Block Google?

Blocking Google?
“Murdoch’s News Corp., which owns the Wall Street Journal and New York Post, among others, has discussed with Microsoft a plan to remove its newspaper content from Google’s search results.” Users will have to use Microsoft’s Bing to get access to these articles. Murdoch wants everyone to pay for news even if they are getting it online. First, I think is a horrible idea for everyone. Secondly, the internet as a whole is fickle, if a doorway is blocked it moves on to something new. If this goes through, I do not foresee things going well for Murdoch.

AIG Staff Threatens to Quit Over Bonuses

Article
The Article linked above goes on to say the unless the AIG staff receives their $198 million dollars worth of bonuses, they will quit. While part of me agrees with them, if you are promised a bonus you deserve to get it. Yet, there is a large part of me that essentially says “who cares about them”, they are largely responsible for the economic collapse, they don’t deserve anything. Is this a situation where it may be okay to break a previous promise?

Hope for AIG

Government Repayment?
“Shares of AIG rose Tuesday after Moody’s Investor Service analysts said they believe the company will have the resources to fully repay the federal government. If they can repay the government, this would give the government incentive to continue supporting AIG and its various creditors.”
Whether or not they actually do payback the loan, we will see, but this seems to be a step in the right direction. Hopefully this will set an example to others that received government bailout funds, that these were not gifts but loans.

A Promise to Be Ethical in an Era of Immorality

An Ethical Promise
When students graduated from the Harvard Business School in May, many of them took a new oath essentially saying that greed is not good. Nearly 20 percent of the graduating class have signed “The M.B.A. Oath.” The purpose was to create business leaders wanting to “serve the greater good.” The Oath holds Harvard M.B.A.’s to act responsibly, ethically and refrain from advancing their “own narrow ambitions” at the expense of others. I think this was a huge step away from corporate greed and as well as one towards a benevolent society. If more Universities offer something similar, business majors can lose the cut-throat reputation they have had for so long.

Profits?! Maybe, They Can Pay Us Back Now

JPMorgan Chase Reports Strong Profit of $3.6 Billion
JPMorgan became the first of the nation’s biggest banks to report its third-quarter earnings. While this maybe some good news for the economy, it brings up some ethical issues. Now that they have 3.6 Billion in profit, I for one believe they should pay back the bailout money they received. The same applies to any company that received bailout funds, as soon as they start posting profits, they should be legally required to payback the taxpayers.

Bank Error Causes Judge to Make an Unusual Ruling

Judge Orders Google To Deactivate User’s Gmail Account
Rocky Mountain Bank mistakenly sent names, addresses, social security numbers and loan information of more than 1,300 customers to a Gmail address. When the bank realized the problem, it sent a message to that same address asking the recipient to contact the bank and destroy the file without opening it. No one responded, so the bank contacted Google to ask for information about the account holder. Google told the bank it would have to get a court order to obtain such data. The bank then filed papers asking a court to order Google to disclose the information and deactivate the account. The Courts now have authority to shutdown personal email accounts because of someone else’s negligence. How is the not a violation of privacy rights? I understand the bank made a mistake, but why is the faultless person being punished?

Watchdog Fed Didn’t Bother Barking

Fed Held Back as Evidence Mounted on Sub Prime Loan Abuses
“In the prime market, where we need supervision less, we have lots of it. In the subprime market, where we badly need supervision, a majority of loans are made with very little supervision,” former Fed Governor Edward M. Gramlich, a critic of the hands-off policy, wrote in 2007. “It is like a city with a murder law, but no cops on the beat. What is the point of making policies to prevent economic downturns but not enforcing them. Do they just pass laws to ease the collective mind of the public as a defense? So they can say well we had policies in place, but we are not sure why they did not work.

Different Rules for the Rich?

S.E.C. Defends Deal in Merrill Takeover
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) lawyers have said in a court filing that they did the right thing in not bringing anyone at Merrill Lynch to any form of justice, and in looking the other way as the firm’s new owner, Bank of America, misled investors on upcoming Merrill Lynch bonuses. Why is it that if the rich do something illegal, the justice system seems to have different rules? By not prosecuting anyone they are essentially saying what they did is okay.

A year after cataclysm, little change on Wall St

Little Change
After all the bailouts and such it seems bank executives are getting paid nearly as much as before the crash. Have we not learned our lesson? How can they justify being paid that much when not long ago we “had” to bail them out or the economy would be in ruins.

Questions raised over Goldman research policy

Questions raised over Goldman research policy

The article says that Goldman Sachs Group Inc. has been regularly providing its top clients with stock-trading tips that are different from the firm’s published research reports. This brings up several ethical questions. Goldman Sachs is obviously not being fair to all of its clients.  I can understand giving discounts and such to high profile clients but giving tips that are radically different from the published reports is preposterious. I would go as far to say that their actions border insider trading. If I was a Goldman Sachs client and had heard about this, I would most definitely stop conducting business with them.