What interesting times we live in.
Came across a relatively new Blog with the title The Fourteenth Banker. Caught my eye because of the similarity to the book written by Simon Johnson and James Kwak of Baseline Scenario fame. Here’s an extract from the ‘About’ piece of this new Blog.
In response to the comments of folks in the Congress and oversight regimes, I have created this blog as a home for bankers who need to speak out and do not have a central clearinghouse or a safe place to do so. Big banks now treat their employees like property, bought and owned. Typically employees must subject themselves to all sorts of potential sanctions, forfeitures of compensation, clawbacks and even lawsuits if they speak in ways we often have thought were protected speech. I am not talking about revealing confidential customer or proprietary information, I am talking about simply commenting on a company, management philosophy, making general observations or raising concerns. It makes one appreciate unions even if not historically supportive of unions. At least management and labor can have a debate. Not so in today’s large banks. Gag orders are written in the most intimidating way, included in Codes of Ethics, attached to incentive plans, posted on the company home pages. We should ask ourselves, what is the big secret?
Do support the Blog by calling by. Here’s a taste of what they are writing about:
What is a million between friends?
Read this piece from Bloomberg Businessweek How Much Did Lehman CEO Dick Fuld Really Make?
This can only be called what it is. Delusion. Delusion about self, society, morality, values and anything else you can name. These are symptoms of a grave illness which is too common among those in power. In fact, the illness may be the requisite to power.
By Paul Handover
Learning from Dogs 
Ever since Solon, founder of the Athenian constitution, 26 centuries ago, Western intellectuals have decried plutocracy. In recent decades, it became fashionable to decry such an attitude as quaint, obsolete, and deluded.
But this classical attitude, besides being justified by the facts of history, and how they turned out, is now explained by neurology itself.
It’s time for plutocracy, this cancer of the soul, this vampire of the economy, this socialization of gangsterism, to get out of the way of civilization, let alone democracy. It’s not a question of a better choice, but of sheer survival.
PA
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