"Madoff was the chairman of Nasdaq."
from "Lessons learned from the Madoff scandal
Investors want to know how to avoid future Ponzi schemes"
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29680828/
How can you learn from someone who himself saw the entire thing as a scam and was the chief scammer? The US needs to radically rethink how to do business from a revolutionary level, from the gut and at the heart. What we have is not working, and it is likely that the same thing will happen again as long as the stock market reigns with big business. It is gambling.
"Gambling is the wagering of money or something of material value on an event with an uncertain outcome with the primary intent of winning additional money and/or material goods." - Wikipedia
Clearly this is a question not just of business, big or small, but of ethics.
NASDAQ Stock Market - Stock Quotes - Stock Exchange News - NASDAQ.com
Mar 13, 2009 ... The NASDAQ Stock Market - Official site of The NASDAQ Stock Market featuring free stock quotes, stock exchange prices, stock market news...
Showing posts with label Business. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Business. Show all posts
Friday, March 13, 2009
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Universal Responsibility in a Matrixed Economic World
I am concerned that Obama and his staff are not aware enough of the danger and that his planned policies do not go far enough. 
Reading up on America's depression era New Deal of the 1930's and the times leading up to it are remarkably like the times we are going though, except no one bailed out the fat cats then (as you know). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Deal
Agreed bailing out the rich will help prevent some suicides like Adolf Merckle, the German billionaire who slipped from #44 most wealthy person on the planet to number #77 or Thierry Magon de La Villehuchet, a fund manager who invested with Bernie Madoff and apparently committed suicide at his office - to me these people's deaths are no laughing matter - not any different than those overleveraged investors who committed suicide on Black Thursday in 1929 or thereabouts by jumping from the buildings they were in. And what is it that Merckle could see that was so scary?
Some people actually laughed in 1929 to see or hear of the suicides, as if those folks deserved it or were somehow different than they were - a few months later, out of a job -- they stopped laughing.
My feeling is that we may be lucky by the end of Obama's first term in office to see any real strides. The only capital that he can really bank on is who he IS, and that the government at least is out of the hands of incompetents (from our standpoint) and warmongering profiteers. Ugh! the sick thing is industrial war complex oldsters really don't get that the world has changed - we ARE in this together just as HH the Dalai Lamas and HH the Popes as well as other religious and secular leaders have long preached. We communicate on an entirely different level, more frequently and around the world. Arguably there is universal responsibility and we are just getting a clue.
For just one example every night that I post a new image on Flickr - I know, no, no, I expect people from around the world will comment on it by the next morning - in one day - all around the world. And the comments in foreign languages I will translate to read and my reply I will translate and respond with - nearly instantly in their language. Even my requests are posted by Flickr in the native language of the person I am requesting their photo from - all with a drop down menu - no effort on my part.
Another example is that of the late Mr. Oscar Grant III, an unarmed African-American man shot in the back and killed in Oakland by the police (by accident or purposely) is instantly seen over the Web from every recording cell phone present - police authorities - placed in their roles to "serve and protect" absolutely can not hide any more behind some story when everyone anywhere can see what occured. And by the way - happy, satisfied people don't protest.
Franklin Roosevelt tried a lot of things to stabilize the economy. The stuff FDR did which was recently dismantled appears to be the root cause of the suffering in the country now, as the rich continue to amass profits while the lower classes lose a place to live. Political leaders can't hide any more either and the results of their efforts for good or bad will be known sooner and in more detail than ever before.
There is also an issue more complex than it first appears, of the average age of baby boomers, as they retire and there are not enough educated people coming into the working social system who can earn enough because education was gutted --- either to make sure that there was no opposition to the will of the wealthy greedy or because self-serving politicos were also too short sighted to see what the results of not funding education would be.
Not everyone is like us, not everyone takes joy in educating themselves, and some education, like primary research is beyond the costs of a single individual to bear, or one person to complete.
Poorer middle-classed housing such as San Francisco's Daly City has inexplicably one of the highest forced foreclosure rates in the country. Economists are researching why but *hey* that is way, way past a dollar short and a day late.
When I asked a religious leader about the causes of being out of work he said "stabilize your mind" and I think that to a large extent - that is the basic root cause of the US current troubles. The fears we have are based on tainted emotions. "The only fear we have is fear itself" another realization by US President Franklin D. Roosevelt that sounds like a call to arms once again with deeper meaning.
We really have to get rid of tainted emotions such as greed and the desire by even those with education and money to willingly inflict pain and suffering on others - such as by torture or slavery - where we can not root it out of ourselves we need to legislate it and make it clear that it is a common goal, a community of the world standard to commit to rid ourselves of afflictive emotions; we need to root out fear itself, greed, and ignorance.
We can’t stand aside and look any more; stabilizing our own minds, taking universal individual responsibility - that is where the future is really at; only then we will have something we can rely on, ourselves as well as each other.
"We'll forward in this generation
Triumphantly ...
Emancipate yourself from mental slavery
None but ourselves can free our minds"
Redemption Song
-Bob Marley
Reading up on America's depression era New Deal of the 1930's and the times leading up to it are remarkably like the times we are going though, except no one bailed out the fat cats then (as you know). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_DealAgreed bailing out the rich will help prevent some suicides like Adolf Merckle, the German billionaire who slipped from #44 most wealthy person on the planet to number #77 or Thierry Magon de La Villehuchet, a fund manager who invested with Bernie Madoff and apparently committed suicide at his office - to me these people's deaths are no laughing matter - not any different than those overleveraged investors who committed suicide on Black Thursday in 1929 or thereabouts by jumping from the buildings they were in. And what is it that Merckle could see that was so scary?
Some people actually laughed in 1929 to see or hear of the suicides, as if those folks deserved it or were somehow different than they were - a few months later, out of a job -- they stopped laughing.
My feeling is that we may be lucky by the end of Obama's first term in office to see any real strides. The only capital that he can really bank on is who he IS, and that the government at least is out of the hands of incompetents (from our standpoint) and warmongering profiteers. Ugh! the sick thing is industrial war complex oldsters really don't get that the world has changed - we ARE in this together just as HH the Dalai Lamas and HH the Popes as well as other religious and secular leaders have long preached. We communicate on an entirely different level, more frequently and around the world. Arguably there is universal responsibility and we are just getting a clue.
For just one example every night that I post a new image on Flickr - I know, no, no, I expect people from around the world will comment on it by the next morning - in one day - all around the world. And the comments in foreign languages I will translate to read and my reply I will translate and respond with - nearly instantly in their language. Even my requests are posted by Flickr in the native language of the person I am requesting their photo from - all with a drop down menu - no effort on my part.
Another example is that of the late Mr. Oscar Grant III, an unarmed African-American man shot in the back and killed in Oakland by the police (by accident or purposely) is instantly seen over the Web from every recording cell phone present - police authorities - placed in their roles to "serve and protect" absolutely can not hide any more behind some story when everyone anywhere can see what occured. And by the way - happy, satisfied people don't protest.
Franklin Roosevelt tried a lot of things to stabilize the economy. The stuff FDR did which was recently dismantled appears to be the root cause of the suffering in the country now, as the rich continue to amass profits while the lower classes lose a place to live. Political leaders can't hide any more either and the results of their efforts for good or bad will be known sooner and in more detail than ever before.
There is also an issue more complex than it first appears, of the average age of baby boomers, as they retire and there are not enough educated people coming into the working social system who can earn enough because education was gutted --- either to make sure that there was no opposition to the will of the wealthy greedy or because self-serving politicos were also too short sighted to see what the results of not funding education would be.
Not everyone is like us, not everyone takes joy in educating themselves, and some education, like primary research is beyond the costs of a single individual to bear, or one person to complete.Poorer middle-classed housing such as San Francisco's Daly City has inexplicably one of the highest forced foreclosure rates in the country. Economists are researching why but *hey* that is way, way past a dollar short and a day late.
When I asked a religious leader about the causes of being out of work he said "stabilize your mind" and I think that to a large extent - that is the basic root cause of the US current troubles. The fears we have are based on tainted emotions. "The only fear we have is fear itself" another realization by US President Franklin D. Roosevelt that sounds like a call to arms once again with deeper meaning.
We really have to get rid of tainted emotions such as greed and the desire by even those with education and money to willingly inflict pain and suffering on others - such as by torture or slavery - where we can not root it out of ourselves we need to legislate it and make it clear that it is a common goal, a community of the world standard to commit to rid ourselves of afflictive emotions; we need to root out fear itself, greed, and ignorance.
We can’t stand aside and look any more; stabilizing our own minds, taking universal individual responsibility - that is where the future is really at; only then we will have something we can rely on, ourselves as well as each other.
"We'll forward in this generation
Triumphantly ...
Emancipate yourself from mental slavery
None but ourselves can free our minds"
Redemption Song
-Bob Marley
Monday, October 27, 2008
"How is designing a service different than designing a product?"
Good question - what are we talking about? See Dan Saffer's Designing for Interaction interview with Shelley Evenson:
http://www.designingforinteraction.com/evenson.html
Shelley Evenson is an associate professor and director of graduate studies at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Design.
"When designing a product, much of the focus is on mediating the interaction between the person and the artifact. Great product designers consider more of the context in their design. In service design, designers must create resources that connect people to people, people to machines, and machines to machines. You must consider the environment, the channel, the touchpoint. Designing for service becomes a systems problem and often even a system of systems challenge. The elements or resources that designers need to create to mediate the interactions must work on all these levels and at the same time facilitate connections that are deeply personal, open to participation and change, and drop-dead stunning."
Don't you love that? Person to person interactions to gather the information you need, not just looking through tons of Web sites and pages to get what you need? And here's a non-typical answer from an academic - she is talking about real business interaction needs and uses the term "drop-dead stunning" - don't you love it?
And from the images available by querying her name on Google - Ms. Evenson has a sense of humor ... as posted on ahn.sang-soo's site - http://www.ssahn.com/archives/2006_03.html.
Also check out - Carnegie Mellon University's School of Design site -http://www.design.cmu.edu/
http://www.designingforinteraction.com/evenson.html
Shelley Evenson is an associate professor and director of graduate studies at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Design.
"When designing a product, much of the focus is on mediating the interaction between the person and the artifact. Great product designers consider more of the context in their design. In service design, designers must create resources that connect people to people, people to machines, and machines to machines. You must consider the environment, the channel, the touchpoint. Designing for service becomes a systems problem and often even a system of systems challenge. The elements or resources that designers need to create to mediate the interactions must work on all these levels and at the same time facilitate connections that are deeply personal, open to participation and change, and drop-dead stunning."
Don't you love that? Person to person interactions to gather the information you need, not just looking through tons of Web sites and pages to get what you need? And here's a non-typical answer from an academic - she is talking about real business interaction needs and uses the term "drop-dead stunning" - don't you love it?
And from the images available by querying her name on Google - Ms. Evenson has a sense of humor ... as posted on ahn.sang-soo's site - http://www.ssahn.com/archives/2006_03.html.
Also check out - Carnegie Mellon University's School of Design site -http://www.design.cmu.edu/
Thursday, September 11, 2008
The Moscow Rules give rise to the Ronin Rules of Enforced Change - what spies and corporate managers think about
For your consideration in terms of solving information management problems I refer you to the film "Ronin" staring Robert DeNiro, written by John David Zeik and David Mamet. If you consider it from the point of view of a capable information manager, and think about how to resolve related problems, this film provided me with some ideas. 1. Maintain a full toolkit
2. Survey the situation/ recon
3. Identify the problem and refine it iteratively
4. Don't put yourself at risk, have a clear exit strategy
5. Identify incapable/immoral individuals or orgs and minimize their responsibility and/or capacity to enforce decisions
6. Trust yourself
7. Be quiet
8. Be bold
So that's something I've been excited thinking about. This is related to enthusiasm for transitional processes - strategies for enforced change. In other words how to effectively get people to pivot their belief systems, or invoke belief systems to solve sticky human and technical problems. Here's four strategies to effect human change:
1. The Anointed:
The Deity of your choice anoints you as the one to solve "the unsolvable" - the unsolvable is of course an illusion.(Religions)
2. The Qualified: [changed to 'The Elite']
You are the best on the planet chosen as the elite to solve this problem (Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, lifted by Microsoft)
3. Special Forces:
Your training is that of the special forces, a spy/warrior who arrives unannounced to resolve the unsolvable. (Ronin)
.
4. Death:
You will solve this problem now or you will die. Solving technical problems in the midst of survival to earn survival. (US Naval Underwater Warfare Command, Navy Seals, CDC / disease and most small businesses). This is the ultimate in enforced change.
Images:
Ronin Poster, Photographer: Nick Slide, Creative Commons License, location: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nickslidepics/255255903/
Navy Seals Training Photographer: Joan Kretschmer, USN, Public Domain, location: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pingnews/589160026/
Grave of the 47 Ronin, Photographer: Netsui San, Creative Commons License http://www.flickr.com/photos/netsui/1374588412/
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