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Global Warming PSA
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Sources: Background Picture: hherbzilla on FlickrStats and "before/after" picture: Brian Merchant, "This Is Life in a 400 PPM World," Motherboard, May 16, 2013.
Hollande Proposes Economic Government for Euro-Zone: Muddying the Water?
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At a press conference marking French President Francois Hollande’s first year in office, the powerful head of the large E.U. state called for an economic government for the euro zone. One might be tempted to ask, what exactly is an econom...
The American Electorate Lagging the Scientists on Climate Change: Implications for Public Policy
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Thomas Jefferson and John Adams concurred on the following preference—namely, a natural aristocracy of virtue and talent over the artificial sort of birth and wealth. Talent here is not merely skill, but also knowledge. Hence the two former U.S...
A "Banking Union" or Coordinated State Laws and Regulations?
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A subtle though important difference exists between American and European federalism, each of which covers both the "kingdom" (i.e., early modern, now mostly republics) and "empire" (i.e., ancient and early modern, now usually huge fed...
Bloomberg News "Speed" Journalists Exploiting Terminal Subscribers: On the Failure of Firewalls
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In 2012, I was stunned to hear an official of Deloitte place all his faith in the internal firewalls that he had constructed in the CPA firm to inhibit the exploitation of the conflict of interest that exists between the auditing and consulting divis...
Obama Mimics Cameron's View of the E.U.
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President Obama has said he “wants a strong UK in a strong EU.” In his joint news conference with David Cameron of the EU state of Great Britain on May 13, 2013, the president elaborated on his earlier statement in a way that reveals his...
Big Banks Opposing Tighter Regulations: A Conflict-of-Interest
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Being able to count on a person or company of persons having sufficient motivation to provide a self-defense is no feat of human nature, for self-interest is a staple in human nature. It should be no surprise, therefore, that after repaying the...
Jamie Dimon as Chair and CEO: A Conflict of Interest in Corporate Governance
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Chairman of JPMorgan since 2006 and CEO a year longer, Jamie Dimon faced a stockholder vote on May 21, 2013 on whether someone else should chair the bank’s board. Even as two shareholder advisory firms urged a split due to questions about...
Does Austerity Work?
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Does raising taxes and cutting government spending reduce a government’s deficits and thus debt? Confine consideration to more tax revenue and less spent and the theoretical answer is yes; it being a simple matter of mathematics. Include the im...
Gilding the Dandelion: Management as Leadership
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Wendy Lea, the CEO of a customer “experience” start-up, discusses her leadership approach in an interview with the New York Times. I contend that what she takes to be leadership is actually management. Put another way, she is gilding the...
Can the Federal Reserve Handle Banks Too Big To Fail?
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The biggest banks operating in the U.S. reaped an estimated $13 billion of income by taking advantage of the Federal Reserve’s below-market rate of .001% on $7.7 trillion in emergency loans in the wake of the credit freeze in September 2008. Ra...
Pope Francis: God’s Verdict on Corporate Social Responsibility
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The verdict has come in, Pope Francis announced on May 1, 2013, and the corporate social responsibility (CSR) movement re-emerged sporting a rather enviable after-glow. One question scholars had been debating concerns how salient ethical princi...
“No Loans” on Gun Sales: G.E. as Socially Responsible or Financially Savvy?
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In the wake of the Sandy Hook school shooting in Newton, Connecticut that took place in late 2012, General Electric announced that the company would no longer finance consumers’ gun purchases. Russell Wilkerson, a G.E. spokesman, wrote in an em...
Should Icelanders Push for E.U. Statehood Anyway?
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In late April 2013, a slight majority of Icelanders who voted in the parliamentary election went for a return to the center-right Independence and Progressive parties even though they had been responsible for the banking crisis that bankrupted Icelan...
Return of the Mortgage-Based Bonds: Another Bubble in the Making?
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In case it has been a while since you have gone around in circles sitting on a wood horse on a merry-go-round at an amusement park, the world itself just might be such a park with us playing out our respective roles as children, spinning around and a...
Loans to the Middle Class in Asia: Threat to the Species
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In April 2013, debt levels in Asia were reaching record levels as international lenders were extending short-term loans to a growing middle class. Nonmortgage consumer credit in Asia outside of Japan had increased 67% from 2007 to reach $1.66 trillio...
Board Directors Trading as Principals of Investment Firms: A Recipe for Insider-Trading?
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The U.S. Government designed the 10b5-1 plan so a company’s executives could lay out future trades involving the company’s stock at set prices or on set dates so as to obviate any potential charges of insider trading. The government&rsquo...
China’s Yuan To Be More Market-Driven
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According to the Wall Street Journal, “China's central bank plans to widen the yuan's trading band in the near future, People's Bank of China Vice Governor Yi Gang said . . . , suggesting that China's leaders will press ahead with change...
The E.U. as Peace-Maker: Bringing in Serbia and Kosovo
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Serbia and Kosovo reached an agreement on April 19, 2013 bearing on how much autonomy Kosovo would allow Serb cities in return Serbia’s recognition of Kosovo’s remaining authority in the cities. Kosovo had seceded from Serbia in 2008, and...
Britain Challenges the E.U.’s Financial Transactions Tax
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In April 2013, the state of Britain mounted a legal challenge at the European Court of Justice against E.U. financial transactions tax (FTT) going into effect in eleven other states. The way in which the challenge was depicted by state officials in B...
