Does Your Money Support Greed?

Interesting article in the New York Times today - comparing a company that embraces social responsibility vs. one that pursues profit over customer service.  Starbucks vs. Goldman Sachs

I don't know enough about Starbucks to cheerlead for it, but I think what they're saying is what we hope for from an American business.

On Wednesday, Howard Schultz, the chairman and chief executive of Starbucks, will take the podium at his company’s annual meeting and talk about the importance of morality in business.

Yes, morality. I don’t know that he’ll use that exact word. But there can be little doubt that in recent years, especially, Schultz has been practicing a kind of moral capitalism. Profitability is important, he believes, but so is treating customers, employees and coffee growers fairly. Recently, Schultz has defined Starbucks’s mission even more broadly, creating programs that have nothing at all to do with selling coffee but are aimed at helping the country recover from the Great Recession. 

In the speech, Schultz plans to make a direct link between Starbucks’s record profits and this larger societal role the company has embraced. He will make the case that companies that earn the country’s trust will ultimately be rewarded with a higher stock price. “The value of your company is driven by your company’s values,” he plans to say. 

That's a sharp contrast to Goldman Sachs, which got a public smackdown from an executive who aired his concerns about the predatory greed as he resigned.  Bloomberg rushed to their defense.

Apparently, when Greg Smith arrived at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) almost 12 years ago, the legendary investment firm was something like the Make-A-Wish Foundation -- existing only to bring light and peace and happiness to the world. 

Smith, who was executive director and head of the firm’s U.S. equity derivatives business in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, does not go into details in his already notorious op-ed article in Wednesday’s New York Times, “Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs.” But one imagines Goldman bankers spending their days delivering fresh flowers to elderly shut-ins and providing shelters for abandoned cats. Serving clients was paramount. “It wasn’t just about making money,” Smith writes. “It had something to do with pride and belief in the organization.” 

That article is one of the saddest things I've ever read.  Corporate responsibility, community involvement is so far from the Wall Street pale that it's actually mocked.  There was a time when a company's reputation was its most valuable asset.  To be accused of putting profit above morals and ethics would be a slur that would have to be answered vehemently and definitively.  These days, the response is a cynical "Get your head out of the clouds, Pollyanna - that's business."

It doesn't have to be.  Research. Go to Good Company - see the company ratings.  And stop doing business with the ones that don't share your values.

I Should Do Something --- but What?

I find myself, for the first time, thinking about protesting.  With each day's headlines, I wonder if I should make some sort of grand gesture, even if it's futile.The evidence that we're heading down a bad road continues to pile up and I am seeing no signs of an imminent change of course.

1.  During Republican debates, the audience cheers at the prospect of letting people die.  And executing people.

2.  The US supports the Arab Spring everywhere but in Palestine.

3.  General Electric paid no taxes in  2010.  In fact, we paid THEM to keep making profits.

4.  During the recession, the largest banks have made a massive profit; but Moody's is now downgrading them because of the possibility that if their speculative investments begin to crash, it's possible the US government won't bail them out.  And that could create the very bank crisis scenario the pundits are dreading.

5.  The London riots got front page, first block coverage for days on every news station.  Protesters occupying Wall Street are being ignored by most press outlets.  But not by the NYPD.

6.  Our president will not sacrifice his ambition to the greater good. He made it clear from day one he wanted two terms.  Now, when nothing has made much of an impact on the recession, he will continue to play it safe to ensure his campaign coffers are full for his re-election campaign.

7.   There is no press but the Internet.  Rick Perry didn't win the Florida primary.  Neither did Mitt Romney.  Or anyone else I'd ever heard of.  But I still can tell you nothing about the man who won because the nightly news (NBC, in this instance) simply mentioned what a stunning upset it was, then did another story on the two candidates they already had stories on:  Mitt and Rick.
  Nice, Lester Holt.  Are you executive producer when you're at that fancy desk?

8.  College students can't find jobs.  So they're racking up more students loans to stay in school, hoping things will improve in a year or two.

9.  8.8 million people worked part time in August because it's the only work they could find.  16.1 percent of American workers are underemployed.  31% of the workforce was underemployed at some point in 2009.

10.  Desperation for cash is a major part of the conversation as states consider hydraulic fracturing, the effects of which were illustrated so pointedly in "Gasland".

There is fast money to be made.  The long term environmental impacts may be far more expensive to deal with.  How much does it cost to import enough drinking water for an entire state?  Several states?

That's just ten items off the top of my head.  The actual list is far longer.  I haven't even mentioned our multiple wars, the fortunes being made by hired mercenaries, our unhealthy mass produced food, our continued discrimination against people who don't look like us.

It's feeling like last days of the Roman Empire to me.  And the thought that keeps crossing my mind is that I should just start walking.  Walk from New York to California and back to Washington.  Criss cross the country, bring a recorder and document what I find along the way.  I know I'm a speck in the ocean, but if I did it long enough, maybe it might get some notice.  Maybe it'll force a conversation.  Or maybe I'm mixing up political activism with Forrest Gump.


 

Maybe a hunger strike?  I suspect I would starve to death before any real change occurred.

And so I feel helpless.  For now.  But if there were enough people like me, who are tired of emotional toddlers running the world, maybe there is something we could accomplish together.