Faustomics
The Sheepdog Manifesto for a Culture in Crisis
Faustomics
Tempest in a Teapot
Jamie Dimon, current chairman, president and chief executive of JPMorgan Chase and previous New York Federal Reserve Bank board member, then and now:
April 13, 2012:
"It’s a complete tempest in a teapot. Every bank has a major portfolio. In those portfolios, you make investments that you think are wise, that offset your exposures. Obviously it’s a big portfolio, we’re a large company, and we try to run it – it’s sophisticated, obviously with complex things, but at the end of the day, that’s our job is to invest that portfolio wisely and intelligently over a long period of time to earn income and to offset other exposures we have."
May 10, 2012 after disclosing a $2 billion trading loss:
"In hindsight, the new strategy was flawed, complex, poorly reviewed, poorly executed and poorly monitored. The portfolio has proven to be riskier, more volatile and less effective an economic hedge than we thought."
"These were egregious mistakes, they were self-inflicted,
we were accountable and we happened to violate our own standards and principles
by how we want to operate the company."
"I don’t know just because we are stupid doesn’t mean everybody else was."
Stupid does not seem like the right word, although we like that he uses it. Infantile is better. Sycophant, better still? Whichever, it presents yet more evidence for the need of character transparency from those in roles of fiduciary duty and public office in American society today.
Psychology of Fraud
More momentum for the principles of Faustomics:
Political Public Masks
Shadow Denial poster boy John Edwards is in the news again:
Thank you, Walter Shapiro for your extremely insightful commentary. But the exercise of character transparency need not be "frustrating." Faustomics will prove it to be simple, reliable and comprehensive.
Razorbacks
Married with four kids, another "leader" from a storied college football program demonstrates the glaring need for required character transparency from those in such roles in American society today:
"Former Arkansas coach Bobby Petrino sent candy to his
mistress, called her a 'close friend' and suggested the affair that
cost him his job started with a kiss over lunch last fall, according to
documents released Thursday."
Psychos on Wall Street
The easiest way to explain the never-ending string of
Wall Street scandals and implosions is to observe that a surprising percentage
of people in the financial industry are psychos, according to Al Lewis on The
News Hub.
Goldman Sachs "Muppets"
That the obvious was opined in The New York Times about the shameless status quo at Goldman Sachs (otherwise known today as the fourth branch of the U.S. government) is no surprise. Been writing about it for years—ho hum.
Regarding author Greg Smith, senior Goldman executive who wrote it as part of his resignation after twelve years with the firm, Eric Rosenbaum of The Street observed, "there's a maxim I like to fall back on in situations where the members of the 1% speak of as if they are breaking from the elite: It's easy to to become as Buddhist after you've made your first million."
My nephew interned for a summer at Goldman recently and, having a pulse, he saw it for what it was he did not walk but ran away from it. Three months is all it took. By contrast, waiting twelve years while personally enriching oneself to finally show some conscience is hardly noble. Give all the money you made in that period to charity and start over, Mr. Smith, then you might have a meaningful act (I always felt the same about Henry Blodget ever since meeting him in person; shocker that he's yet to redeem his soul and legitimately reverse his karmic trajectory in this way either).
Instead, Darth Vader speaks best for Mr. Smith and all those like him, especially current Goldman CEO, who in a 2009 Times of London interview proclaimed that the firm was "doing God's work." Then, Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman also felt so pious as to cite the divine when telling his own staff not to circulate Smith's piece, for "there by the grace of God go us," said he.
"The so-called brightest in the room cast a long Shadow," wrote James Hollis in Why Good People Do Bad Things: Understanding Our Darker Selves. Seeing as Goldman is reputed to hire only the brightest, you'd think something like this might occur to them. Not likely, at least not until life forces the matter upon them, which we can all rest assured it will as sure as night follows day. See Goethe's Faust for a refresher on this natural law for which we can all be thankful.
Rolling Stone magazine was on target when they dubbed Goldman "a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money." And so it is. Just how long investors continue choosing to do business with such institutions when so many transparent and valid alternatives exist will be interesting to see. The buyer is now officially, or certainly should be, aware.
People and Nature
"There is no such thing as 'government', 'society', 'company', 'organization', these are just vague concepts, they are not real, they don't have feelings. People are real. Your loyalty is to people and to Nature."
Sure it's out there. But as Mark Twain once noted, "truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; truth isn't."
Wisconsin D.O.J. Constitutional Assault
My elected officials are blatantly and shamelessly violating their sworn oaths to uphold and defend our Constitutional rights. No food choice for fresh and natural dairy products through private contracts for me, these officials have proclaimed. Instead, small family farmers must go to jail.
Our Forefathers saw this coming, so way back in 1771 Samuel Adams counseled us on what to do about it:
"Knowing that power, especially in times of corruption,
makes men wanton; that it intoxicates the mind; and unless those with whom it
is entrusted, are carefully watched, such is the weakness or the perverseness
of human nature, they will be apt to domineer over the people,
instead of governing them, according to the known laws of the state, to
which alone they have submitted. If he finds, upon the best enquiry,
the want of ability or integrity; that is, an ignorance of, or a disposition to
depart from, the constitution, which is the measure and rule of government
& submission, he will point them out, and loudly proclaim them:
He will stir up the people, incessantly to complain of such
men, till they are either reform'd, or remov'd from that sacred trust,
which it is dangerous for them any longer to hold."
Got it, Sam and Tom. We hear you now. From thine heavenly perch above, watch us preserve all that you fought for today.
My Governor Scott Walker claims to be fighting for smaller government in his high profile battle to balance a budget. Yet his Republican counterpart leading the Attorney General's office and his Department of Justice legal staff are now proceeding with the very sort of big government over-reaching and outright thuggery that Walker himself claims to be fighting. Someone please remind me, exactly what do "Republicans" stand for again? (And let's not forget it was his predecessor Jim Doyle, a die hard Democrat, who vetoed a popular bill to make raw milk legal which would have entirely avoided the sad mess we all find ourselves in now).
At this point, who cares. It's beyond politicians. As The United States Supreme Court wrote in its landmark Mack/Printz v. USA decision against similar Leviathan government violations:
"But the Constitution protects us from our own best intentions."
This means you, local Department of Agriculture employees and my D.O.J. now claiming be acting on behalf of my good health. Twinkes are legal; fresh food is not. Yea, right. Spare us your good intentions, please. Asks the good Judge Andrew Napolitano, "why doesn't anyone in government take seriously the oath to uphold the Constitution?"
Economist Donald Boudreaux wrote yesterday about the same topic and called it Illegal Everything. Yes, food choice is included, as is local farmer Joel Salatin's book, Everything I Want to Do is Illegal.
One mom had her rights violated so frequently that she produced an excellent documentary entitled Farmageddon to tell the whole story.
In a court of law, may the bright light of sunshine prove whether our elected leaders indeed uphold their sworn oaths, or instead the capricious whims of a few overzealous regulators. Judge Napolitano sums up nicely our unbelievable battle with "the guardians of the Constitution," our government employees today:
"... they violate their duty and our trust in them when them when they diminish and abridge the rights of the people they serve; and the damage they cause is 'fifty-fold' more harmful than ordinary crimes, because when the government breaks they law, it does so with a false semblance of authority, and it does it again and again and again."
In the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, his compatriot Thomas Jefferson wrote it this way:
"In questions of power, then, let no more heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution."
Individuation vs Individualism
The genius of Adam Smith is that he dealt with the essential reality of human self-interest with eyes wide open.
The genius of Carl Jung is that the helped humanity to discern the particular type of self-interest one chooses to exhibit.
Put another way:
Selfish self-interest = Individualism
Selfish self-interest = Individualism
Enlightened self-interest = Individuation
Which one do we see on display from our elected leaders and those in roles of fiduciary duty today? And which one which forms the basis of our (broken) American political system today?
The way we're allowing Individualism to trounce our Constitutional Republic today is sad; slowly but surely, though, we're getting smarter and doing something about it.
Faustomics will provide tools for us to be able to measure crucial aspects of character from those with such a great capacity to either build up or tear down our communities. The degree to which we measure and demand more Individuation and less of Individualism from our public "leaders" is the single most important factor that will determine the quality of life that our children will get to enjoy in the future. Let's get busy.
Money Transparency
It's the only way we're going to have it:
"The gold standard is a modern, digital, information-sharing, global operating standard. Moreover, it is a stable, networking, efficient, price transmission system in the form of a stable international monetary standard."
Bring back the Value Standard, as Lewis Lehrman writes. It will help usher in a Golden Age, indeed.
Bring back the Value Standard, as Lewis Lehrman writes. It will help usher in a Golden Age, indeed.