Tag: Integrity

Wall Street porky pies!

Wall Street Analysts Keep Telling Big Earnings Lie

Thus reads the headline of an article, July 30th, on Bloomberg.com.  Written by David Pauly it alleges that Wall Street analysts keep telling lies (porky pies – English expression, do you Americans use it as well?).

Here’s Pauly’s opening paragraph:

At a time when the financial industry’s credibility is at an all-time low, you would think Wall Street’s finest would break their necks providing transparency.

Not so. Stock analysts continue to promote corporate earnings lies, insisting that net income isn’t really what investors need to know.

Read more of this Post

Is it me?

Plunges

One has become accustomed to some newspapers publishing lurid headlines.  The Sun (a British newspaper) has had a long history of ‘interesting’ headlines with, perhaps, one of the all-time favourites being this:

13th March 1986
13th March 1986

Those from other countries may wonder just who Freddie Starr is. (Those of us from England frequently wonder just who he is!!)

Read more of this Post

Well said Robert G. Wilmers!

Robert Wilmers, chairman and chief executive of M&T Bank, (i.e. an insider) writes about the causes of the banking crisis in the The Washington Post.

No excuse is made for the preponderance of posts on financial matters.  If ever there was an issue that goes right to the heart of integrity and honest behaviour, it is the economic crisis that we are all in.

So it was particularly gratifying to read from someone within the industry that reforms are sorely needed.

The article is well worth reading.  Thanks to Baseline Scenario for referring to the article.

By Paul Handover

The love of a dog.

A love song

Pharaoh

I am your dog and have something I would love to whisper in your ear.  I know that you humans lead very busy lives.  Some have to work, some have children to raise, some have to do this alone.  It always seems like you are running here and there, often too fast, never noticing the truly grand things in life.

Read more of this Post

Can’t see the wood for the trees.

Debt, Inflation, Recession, Depression?  Finding some truth!

How blessed we are with almost instant access, via the Web, to mind-numbing amounts of information.  So, for example, it was easy to check the origins of the quote that forms the subject line.

Yes, the saying is at least five hundred years old, and probably a century or two could be added to that, for it must have been long been in use to have been recorded in 1546 in John Heywood’s ‘A dialogue Conteynyng the Nomber in Effect of all the Prouerbes in the Englishe Tongue.’ He wrote ‘Plentie is no deinte, ye see not your owne ease. I see, ye can not see the wood for trees.’

From here.

Anyway, to the substance of this Post.

Read more of this Post

John Bachar, free-solo climber, RIP

For many years being a subscriber to The Economist newspaper has been a weekly pleasure.  Strangely, it might be thought, one of the most appreciated sections of this newspaper is the weekly obituary.  Frequently giving an insight into a well-known person but, not uncommonly, a beautifully written piece about a person not in the public arena.

Just so in the publication dated July 18th, 2009 (my copy always takes a couple of weeks to arrive).

It is about a climber, John Bachar, who loves climbing without any aids whatsoever.  Apparently known as free-solo climbing, not free-climbing, as described in The Economist.

Unless you are a print or online subscriber you will not be able to appreciate the wonderful prose used to describe John’s life.  If you are a subscriber the article is here.

For those that want some more background and do not have access to The Economist there is an obituary in the LA Times including a breath-taking picture.

What I can do (hopefully without treading on any copyright toes) is to quote just one of the comments that was attached to the online version of the article.

I was so enthralled reading this beautifully written piece that I suddenly felt living through one of John Bachar’s many climbs.  This is a lively description of an intrepid life lived in full harmony with and in respect of rocky mountains to the very end. Understanding the risks this man single-mindedly stuck to his values on rock-climbing, dangling with death but not with his body whilst working his way up until one rock-face decided to claim the better of him to remain unconquered this one time.
An obituary that pays due homage to a specialist nature lover in the art of blending with the rock graciously.

Integrity appears in many forms.

By Paul Handover

Walter Cronkite, the most trusted man in America.

These days, commenting on something that happened longer than 24 hours ago is probably passé.  The last few days have been a bit busy but one couldn’t possibly not comment about this sad news.

Nice piece from the BBC and, thanks to technology, his voice lives on.

By Paul Handover

Bighorn Sheep in the Coachella Valley Mountains

Integrity is the parent of Trust and having friends that you trust is one of life’s great riches.  (Indeed, isn’t a friend, by definition, someone you trust?)  Anyway, nearly 30 years ago I met this great Californian, Dan G., at a dealer meeting being held by Commodore Business Machines in New Jersey where their headquarters used to be.  I was giving a sales pitch extolling the virtues of my word processing program that Commodore had agreed to market through their dealer network.  I used the word “‘fortnight” which every good Englishman will know means two weeks.  Dan interrupted me by calling out, “Hey Handover, what’s a fortnight?”  The rest of the talk seemed to descend into a very funny expose of all the differences between our two versions of the English language.  George Bernard Shaw is attributed as describing the Americans and the English as ‘two nations divided by a common language‘ which seems to me a very apt observation.

Anyway, this is a complete digression to the point of this posting.  In my email box this morning is a most beautiful description of Dan coming across Bighorn Sheep.  I can do no better than to reproduce it in full.

Read the rest of the Post

Welcome!

Beloved Pharaoh. Born: June 3rd., 2003 – Died: June 19th., 2017. A very special dog that will never be forgotten.

Dogs live in the present – they just are!  Dogs make the best of each moment uncluttered by the sorts of complex fears and feelings that we humans have. They don’t judge, they simply take the world around them at face value.  Yet they have been part of man’s world for an unimaginable time, at least 30,000 years.  That makes the domesticated dog the longest animal companion to man, by far!

As man’s companion, protector and helper, history suggests that dogs were critically important in man achieving success as a hunter-gatherer.  Dogs ‘teaching’ man to be so successful a hunter enabled evolution, some 20,000 years later, to farming,  thence the long journey to modern man.  But in the last, say 100 years, that farming spirit has become corrupted to the point where we see the planet’s plant and mineral resources as infinite.  Mankind is close to the edge of extinction, literally and spiritually.

Dogs know better, much better!  Time again for man to learn from dogs!

Welcome to Learning from Dogs