Date: 2025-07-02 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00013600
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Peter Burgess COMMENTARY
Peter Burgess
Banking Regulations
The Finance 202: Wells Fargo mess may make it harder to roll back Dodd-Frank
Burgess COMMENTARY
US ... and Western ... corporate culture is dominated by the idea that performance is almost exclusively about profit. The idea that profit should be balanced by good social and environmental behavior and an adherence to some core concepts of ethics and morality is almost totally absent. This culture and mondset has resulted in huge increases in investor wealth over the past 50 years, but at a huge cost to society and the environment. This is a sad state of affairs ... and also very dangerous because the resulting socio-enviro-economic system is unstable and unsustainable. I think that it is fair to say that many of the major waves of innovation in the history of capitalism were driven by business investment that was both profitable and delivered significant improvements to society ... railroads, steamships and automobiles come to mind, as well as all sorts of innovations in manufacturing including mass production and innovations in agriculture. People got better lives as a result of investment in industry, agriculture and infrastructure ... but much changed about 50 years ago when financial engineering started to take precedent over real engineering and investment.
Eddie Garcia https://www.facebook.com/SeniorDemolay
I lived in Houston and then Beaumont a little more than 50 years ago working with people who know a lot more than I do about how to do things like emergency relief. I learned a lot about hunting, shooting, fishing ... beer ... friendship. At the same time I learned that my view of the bigger world was vastly different because I came from a different place and had learned different things ... and essentially this meant my thinking about politics and policy options was going to be different. In an emergency and for all sorts of other reasons, I want these folk to be my friends, but also know that mostly my politics will be very different from theirs, and most probably better for them than their own political choices! . Something of a conundrum, but welcome to reality ... and thank you to everyone who is doing stuff to help.
I am in my late 70s and worked for many years in different parts of the world ... over 50 countries ... and sometimes where security was problematic. I was never in the military but very much respect what they are trained to do. During a coup attempt in Africa in the 1970s the State Department issued an order for US citizens to evacuate. My company chose to object and complained to the US Ambassador, suggesting that it would be better simply to have some US Marines come in to give us protection while we got on with the work we had been contracted to do. We did not leave, and we did some good ... and the coup failed ... and our company's reputation was intact, indeed enhanced. The widespread view that the military can win is nonsense. The military are essential for a strong defense but it is soft power and professional and nuanced diplomacy that wins. The military are and also brilliant in support of the logistics needed to handle natural disasters and humanitarian emergencies ... in collaboration with the soft strength that is a healthy civil society.
Investing, whether impact investing or otherwise, requires a lot more organizational clarity than usually exists in the majority of local initiatives. Even though many local initiatives have amazing impact, the accounting for this is difficult, in large part because a simple, rigorous methodology has not been developed and promulgated. I argue that without better metrics about all the things that really matter, allocation of resources will remain skewed towards simply making money with investments. Better PLACE focused impact accounting and accountability will be a good step in the right direction.
Dawn (Dahelia) and I were active at CHR for more than 20 years. I am now living in the Poconos of PA but still participate in services at Heavenly Rest as an usher and periodically doing readings. I was proud to do one of the readings at Easter in 2014 (I think). During my career I was a very young corporate CFO and later did consulting assignments in more than 50 countries around the world for the World Bank, the UN and others. I am not well known and do not have a high profile, though I have done some important work. However I am appalled at the failure of the world's leaders to understand the really big issues that need to be addressed and the protection of a failing status quo. I graduated from Cambridge in 1961 after studying engineering and economics, and subsequently in 1965 qualified as a Chartered Accountant. I came to Canada and then the USA in 1967 ... just 50 years ago! In this time, owners have done very very well, but people who work for their living have had to work more and more for less and less except for a few segments of the economy (eg banking, finance, law, medicine). Taxes have gone down, bankruptcies have gone up and infrastructure has deteriorated. Society is a mess and the environment polluted. I argue that as long as the goal is simply to be financially wealthy, then we are going to have a dysfunctional society ... and for the time being it looks as if this remains the dominant goal and operating modality for the modern world. It won't work ... so my own efforts are focused on working to design, develop and deploy a new system of metrics that is based on double entry accounting, but operates not only for money profit and financial wealth, but also for social impact and environmental impact as well. There is amazing modern technology ... including now blockchain ... and there are wonderful nice people around the world. Surely there are opportunities to make the world a better place. I may be old, but I am not giving up!
Addressing the problem of ignorance aggravated by dangerous misinformation (started by President Nixon with the assistance of Roger Ailes some 40 odd years ago!) and now operating on steroids with the help of technology and international adversaries. I argue that people are often nice people even though they are also ignorant and misinformed. This is a problem with democracy recognized many years ago by Prime Minister Gladstone in the UK in the middle of the 19th century!
Safe seats created by gerrymandering need to be fixed ... all districts should be as near circles (hexagons) as possible.
Better metrics / accountability / transparency (see http://TrueValueMetgrics.org )
Fair and equal justice for all ... get rid of for profit prisons and perverse incentives that encourage incarceration.
More understanding of how insurance works ... copy the auto insurance model into the health sector ... end the stupid way in which the health sector works ... though the costs are low the prices are high and the results are poor
Figure out how to fix the dysfunction of the socio-enviro-economic system. Owners have done well over the past 50 years, but people who work for their living are working longer and longer for less and less. This is a natural result of simplistic economic ideas that were reasonable in the 19th century when productivity was very low and scarcity endemic, but cannot work in the 21st century where productivity is high and material abundance is ubiquitous AND society is falling apart, as well as infrastructure AND the environment is dangerously polluted with potential existential threats like climate change (Harvey / Irma / Sandy in the USA and worse in South and East Asia!)
13804
I don't like the simplistic labels of 'left' and 'right' but prefer to think objectively about the underlying real problems that need to be addressed and how they could be solved in a world of real people. The reality is that the price of American healthcare is very high, even though in some cases the cost of healthcare is low. Though some American healthcare is wonderful, for many people it is problematic ... perhaps unavailable, perhaps unaffordable. Most of health insurance is not insurance at all, but merely a way to administer payments and in the process lose transparency and create opportunities for profit ... whether it is the profit of a (possibly not-for-profit) hospital, the profit of medical experts, of medical equipment suppliers, of pharmaceutical companies, and all sorts of others. Real insurance exists when a large pool of people pay a small amount each, and a few people draw on the financial pool in order to pay for an unusually high cost health situation When everyone is sick, increasingly the situation in the USA, insurance does not do much to help ... merely adding administrative overhead. A 'single payer system' will be far better for consumers than what America has at the present time ... and might work very well if there is a requirement for all the actors in the health sector to be a whole lot more transparent about costs, prices, profits and performance. The US healthcare system is a complex system and essentially failed / dysfunctional and a huge drag on American economic performance, and getting worse. Major interventions are essential.
Peter Burgess http://truevaluemetrics.org
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The socio-enviro-economic dynamic of donations
Funding anything with donations is not healthy. Essentially the beneficiary is involved in some activity or situation that is unsustainable. Donations are an essential part of an economic system that is only about money (and profit and financial wealth) but donations should never be needed when the system is about progress for ALL the capitals taken together. In the conventional money based economy there are all sorts of 'good' things that cannot get done because they are not sufficiently'profitable' though they produce social valuadd and/or environmental valuadd. Rather than funding anything with donations, there should be funding that is based on 'Proof of Potential'
Why public private partnerships (PPPs) are the worst of all worlds.
There was a time when the 'commons' was an important part of a vibrant community ... a common good that was shared by everyone in the community.