This week people have been buzzing about Goldman Sachs executive Greg Smith's high-profile resignation from Goldman and his description of the way that company's ethics and morals have declined over the last decade and more, especially under current CEO Lloyd Blankfein.
But Smith's revelations aren't really news at all, and the moral decline he describes at Goldman has been replicated throughout our corporate culture. Behavior at Wall Street firms like Goldman may have been more overtly criminal, but the shift from respect for the customer to the desire to rip customers off is pervasive and insidious.
Wall Street has, of course, been the epicenter of this behavior. Years ago it was reported that traders at Morgan Stanley used to get off a phone call and gleefully shout "I ripped his face off!" -- about their own clients -- after successfully selling them what they knew were garbage investments. The surprise isn't that Goldman Sachs encourages its employees to mislead clients and put its own interests above theirs -- the surprise is that anybody is surprised.
We should know better.
Capitalism has always been based in part on predatory behavior. But a series of progressive reforms that began more than a century ago managed to bring the predators among us under control. Laws and regulations were a key part of that control, but a four-decade long conservative crusade against them has brought us to the point where Democratic presidents can echo the anti-regulatory rhetoric of the right without fear of reprisal from their own base.
We need to restore the respect that regulations and those who enforce them have earned over their decades of service to the country. But there needs to be even greater change -- cultural change -- before we can stop the kind of behavior that Smith described in his editorial. We need to end the culture of predation and stigmatize the corrupt business leaders who are tearing our society down.
It's true that Blankfein's a particularly egregious example of the culture of predation. But there isn't an executive on Wall Street whose company hasn't done things he should be ashamed about -- and shunned for. And many of them should be under criminal investigation right now. Instead they're attending plush fundraisers with leaders from both parties and whining to subservient journalists that today's coverage of them isn't universally congratulatory. These guys don't want reporters, they want praise-singers like the ones that flattered ancient princes -- and more often than not they get them.
But the culture of predation goes way beyond Wall Street. It's all around us. Here's an example from my own corporate life: While I was working in the insurance and risk management area back in the 1990s, a group of us were sent to one of those offsite 'bonding' get-togethers that were so popular at the time.
As was the custom in those days, slightly hippie-ish baby boomers (usually ex-teachers or ex-social workers) were hired as 'facilitators' to get us 'thinking outside the box.' (I used to say "I have ADD; I lost the box," but they made me attend anyway.) This typically involved 'team-building exercises' like making a house out of string while blindfolded.
(Yes, that was one of our exercises.)
In one of the sessions we were encouraged to come up with an innovative idea for our own work area. To stimulate our 'creative juices,' we were given three examples from the real business world. One of them will be familiar to any man who shaves: Our granola-eating facilitators enthusiastically told us how the Gillette company managed to send its revenues sky-high by selling their razors at a low cost and then charging an arm and a leg for the blades. Gillette constantly changes its razor design so that lower-cost competitors can't sell blades to its customers.
Millions of American men have contemplated spending the rest of their lives looking like ZZ Top, just because of the Gillette company. Gillette has a stranglehold on the razor market and uses it to shaft its customers any chance it gets. The sleazy, anti-consumer Gillette strategy has even been adapted by formerly decent companies like Hewlett-Packard, who under prominent Republican Carly Fiorina began selling cheap and unreliable printers whose cartridges constantly run out of ink and cost a fortune to replace.
In Corporate America, however, that's not called sleazy behavior. It's called "thinking outside the box."
The second example was that of a public telephone company in some Midwestern city that decided it could make more money by making it unpleasant to use its pay phones. So, as our Birkenstock-wearing guides told us gleefully, some young executive suggested putting a heavy weight in the receiver and slanting the shelf underneath the phones so that you couldn't put anything there without having it fall off. Pretty soon they were all doing it. (Now pay phones are a thing of the past. It's like they say: Karma is a bitch.)
I forget the third "innovation," but it was equally repellent. But what I do remember is that only two or three of us in the group exchanged looks of disgust. A few other people were as excited as the group leaders, and the rest didn't care one way or the other.
What's the point of bringing this up? That the bond between business leaders and customers has been broken, and that businesses aren't being punished for it. They're not being punished by loss of customers or social disapproval, and when they break the law they're not being punished with jail time.
People have come to expect that the businesses which are supposed to serve them will do everything in their power to rip them off instead -- and that nobody inside or outside of government will do anything about it. When people buy shoddy products and call the manufacturer for help they've come to expect endless wait times, followed by soul-killing robotic interactions with underpaid script-driven hirelings. When they open their bank or credit card bills they expect to be slammed with unadvertised and unaffordable add-on charges.
And they're rarely disappointed.
The Democrats' attempts to change this culture have been tepid at best (with the possible exception of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which will only be as good as its presidentially-appointed director). But even those tentative steps have been met with a firestorm of reaction, which too often is met with offers to water the reforms down even more.
What can be done? For one thing, computer owners can boycott companies like Hewlett-Packard, too. And we can explain why. For another, the men of America can boycott companies like Gillette. If we all wind up looking Amish it'll be worth the effort. Because you know what? The Amish are scrupulously fair and honest in their business dealings.
You can't say that about bank executives like Lloyd Blankfein at Goldman Sachs, or any of the other CEOs on Wall Street. And you can't say that about most other corporate CEOs these days, either. Sure, there are notable and admirable exceptions. But we need a movement to clean up our entire corporate culture. Maybe we could call it "Beards, Not Banks." And along with it, we need to restore our nation's respect for the laws and regulations that protect us from bandits, rascals, and thieves -- and for the people who enforce those laws.
As long as we reward bad behavior with our money and our respect, things will only continue to get worse.
Follow Richard (RJ) Eskow on Twitter: www.twitter.com/rjeskow
This has brought us to the end of democracy, the convergence of wealth and political power in a new Gilded Age. The rich folks have figured out how to manipulate the system to enrich themselves at everyone else's expense--and have the spare cash to buy the government. Ironically, the only legitimacy the "small government conseratives" have refutes their worship of "free markets." Shrink government to loosen the power of wealth. That's not what Grover Norquist had in mind.
Unfortunately, we've gone too far. When they captured the Supreme Court we got Bush v. Gore and Citizens United. Corporations are people with more rights than actual humans. We approach fascism, rule for and by the corporations. The Congress has become a wholly owned subsidiary of the super-rich. The executive branch is stymied by Congressional obstructionism. Who can blame the predators at Goldmann for feasting on the corpse of democracy? Carpe diem.
You've got this just right! You cannot live in this society anymore without experience con jobs at every turn. Few make or fix things with any sense of morality, instead it's legions of marketing con artists whispering in your ear or shouting from the TV and other media. I fear that the only solution is the crash to end all crashes becoming more likely by the day.
This is one of the best articles I've ever read on HP - at least, one of the most poigniant - and I' ve been reading here since very nearly the very beginning of The Huffington Post.
Early on as I read I copied some selections of text, meaning to add commentary about them, only to keep reading and find that you already covered my points! Yay!
Now, what are some good ideas to help get this along?
How about we start by pushing Obama to replace Eric Holder with someone who doesn't think robo signing mass quantities of fraudulent forclosure documents is "immoral but not illegal", as Holder described them?
How can we suffer through "the fierce urgency of now" and "hope and work for change" when we have a circumstance that "when they break the law they're not being punished with jail time." Heck, they're not even CHARGED!
We need a new AG - one who will PROSECUTE.
And, dare I mention that Obama has put a lot of Wall Street into his cabinet? What's Up With THAT?
The man may be our only real choice at the top of the ticket in November, but he's no liberal or progressive.
Hopefully this clarification will advance this important discussion. Thanks so much for kick starting it.
Hopefully this clarification helps to advance this important discussion. Thank you for kick starting it.
I'm fairly sure that I'm not alone in developing an informal list of companies and organizations with which I avoid doing business no matter what the present "deal" might be. The problem seems to be that these organizations have no good way of measuring this loss of business (spanning many decades) of individuals like myself. The decisions and actions of the management responsible for this permanent loss of business are consequently lost when annual evaluation/bonus time rolls around and so it continues.
You're right, you're not alone.
At the top of my list of companies to never do business with is AT&T. Second is BofA. There are far too many others. . .