13 Oct 2008
The systemic erosion of ethics and responsibility in business and individual decision-making has brought the world economy to a virtual standstill. Algorithmic risk management designed to ignore real world problems, short-term profit driven decisions, extremist free market fundamentalism, and shareholder primacy at the expense of other stakeholders, have divorced business leadership from standards of good faith, wise stewardship and care for the public interest.
Trust the essential element of credit-based market transactions has become a rare commodity. Indulgence in the race-to-the-bottom, profit-at-all-costs, instant gratification mentality of the entitlement culture, can no longer be cloaked in terms of capitalism and the free market. The blame for where we are can be shared by everyone in government and industry who acted only in their immediate self-interest and in apparent belief that the bubble would never burst. Is it any wonder that a recent Washington Post story was headlined, The End of American Capitalism?
Trust the essential element of credit-based market transactions has become a rare commodity. Indulgence in the race-to-the-bottom, profit-at-all-costs, instant gratification mentality of the entitlement culture, can no longer be cloaked in terms of capitalism and the free market. The blame for where we are can be shared by everyone in government and industry who acted only in their immediate self-interest and in apparent belief that the bubble would never burst. Is it any wonder that a recent Washington Post story was headlined, The End of American Capitalism?
categories: Corporate Culture, Corporate Responsibility
