Short term profits, long term losses

Before I get into the title subject, let me explain that I was led by two items on the Coffee Party Facebook page to two different Forbes Magazine articles. Remember that Forbes is a magazine for business leaders; the current slogan of Forbes.com is "Information for the World's business leaders". Also, the CEO and Editor-in-Chief is Steve Forbes who ran for president in the Republican primaries in 1996 and 2000. Among other "conservative" proposals, he called for a flat tax. For more, see Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Forbes.

The two articles I found are both by Steve Denning, who writes a column called "Radical Management" and wrote a book "The Leader's Guide to Radical Management. The two articles are titled "Retirement Heist: How Firms Plunder Workers' Nest Eggs" and "Lest We Forget: Why We Had A Financial Crisis".

The first is about how many companies take funds out of employee pension plans and use these to bolster returns. Companies have also sought to reduce contributions to pension plans, citing them as a drain on profits. Many of these same executives do not look on their golden parachutes and high-priced pensions, including platinum life-time health care as a drain on profits.
The second is an examination of the causes of the financial crises and the lies to deny these causes. Many say that the Federal Government caused banks to make risky loans. But it wasn't banks that made the risky loans, it was non-bank companies that did. For various reasons, these non-bank companies were not supervised by the government anywhere near the extent banks were supervised. Even then, there were many who prodded Congress to weaken the laws governing financial institutions. "These agencies of government were being strenuously lobbied to do the very things that would benefit the financial sector and their managers and traders. And behind it all, was the drive for short-term profits."

Maybe we should stop conjoining "pro business" and "pro overpaid executives".

Hard-earned dollars or cushy union jobs, make up your mind

Many politicians, Democrat, Republican, and others, laud the hard-earned dollars of workers and executives without regard to what they actually do.  Many Republicans and conservative commentators imply that all union workers are over-paid.  Excuse me, if all workers have hard-earned dollars, how can any be overpaid?

The latest claim of inefficient union workers is "Unions promote lower performance" by Nathan Jamail published in the Duluth News Tribune, 2011-09-04.  Among his claims is that unions are responsible for the outsourcing of jobs.  He hasn't read the About window for Adobe Photoshop Elements.  All the programmers have Indian names.  I didn't know that Adobe had union programmers.  If they don't have union programmers, then why are they outsourcing programming in such a large scale to India?

He didn't mention all the overpaid financial wizards who got six figure bonuses for helping defraud widows on refinancing their homes.  Nor did he mention the "unproductive" union firefighter who rescued a widow from her burning home.

If you want a kinder view of unions, read Phil Nast's "Denying their [unions] benefit denies history".  I am a bit biased on this, Phil is a friend.

Customers - the forgotten element in business

"In this new era, Goldman's first duty was to its own bottom line, 
which accrued to the shareholders.  Clients were a means to that end, 
not an end in and of themselves."
- "All the Devils Are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis", Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera, p 157

The business mottos "customers first" and "the customer is always 
right" have become "shareholders first" and "the shareholders are always right."

Quote of the day - the crooks on Wall St.

"For the people on Wall Street, it's a case of heads they win, tails they get to flip again."  - Brett Arends, "The Next Financial Crisis Will Be Even Worse", SmartMoney, 2011-07-06.

People power takes on corporate power

"Iceland, a country that wants to punish the bankers responsible for the crisis" is the title of an article published by Pressenza, a press agency based in Chile.

The Icelanders have thrown out one government and led a second government to plan a referendum on whether the Icelandic people should be responsible for the debt incurred by others.

On top of that, it will be individuals elected specifically to rewrite the constitution, not experts and politicians.

I'll let you read the last two paragraphs, which are humdingers on how countries should be governed.