Articles

Greed is not for the Greater Good - Part I

Things Politicians and Regulators can't tell you

The following is a further response in an on going chain of emails and essays with my good friend who is located on the beautiful island. "That was quite a letter and it contained many valid thoughts and observations. I believe, as you well know and confirmed by your first comment, that many people have abdicated the responsibility to think and left it to politicians or others, whoever these others may be. The number and scale off issues is such that the average citizen cannot cope with it on a daily basis. Even professionals are struggling to comprehend the extent of the issues and their causes, especially as their present and future positions are also in doubt. It is difficult to make time to consider the broader perspective when everyone around you or you yourself is starting to panic, waiting for the long awaited U or V turn, depending on which supposedly qualified person in authority will tell us.

As I woke up today I watched BBC and saw Alistair Darling apologizing for a miserly GBP 700 which he had claimed inappropriately, in addition to several other allegations of inappropriate behaviour. In response Mr Darling said sorry, and his boss said it was an inadvertent mistake, a very nice turn of phrase. Mr Darling's little peccadillo goes right to the heart of the following essay which I wrote in response to your letter. Due to its length and many thoughts drawn from many disciplines, I have decided to publish it as a serial essay in parts on our website.

(Source: www.dakotavoice.com)

Let's first return to the case above to have a further look at the responses and the ethics and values driving this apology. Noteworthy is that Mr Darling is the Chancellor of the Exchequer, basically the top guy in charge of finances for the United Kingdom and one would therefore assume, financially and accountability wise extremely astute and competent. Why else would he be there otherwise? Let's now also take into account that the MP expenses scandal has been reported on by the media for the past two weeks or so, and add to that that there are allegations that an accountant hired by Mr Darling to do his books has also been paid for by public funds. Any normal thinking person would have probably gone through his expenses and his books of account about two weeks ago to make sure there were no "inadvertent" mistakes that might be embarrassing and then devise a suitable strategy, in case of a really inadvertent mistake, to come clear and minimize the impact. In the case of the Chancellor the strategy seems to have been to sit quietly and hope the issue would blow over until he got caught in the spotlight today. I would strongly question the sincerity of his apology today, considering it was followed by a comment by the Chancellor to the extent that he has really enjoyed working with the UK Prime Minister and that essentially the decision is up to the PM in terms of what action to take. Shouldn't it be obvious who should be making such a decision, albeit it very belatedly and embarrassingly?

If you were a CEO and found your CFO had taken funds from the company, what would you do? Not only that, would you trust the CFO to have fulfilled his duties including accurate financial and management reporting and not possible investigate further? I have been through a situation like this, having identified a CFO that took a little bit more money than the Chancellor from his boss. This CFO was very smart and deleted his expense advance accounts from the system. The issue came to light because I went on a business trip with him and afterwards wanted to return the excess advance not spent to the accounting department. What a surprise when the accounts clerk told me the account was deleted and she didn't know where to post the entry. At least the CFO appears to have had a real sense of fellowship, because he deleted not only his own but also my advance account. What a nice guy!

Now let's consider the G 20 meeting held in London several weeks ago, at which the Chancellor would have been one of the more influential players. There were a number of very important announcements made at that meeting, related to a global stimulus budget, a crack down on tax havens (to this date I am still unclear how much that would do to stimulate the world economy) and a generally unnoticed discussion on Special Drawing Rights, a de facto world currency. For a discussion on this see I refer you to http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13070, where this matter is well explained and analyzed. The article makes some interesting comments about world currencies, a global regulating body and global oversight. Now, I have no doubt that the Chancellor is very capable of discussing and contributing to such an idea. I will leave the idea of a world currency and a global regulator until another part of this essay. However, the first question I would ask is whether there is any risk if the decision makers and drivers of regulations are themselves apparently morally and ethically deficient.

As per my earlier example related to a company, would you, as a CEO, based on the earlier scenario, be comfortable to have your CFO devise a new set of regulations for all multinational operations, for example, related to expense claims? Some might argue that it may be a good idea, to reduce administration, account maintenance and reconciliations worldwide, all noble aims to create greater efficiency inside the organization. In fact, if you believe this, then I would suggest we should simply not record advances at all to avoid any head aches and allow all company employees to simply take any cash from the company whenever they need it. It sounds like communism to me and you know what happened to that idea.

I will next explore the issues around more regulations that are being actively touted by our morally deficient regulators and leaders, in Part II of this essay entitled "A Different Way of looking at Regulations"

Click here for PART II