Bethany McClean’s article in Slate questions Goldman Sachs’ deal to invest $450 million in Facebook and to raise another $1.5 billion from its own investors, raising the question: just how fair is this?
In one sense what Goldman Sachs is doing is nothing new. During the crash of 1929, we saw these same sorts of behaviours by the key financial institutions of the time. Asset prices were low and the banks were calling the shots in terms of ownerships. However, while eighty years ago the banks tended to be the owners themselves, today banks are acting as agents on behalf of their own wealthy clients as well as being owners themselves. The situation is absolutely and distinctly unfair.
The position that we are in today is that we just do not have free markets. We have open markets that are open to people with [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Slate’
Goldman Sachs’ Facebook Deal Signals to Crisis in 2019
Podcast: Ethics and Transparency
In this podcast, I discuss the problem with corporate consulting firms offering awards for corporate ethics (prompted by this article ), as well as whether transparency ‘blacklists’ can actually make companies more transparent (prompted by this article ).
[Audio clip: view full post to listen]
On Narcissism
When I recently noted how some bankers might be self-deceptive narcissists, I didn’t mention any of the potential positives that narcissists can bring to the workplace as leaders. This recent article on Slate about narcissism and narcissistic personality disorder mentions some positives (and negatives) that Michael Maccoby recognized in his book The Productive Narcissist: The Promise and Peril of Visionary Leadership :
[Maccoby] makes a distinction between leaders with narcissistic traits and those who have full-blown NPD. He says narcissists can be charismatic forces for change—because of their drive, vision, risk-taking, and even ruthlessness, many corporations turn to narcissists for salvation. But such people can become dangerous because their success fuels their already ample grandiosity and feeds the sense they got there by disdaining the normal rules.
I agree that drive, vision, risk-taking and ruthlessness can be beneficial traits in a leader. [...]
