength drilling pumps and stronger back-pressure valves, and especially given the successful Big Oil lobbying for Congress to limit oil spill liability to only $75 million (when first quarter PROFITS were $4-5 Billion), BP's management deserved praise from its board of directors and stockholders. That 11 human lives were lost in the blowout was a risk the crew members acknowledged when they signed on for the jobs, and they were paid premium wages for their risk taking; one also assumes BP offered adequate life insurance policies to handle the human life collateral losses.

So what's the problem, America? You know the nature of the corporate game. You elected pro-business Presidents and congress persons, or at least bought into the hype of "business is America's business". Sounds so rhyming and "right", right? And what about those wimpy tree huggers who even want to regulate over-fishing? Until it now looks like this might well be the end for a long time of nice sandy beaches, and the fishing industry along all the Gulf states and eventually along most of the East coast as well. Well, what's the overall national 5-6 year bottom line going to look like for lost oil profits, the closing of seafood industries and the loss of a lot of jobs?

This is the issue: corporations are not "ethical" or "moral" in the sense that humans understand, corporations are only profit oriented (as they should and must be to survive) and profit goals are balanced by the closest thing corporations can come to ethics which is risk assessment. Risk assessment even considers the "cost" of lying and the liability cost of loss of life. In this context, it is dumbfounding why the Supreme Court recently ruled, to this blogger, so strangely in favor of corporations as being near-equivalent to human citizens. This is a big mistake and will bring drastic consequences before it is reversed.

MBA Follies: Goldman-Sachs Alleged Subprime Fraud

On January 29, 2010, and last March 9, 2009, this blogger previously expressed or referred to suspicions that Goldman-Sachs investment house might have gamed the sub-prime mortgage world by shortselling based on insider information, thus causing or significantly contributing to its collapse. Therefore, today's headline allegation of G-S fraud (funny-business shortselling) comes as no surprise. But will this lead to just a shadow-charade puppet show with no final convictions or even conclusions, or will something substantial be gained from all the public scrutiny of how business is done inside Wall Street? This blogger believes there will be a public flogging, not a beheading but it will still hurt a lot for G-S principals, and that regulatory reforms will be installed ... rather, re-installed.

A Lagos State of Mind: A 21st Century Meme to Those in the Know

You know. The Lagos thing, the unnamable name, the unique city of the demi-globe. The feeling when eyes open to a sunny, wood smoke wafting, grilled meats tantalizing, cool morning full of expectancy: there is yesterday's business to finish and today's new business to discover. People to meet and places to go. Broiling "suya" on the air. Maybe a stroll through the market on Balogun with a kabob of Suya (broiled goat kidney with superb dry-rub), yet-unkown but certainly already gestating drama where in a flourish of life affirmation, one might gift a market lady with a larger than normal gratis just to show one's appreciation of the human interaction that led to an apparent, but rarely real, bargain and tip. This gesture would be rewarded with the typical but always fresh Nigerian sales exclamation "You dash me?", as if such a gifting had never occured before (yet it has, many times, in the daily life of the market) but the phrase and joyfulness nevertheless always sounds as if the speaker is newly so surprised and amazed that he or she is so fortunate to be not only a witness to the noblisse gesture but to the more, he or she is furthermore the actual and real life recipient of the gesture. "Wah, you dash me??!!!" spoken with the questioning, mock innocent accusation that is the signature of spoken Yoruba where so much is carried by nuance and tonality. Yes, market lady, we have, the two of us, joined together in that 1000's of years old ritual of giving and acceptance that is mutually pleasing and brings smiles to all around who are privileged to witness and hear the joy and significance of this marketplace ritual.

Youruba spoken is the drum and the drum is of Yoruba. The two modes of communication in Lagos, and Yorubaland are so very much a symbiotic pairing. So much is drum. "B's are mouthed in a push of air both soft and purposeful as "Bwaa" and sometimes as "mBwmm". So the drum. The Yoruba Gods speak thru their specific drums and gave rise tothe New World "Voodoo, a religious belief focused on the intercessionary spirits to Vodon, the Orishas,...

[Voudou, Voodoo, Vudu] is a WestAfrican religion based on vodun spirits and other elements of divine essence that govern the Earth, a hierarchy that range in power from major deities governing the forces of nature and human society to the spirits of individual streams, trees, and rocks, as well as dozens of ethnic vodun, defenders of a certain clan, tribe, or nation. The vodun are the centre of religious life, similarly in many ways to the cult of intercession of saints and angels that made Vodun compatible with Christianity, especially Catholicism, and produced syncretic religions such as Haitian Vodou. Adherents also emphasise ancestor worship and hold that the spirits of the dead live side by side with the world of the living, each family of spirits having its own female priesthood, often hereditary.

I will no doubt return to this blog in days to come and embellish this thought.

Lagos is a state of mind. Lagos itself is a mass of life and a massive, crowd-large theater. All bustle and hustle. To survive, one has to join in. Then one becomes aware that as an initiated player on stage now, everyone one previously viewed nervously as impossibly glib and hustle-full are now your audience who are equally entertained by one's newly-donned thespian cloak...hopeful of your survival but not especially assisting and expecting to be properly entertained, too, by your efforts to cope. It is as if one is being judged and listened to, while being hustled, as if to evaluate whether one has acquired a certain panache, a style, enough vim and verve, nerve and audacity in one's even normal dealings, for the rest of the crowd to stop worrying about you and rejoice as they might celebrate the maturing of a favored small child. I have seen mature, seasoned and hard American businessmen literally frozen in step when emerging from Lagos airport (Murtala Mohammed) and barely able to turn back into the apparent safety of the airport lounge where...all is not a safe as might be expected for to turn back from the challenge of Lagos, before even one step into the Lagos whirl, dooms one to be looked at by the airport hustlers as cooked meat on the stick. More on this another day.

Northern Nigeria. Muslim without the politics and anxiety of the Middle East. Religious mien, prayer and conduct is the emphasis. The radio droning on and on with broadcast payer and Koranic readings in every settled background whether camel clogged Katsina or the riverside villages in western Sokoto. The still largely absence of the Mid-East "difficulties" results in a Muslim atmosphere that is stoically pure and clean. Under those circumstances one can appreciate and admire the religion of Mohammed.

The Griot traditions of oral historian/poet bring the past alive. If one is fortunate enough to have an audience with a genuine hereditary griot one might be confused thinking that one is impolitely easedropping on a conversation let's say between colonial Englishmen speaking about today's news only to occasionally hear references to give-away anachronisms that reveal the griot is speaking in the voices of participants in events that happened several centuries before.

Why Is There A Health Care Reform Stalemate? Because There's A Language Disconnect, ...!

With auto insurance, every new driver can find auto insurance. Differences in rates depending on age are understood by everyone as routine.

After one accident maybe there's a rate increase depending on fault. After three or more accidents the driver gets penalized, the rates increase or the driver might get dropped. Even in these cases, the actions of the auto insurance companies are not only acceped but the public, tho maybe grudglingly, empathizes with the decisions as "just business". Even the driver's family usually steps in with a supportive "hey, cousin Bob maybe it's time you start using the BUS".

So cousin Bob loses his auto insurance and stops driving. Is that the end of Bob's getting around town? NO! Because Bob has ...OPTIONS!!!

Cousin Bob can use the public bus and can still get out and about, and affordably too. And everyone is happy or at least OK - the families, and Cousin Bob. And no one blames the auto insurance companies who are happier than a pig in XXX to get rid of the risk.

Now substitute "health care" for "auto" in this story and the problem becomes clear. America is not being served well by an insurance-model health care system where unhealthy, younger clients are simply dropped like bad drivers....because there is no option to go to! No one can or should expect Cousin Bob to simply die once he gets too sick to insure. But, like with auto insurance, a public health care option seems natural and should be part of the health care picture. In America, though, there is no health care option to private insurance unless one can qualify for medicare.

And the problem in Washington is the public option is a politically taboo subject for the Republicans....so, stalemate..and it is not even possible to discuss an option.

The result of trying to dodge the public health care option is a series of awkward "patch-quilt" attempts to create substitutes for a public option without really having a public option or even without having an option to for-profit insurance. Thus, the stumbling forth of "mandated" insurance which is an absurd frankenstein of self-delusion and words-stuck-in-mouth.

And this is the point of why all this health care reform debate has been so lengthy, traumatic and seemingly without solution. There is a LANGUAGE DISCONNECT.

INSURANCE IS NOT COVERAGE!! Health care insurance companies do not exist to serve the public or the nation. They exist to make profit, either that or go under.

Health care insurers operate just like any other insurance companies: if you become a risk (get sick) the companies will drop you! Ha, you say?! Well, that's what their stockholders expect them to do...plus, it's all above board and written down in the company charter.

The health care debate should not be about insurance. The health care insurance sector is doing just fine, thank you. But, America's health care system is gonzo, too expensive (17% of GDP), not covering everyone (40+ million uninsured), and getting worse.

The solution? First get the language straight, then apply logical analogies like the above story. We need public alternatives to private health care insurance, or better - a public, one source health care system.

President Obama's First Year, Pt. 2: The Economy and Recession (and MBA Follies #)

Right out front, this blogger believes one or more large banking/investment companies short-sold America into a recession. Maybe the same dynamics accounted for the Great Depression of the 30's, maybe not. However, this time around the culprits are for the most part self-admitted short sellers, but they claim, so far, they didn't do anything wrong (which claim might be supported on one of those in-crowd, yes-there-is-a-fox-in-the-henhouse-but-it's-here-to-keep-the-peace kind of rationales).

"Short-selling"? Essentially, the money sector principals (e.g., Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan-Chase) while agressively selling the sub-prime derivatives of shaky motgages, were betting those same derivatives would fail. The big trick, though, was different departments in the same companies were engaging in these cross-interest activities, which was supposed to protect these oompanies from conflict of interest which is a mild way of saying they hoped to stay out of jail for inside trading.

So the key point of this preface is the question: did G-S, and/or JPMC banking departments "cross the hall" and discuss their sub-primes with their brother departments, the special investment groups, who were structuring and touting their own investment issues whose eventually stupendous financial success depended on the eventual tanking of the sub-primes. (Take a breath.)

One assumes any congressional "look-see" commission will begin with finding if cross-talk happened. But one never knows does one?

And just why did the sub-prime market tank? Well, mainly because of the MBA Folly of assuming real estate prices would climb forever. (As if the "dot-com" tanking had happened in another universe.) But then there was another factor that played a big-big factor in blinding good-minded MBA types - the Magic Formula. Just about every business fairy tale in the last 20 years has a magic formula tucked somewhere down in the bedding. And, MBA types do love their formulas...makes thing so tidy and easy to remember. This magic formula was not understood, or it was misunderstood or it was just quoted by name just to look savvy, by nearly everyone. Plus, plus, the formula wasn't even developed by a business type, just a small-world-view mathematician...and you know how dweeby they can be.

But let's not blame the honorable mathematician, his formula checked out...within the parameters of strict mathematics validation. The problem was, it is claimed, no one plugged into this sturdy formula the simple matrix option where the grand upward market price trend would somehow, heaven forbid, turn sour, i.e. reverse and downtrend. Maybe, (?) this is forgiveable in the then enthusiasm of all the MBAs making so much commission, but more likely it is not forgiveable. Instead, it is likely someone did the dastardly thing, plugged in a downturn, which occurs in the nasty real-world, and got scared out of their mind since what they saw would cause angels to trade in their wings.

More to come....

President Obama's First Year, Pt 1: From The Bottom of the Pit, The Spirit of South Carolina's Zombie Racism (Red Shirt Vigilantes) Rides Again

Mr Obama's First year was a rocky ride. Racism surfaced, to put it mildly. Town meetings were clouded by gun-carrying, political paramilitary types and some of the the former Dixie states threatened secession. 

The economic collapse was revealed to be far worse than imagined and Wall street behaved as if it is not even part of American soil. 

An overdue proposal to reform American health care was met with outrageous distortions and even bald lying issuing from opposition media and pols. 

And then it appeared the President earned good points on the promise to make his administration a transparent one, but the machinations of Wall Street big banks and moguls were so distasteful and tricky and greedy, that it was almost too much for the mind to bear. 

All in all, one imagined that most new Presidents might rue being elected in such times. But Mr Obama keeps at his goals with diligence, endurance and a kind of Spartan doggedness and grind that shows promise of successfully meeting and overcoming these challenges. 

Personally, while dismayed by the above events and especially the extremes of hate, I can only hope that they allowed America to vent and finally scour clean the last remnants of racial animosity and leftover Civil War resentment. It would seem, hopefully, that such spewing can't occur again after being so exposed. 

I will offer some analyses and opinions on each of the above topics in future blogs. First, with regard to racism, this blogger wants to convey his disgust at the hateful and sometimes extreme utterances from some of the political and media opponents of President Obama during his first year. What was dismaying was that those utterances sometimes received a kind of chuckling support from the media corporations and opposition politicians. 

Along with the racial slurs, there emerged from the swampy muck of the old South, the South Carolina brand of post-reconstruction, vicious prejudice, and hate that peaked almost a century ago in the racially demeaning "Jim Crow" era: discrimination, segregation, and lynchings. Sadly, this hate was also given open and tacit support by some American religious groups and ministers...as is happening against Mr. Obama.

From these and other sources, this first year of Mr. Obama's administration was a time of America showing a racist face that surely frightened and dismayed other countries who have been 'told' about the American dream society of everyone being equal under the Constitution. But, in the light of such regressive cant, how could America hope to maintain an international image of fairness, hope, and democratic success. 

 The hateful speech from some right-wing media persons and politicians was/is apparently a new national buy-in to the media's profits-rationalized argument that hate speech is just entertainment. 

The key to this deception apparently derives from the speakers of such hate pasting on their faces a goofy, lopsided smile and an open-eyed, fake innocence - ala Limbaugh, Beck, Michelle Bachmann, Hannity, Savage, etc - as they spew their poison. 

These personages and their comrades directed such raw, hate-filled utterances on mainstream media, directed personally at the president and sometimes even at his family, that it seemed America had retreated 100 years to the rhetoric of Jim Crow lynch mobs. These racist utterances were deliberately scripted to slander the President and intended to incite a mob reaction. To claim otherwise is grossly cynical. 

Give credit to President Obama, however, that he did not show a reaction and seek revenge or engage in trading insults.

To some of his supporters, the President's patience was seen as too much turning of the cheek. But, one has to remember that a President sits for all citizens, so Mr Obama's patience has been appropriate and shows wisdom. 

Sadly, the hateful utterances undeniably 'call' for killing innocent people. To argue against this conclusion is Satanic. But note well: although the fake-smile routine seems to have stymied American good taste and defied slander laws, several European countries appeared to have learned painful lessons from past demagogues and showed an ability to see through the faked smiles. The big example was that the UK showed no hesitation in seeing Savage, Limbaugh, Beck and company for what they are - callously unconcerned and deliberate wreckers of civil stability - and denied an entry visa to Michael Savage and Fred Phelps, an extremist right-wing minister. 

From these two and others in their group, we hear shouts of "secession" and "states' rights" ... which exposes "States' Rights" for what it really means - a shrill call to the wearing of robes and hoods, and circling the lynching tree. 

Also, the wearing of guns at the President's town meetings and the shouting of "Liar" by the South Carolina Congressman (Joe Wilson) is a strategy first laid down in print in post-Civil War Dixie in 1870 by the Dixie states in their efforts to squelch the voting of newly freed African-Americans by intimidation (showing of guns at town meetings and political rallies) and murder, if intimidation was not effective. Here is an excerpt from a 1876 South Carolina poster giving instructions to the white supremacist vigilante group, the South Carolina Red Shirts, how to intimidate and disrupt town meetings - the similarity with tactics used recently to disrupt Mr Obama's town meeting can't be denied:

2. That a Roster must be made of every white and of every Negro in the Townships and returned immediately to the County Executive Committee. 3. .... be armed with rifles and pistols and such other arms as they may command..... . . . 13. "... soon as their leaders or speakers begin to speak ..., tell them then and there to their faces, that they are liars, thieves and rascals, and are only trying to mislead the ignorant Negroes and if you get a chance get upon the platform and address the Negroes. 14. In speeches to Negroes you must remember that argument has no effect upon them; they can only be influenced by their fears, superstitions and cupidity. . . . Treat them so as to show them, you are the superior race, and that their natural position is that of subordination to the white man. . . . 16. Never threaten a man individually. If he deserves to be threatened, the necessities of the times require that he should die. . . . 29. Every club must be uniformed in a RED SHIRT and they must be sure and wear it upon all public meetings and particularly on the day of election. 30. Secrecy should shroud all of our transactions. Let not your left hand know what your right hand does.

(Source: William A. Sheppard, editor, Red Shirts Remembered: Southern Brigadiers of the Reconstruction Period (Ruralist Press, 1940), pp. 46-50, reprinted in Paul D. Escott, et al, eds., Major Problems in the History of the American South, vol. 2, second ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999), pp. 37-38.) 

 A final comment on this sub-subject: the opponents of Mr. Obama are well-protected by their Constitutional rights to challenge, debate, and strongly criticize the policies and political philosophies of the election winner; however, it has been crystal clear that Mr. Obama's opponents haven't anything substantial to offer by themselves, and don't want to expose to close scrutiny their shabbily constructed, obsolete, dangerous laissez-faire "economics" and 1840's style States Rights' laments. 

We were offered, jnstead, quick glimpses of shrouds and tatters, dangling in broken windows of Tara, with ghosts of night riders with smoking torches astride skeletal steeds.

2012, A Different View

Rather than the current end-time gloom and doom, the coming 2012 date should be a event for celebration and marvel at the grandeur of the universe and majesty of its great cycles. 2012 comes around only every 26,000 years! And we are here to share this mystical rebirth of times.