WHAT'S GOIN' ON?

Trying to live a practical, but compassionate life towards all living creatures (animal, mineral, vegetable, humanable) without being a self-righteous ass.

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

A little more AIG

Here's a little of NYT columnist Thomas Friedman on AIG. Hmm I wonder if this is true. Well, the thing I have some confidence in is--Obama is probably the type who listens to Wise Counsel and learns from mistakes. As opposed to Bush.

Had Mr. Obama given A.I.G.’s American brokers a reputation to live up to, a great national mission to join, I’d bet anything we’d have gotten most of our money back voluntarily. Inspiring conduct has so much more of an impact than coercing it. And it would have elevated the president to where he belongs — above the angry gaggle in Congress.

“There is nothing more powerful than inspirational leadership that unleashes principled behavior for a great cause,” said Dov Seidman, the C.E.O. of LRN, which helps companies build ethical cultures, and the author of the book “How.” What makes a company or a government “sustainable,” he added, is not when it adds more coercive rules and regulations to control behaviors. “It is when its employees or citizens are propelled by values and principles to do the right things, no matter how difficult the situation,” said Seidman. “Laws tell you what you can do. Values inspire in you what you should do. It’s a leader’s job to inspire in us those values.”

Right now we have an absence of inspirational leadership.

3 comments:

-p. said...

"Had Mr. Obama given A.I.G.’s American brokers a reputation to live up to, a great national mission to join, I’d bet anything we’d have gotten most of our money back voluntarily."

Ah, Tommy Friedman, one-man cheering section for the wealthy and possibly the only person left in America who would put in a kind word for the contemptible greedheads that caused the ongoing clusterfuck.

The bottomfeeders who ran AIG were going to respond to calls for a sense of community and duty? Grow up, Tom--the only thing they would ever have responded to was public shame, and many of them, not even to that. When it comes to wealth, they have few morals, no scruples and no sense of values beyond their own self-worth and the worth of their own parasitic class.

London Mabel said...

That Dov Seidman guy he quotes would say that shame IS an evidence of values.

http://www.howsmatter.com/how-values-played-a-role-in-aigs-giveback/

Anonymous said...

Returning bonuses:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ukpress/article/ALeqM5iQg5u81ys1Bb_0kjd0YPMqmH1YxQ