Skip to content

Posts tagged ‘politics’

Apr 19

big bank

It the Game, Not Just the Players: Royal Bank of Canada and Consumers Complicit with Drive to Low Wage Outsourcing

I was visiting a hospital in Canada the other day and overheard health care workers joking about their wages, saying “she was a low-income patient…. Heck we are all low-income now a days… there is no such thing as a middle class job.”

In the wake of the Royal Bank of Canada’s (RBC), understandable, yet inexcusable gaff managing the outsourcing of some 45 IT jobs to iGATE Indian employees, one has to wonder if these nurses might not be right.

But who’s to blame?  And what is a company to do about it? Read more

Aug 16

frog
2 Comments

Boiling Billions of Frogs

Very seldom do I get very scared. But I am now.

A new report by the Belfer Centre for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School found “oil supply capacity is growing worldwide at such an unprecedented level that it might outpace consumption. This could lead to a glut of overproduction and a steep dip in oil prices.” http://bit.ly/Q825E1 More importantly, it could devastate high oil price driven investments and innovations in cleaner energy.

Worse yet, the report predicts petroleum prices will decline, even collapse sometime after 2015. If the petroleum industry was reticent to invest significantly in alternative energy when oil was seen as increasingly scarce, what’s the incentive for change now?

Not much: are you scared now? Read more

Jan 8

fat cat bankers

Financial Institutions, Supply Chains and Corporate Social Responsibility

Stop Payment by Christopher Ketcham in Harper’s January 2012 edition’s reports on a slow brewing homeowner’s revolt against banks as millions of foreclosures resulting from the 2008 financial meltdown work their way through courts.

As a former credit union Treasurer and banker for a socially responsible bank, I remember long, intense conversations about bank culpability and the financial industry’s utter failure to serve the needs of their stakeholders, and in doing so, causing the second largest economic crisis in modern times.

Ketcham’s article reminded me of some thoughts I wrote down in early 2009 on the crisis which I offer up as a retrospective, unedited from its original form (and predictions!!).

Read more

Nov 17

unhate

Benetton: the Bad Boy Singing Peace on Earth

Benneton’s fresh off the press campaign features “symbolic images of reconciliation — with a touch of ironic hope and constructive provocation — to stimulate reflection on how politics, faith and ideas, when they are divergent and mutually opposed, must still lead to dialogue and mediation…”  Oh yeah, it takes the form of pictures of the Pope kissing an Egyptian imam and President Obama kissing Chinese President Hu Jintao or Venezuelan President Chavez .  (see http://bit.ly/vGBL8N)

What is the difference between the 10 million advertisements promoting a lifestyle or body type that most of us aspire to but will never attain and what Benetton has just done with its latest “peace on earth while selling lots of clothes campaign?” Read more

Oct 5

protest
2 Comments

Values Markets Scream for Change

Every now and then, a voice of protest somehow finds its way above the constant and weighty, multi-layered, well-planned suppressive cacophony of the conventional business news media.

And as it is now, as it was with protests against Bretton Woods Institutions in the 1990s, the voices of protest seems to lack a coherent, organized message and clear objective. But they are loud and representative of legitimate concerns.

So it is with the Wall Street Protesters.

And whatever we may think from behind our desks, it is hard to ignore people in the street, particularly if they are of all ages, races, and from all across the economic spectrum. Sometimes it is hard to listen to these shrill voices because we are easily offended in our comfort and because they chaff against how we prefer to see change wrought. It is too abrupt, too upsetting, too demanding.

Protest is often the last resort of those protesting and we need to pay attention to the message, because it is seldom a new one and it almost always tells us something we already know but in our fear refuse to face.
Read more

Page 1 of 212

Switch to our mobile site