Corporate Greed Research Articles

Book Review: Revolt! The Next Great Transformation from Kleptocracy Capitalism to Libertarian Socialism through Counter Ideology, Societal Education, & Direct Action by John Asimakopoulos

Revolt! The Next Great Transformation from Kleptocracy Capitalism to Libertarian Socialism through Counter Ideology, Societal Education, & Direct Action by John Asimakopoulos Transformative Studies Institute Press, 2011. Pp. 159. $14.95 (Paperback). ISBN: 9780983298205[Article copies available for a fee from The Transformative Studies Institute. E-mail address: journal@transformativestudies.org Website: http://www.transformativestudies.org ©2012 by The Transformative Studies Institute. All rights reserved.]I highly recommend this book to anyone who works for a living, and even mature teenagers about to enter the workforce, as they are our future and are exposed to more and more capitalist propaganda as they go through high school which, depending on various factors, including adult guidance, could either teach them to learn and think critically or prepare them to be cogs in a defective capitalist system. In Revolt!, Asimakopoulos early defines working class essentially to mean anyone who must work in order to live, which would encompass a major percentage of people from all lines of work. And to be sure, he cites some of Karl Marx's concepts, such as capitalism being the problem and that band-aiding the problem with bailouts is merely part of its vicious cycle and not a solution to social injustices and inequalities on a national and global scale.In addition to outlining the problem, the author talks about the historical buildup of the capitalist powers that be, dating back to Breton Woods in the 19l century and bolstered by laws created over the years by corrupt politicians loyal to corporations. The insidiousness and tenacity of the problem is due to the fact that corporate greed and exploitation of whole groups of people (including most of us) and our resources are being disguised by corporate-owned media as the American way. Those who challenge it are met with force by government that has been hijacked by large multinational corporations through lobbying. What the author terms a revolving door between politics and big business, is exemplified by former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, previously of Sachs Goldman. Not only are the laws and practices and many institutions, such as Wall Street and credit card companies, corrupt and self-serving, but they actually produce a negative effect on America's productivity and consumption by shifting jobs to other countries and giving its own citizens fewer and fewer social guarantees such as health benefits. Further, jobs are cut, and people forced to work more for less pay and under substandard conditions. This naturally affects our ability to spend on the things we would like, leading to a corporation's own decline. However, the government comes in and bails out the corporation, resetting the cycle but not solving the problem, and potentially making the next downturn even worse than the previous one.Asimakopoulos also lays out a groundwork for fighting back against this nightmare, producing three basic tools to anyone wishing to make social change: societal education (to increase awareness of the rich getting richer and poor getting poorer phenomenon, for instance), counter ideology (to offer an alternative to the hegemony), and direct action (the most important, grassroots tool). Direct action can and has taken many forms, and the author specifically cites how this and the other tools had major positive influence on the well-being of labor unions in past uprisings, as well as the civil rights/black power movement, two that he details extensively in the book. As members of the community, we are called upon by the author to help change the system; mere votes for one flavor of capitalist mouthpiece over another, as between a Republican and a Democratic candidate, has often shown to be inadequate because greed does not respect party lines. A sympathetic yet ineffective candidate only gives the public the illusion of change. What is needed is independent media (through radio, television, print, and Internet) to spread and delegitimize the system held dear to the corporate-owned mass media. …

A Call to Corporate Compassion

Over the past 25 years, American businesses have become intoxicated with greed. In effect, because greed works, it has become, to many, a necessary component of capitalism. But like all drugs, it has side effects. One such side effect is that its lack of compassion has alienated its greatest stakeholder, the consumer. The American consumer has come to both hate and need American business. Like a bungling parasite that takes too much of its host, corporate greed has conceptualized its customers as consumables versus symbiotes and is alienating itself into the red.

The Rule of Law against the Rule of Greed: Edmund Burke against the East India Company

At the end of the 18th century Bengal suddenly came under the rule of the East India Company. The former trading company had become the sovereign, first, of a country the size of France, and eventually of the whole Indian subcontinent. The Company was not controlled by any positive law, be it Indian, British or international. As a consequence, the Company’s individual and corporate greed reigned supreme, with the most dire consequences for the native Indian population. The Indian question aroused the interest of Edmund Burke. He saw in India a metaphor for his native Ireland and was suspicious of the corruption of British politics by the money and influence that the Company’s men had gained in India. He therefore made it the aim of his life to fight the Company’s unrestrained avarice by fostering an impeachment trial against Warren Hastings, the first Governor General of Bengal. In order to get Hastings convicted it was necessary to show that he had infringed the law. But which law should Hastings’ judges apply? He resorted to Natural Law and Roman Law. Thence he took the maxim »Eundem negotiatorem et dominum«, that is to say, commerce which aims at profit, and government which aims at the welfare of the population, are irreconcilable. Though after many years Hastings was acquitted, Burke contributed by this trial to civilising British rule in India. Burke’s stance has recently been criticised by the post-colonial school: He should have pleaded for the British to quit India rather than improving their rule and thereby prolonging its existence.Am Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts gelangte Bengalen mit einem Schlag unter die Herrschaft der East India Company. Die ehemalige Handelskompagnie war zum Souverän eines Landes in der Größe Frankreichs geworden und sollte später den gesamten indischen Subkontinent beherrschen. Die Kompagnie wurde weder von indischem, noch von britischem Recht oder von Völkerrecht in ihrem Tun kontrolliert. Daher konnte sich die Gier der Kompagnie wie die ihrer Mitglieder ungehindert entfalten, was die unangenehmsten Konsequenzen für die eingeborne indische Bevölkerung hatte. Die indische Frage erregte das Interesse von Edmund Burke. Er sah in Indien eine Metapher für seine Heimat Irland und hatte Angst vor einer Korruption der britischen Politik durch das Geld und den Einfluss von Briten, die sich in Indien bereichert hatten. Er machte es sich zur Aufgabe seines Lebens, gegen die Gier der Kompagnie zu kämpfen, indem er ein Impeachment-Verfahren gegen Warren Hastings anregte, den Ersten General-Gouverneur von Bengalen. Um eine Verurteilung Hastings zu erreichen, war es notwendig zu zeigen, dass er das Recht gebrochen hatte. Aber welches Recht? Burke griff auf Naturrecht und Römisches Recht zurück. Von dort nahm er den Grundsatz »Eundem negotiatorem et dominum«. Damit ist gemeint, dass man nicht zugleich Händler und Souverän sein kann, hat der eine doch seinen Profit zum Ziel und der andere das Wohlergehen der Bevölkerung. Zwar wurde Hastings nach mehreren Jahren freigesprochen, doch trug Burke mit diesem Prozess dazu bei, die englische Herrschaft in Indien zu zivilisieren. Seit neustem wird seine Position von der Schule der Postkolonialisten bekämpft: Er hätte dafür eintreten sollen, dass die Briten Indien verlassen anstatt ihre Herrschaft zu verbessern und damit zu verlängern. Recommended citation: Stagl, Jakob Fortunat, The Rule of Law against the Rule of Greed: Edmund Burke against the East India Company, in: Rechtsgeschichte - Legal History Rg 20 (2012) 104-124, online: http://dx.doi.org/10.12946/rg20/104-124

The role and need of offering workshops and courses on workplace spirituality

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to present the experiences and findings of a university course in workplace spirituality in a time and stage where corporate greed and organizational instability run rampant.Design/methodology/approachThe authors analyzed workshop dialogues and reviewed of participants' findings on corporations as well as their own changed perceptions.FindingsThere are some interesting common factors in corporations that perform according to spiritual guidelines and a highly interactive program on organizational analysis contributes tremendously to the levels of responsibility and awareness of participants.Research limitations/implicationsLimitations to the research are: the population used for data was limited, as it consisted of business and management students at the MBA level; and the findings were only gathered from one cohort, and might provide increased themes when extended over multiple courses in multiple semesters. Future research could apply this study on other populations for a greater foundation in findings.Practical implicationsOrganizations that adhere to the spiritual mindset are more successful, have happier employees, and are more aware of their environmental responsibilities.Originality/valueThe paper shows that in these times when corporate greed, dishonesty, and environmental neglect have been exposed so dramatically, courses on workplace spirituality are of high importance and lead to valuable insights for immediate and non‐immediate stakeholders.

Compassion as the New Philosophy of Business

Forty years ago, Milton Friedman (1970) argued that the sole social responsibility of a company is to generate profit for its shareholders. The core message was that the primary responsibility of those running a business was to the owners or investors of the company. At the same time, Friedman assumed that the company would abide by laws and prevailing ethical customs. Unfortunately, Friedman's arguments have been misinterpreted by business managers and have provided justifications for engaging in any and all types of immoral, unethical, and illegal activities for personal gain and corporate greed. Such activities have also contributed to the recent global recession, which has had a profound negative impact on the lives of millions of people worldwide. Given various instances of corporations’ abnegation of their responsibility for the impacts of their actions, it is clear that the sole purpose of a business is not merely that of generating profits for its owners. Instead, because compassion provides the necessary equilibrium between a company's purpose and the needs of its communities, it should be the new philosophy of business. Emerging from the same paradigm as corporate social responsibility (CSR), compassion is the guiding precept that a company's positive impact on its community is primary to its generation of profits for its shareholders.

Collis P. Huntington, William S. Rainsford, and the Conclusion of Frank Norris's The Octopus

Collis P. Huntington, William S. Rainsford, and the Conclusion of Frank Norris's The Octopus Donald Pizer (bio) Frank Norris's The Octopus has had an uneven critical reputation. Initially greeted as a candidate for the long-awaited Great American Novel, it was embraced during the 1930s by the Left because of its ground-breaking attack on American corporate greed. Since then it has been mostly down hill. Both the novel's intellectual confusion and its stylistic excess now often receive the bulk of the attention afforded it, and, in recent decades, its racism and anti-Semitism have also increasingly raised hackles. Although some critics have sought to describe the coherent system of belief underlying the novel's events, even this group acknowledges that Norris has not succeeded in convincing most readers that his dramatization of this system is valid. My purpose in this essay is to contribute to the ongoing debate about the meaning of The Octopus by discussing freshly the presence in the novel of two striking public figures Norris met and admired while he was preparing and writing the work. The two figures are Collis P. Huntington, president of the Southern Pacific Railroad, and William S. Rainsford, rector of New York's St. George's Episcopal Church. By "presence in the novel," I mean, for Huntington, both that he served as a model for the portrait of Shelgrim at the close of The Octopus and that Shelgrim's defense of railroad practices plays a significant thematic role in this section of the novel. For Rainsford, I mean that his ethical ideas provided Norris a counter-argument to those of Shelgrim both throughout the work and especially in the crucial period between Presley's initial acceptance of Shelgrim's defense of the railroad and his conversion to Vanamee's beliefs. Although the possible presence in the conclusion of The Octopus of ideas derived from Emerson, Whitman, and Joseph Le Conte has long been noted, I will be seeking to contribute to the discussion of what Norris [End Page 133] was attempting to do in this much examined and usually attacked portion of the novel by examining the personalities and beliefs of the extremely forceful figures who served as principal sources for Norris's dramatization both of Presley's intellectual confusion and of his ultimate triumphant announcement of faith. In October 1898, Norris returned to New York from San Francisco, where he had been recuperating after becoming ill during his Cuban adventure.1 In December, he moved to Washington Square, and by January had become a member of St. George's, which was located at Stuyvesant Square, within easy walking distance of his home. Another stimulus to join this specific church may have been that several members of the McClure firm, including Frank N. Doubleday, were members, though, as we shall see, he may well have been drawn primarily by Rainsford's reputation. Norris announced in March 1899 his plan for a Trilogy of the Wheat and soon afterwards went to California on an extended research trip. He interviewed Huntington in San Francisco sometime during the spring of 1899 and then again in late August in New York after both he and Huntington had returned from the West. (Huntington's principal office and home were in New York, but he spent several months each year in San Francisco.) Norris married his San Francisco sweetheart, Jeannette Black, at St. George's in February 1900, after which they continued to live at Washington Square and to attend services at St. George's. The couple moved to New Jersey in September 1900, and Norris completed The Octopus in December. To sum up: During his preparation and composition of The Octopus, Norris met Huntington twice and was deeply impressed by him, and he not only attended Rainsford's church but was sufficiently acquainted with him for Rainsford to describe him, after Norris's death, as a friend (Rainsford, "Frank Norris"). Even before undertaking his research into the struggle between the railroad and the wheat ranchers that dominates The Octopus, Norris no doubt determined to make the Mussel Slough incident the climactic event of the novel. As a Californian during the 1890s, he had...

Images of Interracialism in Contemporary American Crime Fiction

Images of Interracialism in Contemporary American Crime Fiction Tarik Abdel-Monem (bio) Racial clues have always been written into crime fiction. Sherlock Holmes was as much an anthropologist as he was a detective. The venerable investigator of Britain’s imperial empire could as easily differentiate between the footprints of a Hindu or Muslim as he could identify the Chinese origins of a tattoo by its color.1 Although these types of racialized—and often racist—depictions are no longer mainstays of the genre, race still plays a central role in many contemporary works of crime fiction. Modern writers have brought new perspectives on race, justice, and social inequalities to contemporary crime stories, infusing the crime narrative with critical race, feminist, post-colonial, gay/lesbian, and other perspectives. Today’s authors are just as likely to find evil in individual villains as they are in racism, sexism, corporate greed, or political institutions. Crime fiction has thus become more and more a platform for social commentary as well as entertainment. But if race still has meaning and relevance to the detective story, it begs the question of what the significance is of interracialism in the criminal worlds of our collective imaginations. As America continues its Quixotic quest for a post-racial new world, an examination of our interracial imaginings poses important questions. In popular thought, miscegenation serves as an ideological symbol representing everything from racial genocide to racial harmony, from social destruction to social progress (Olumide 2002, 1–2). This article provides an overview of how ideologies of interracialism inhabit contemporary works of crime fiction. My argument is that [End Page 131] certain themes prevalent in earlier American literature have transferred quite comfortably into the modern crime genre, attesting to the longevity and persistence with which particular tropes of interracialism resound within the popular culture generally. Over 150 years after the flourishing of the tragic mulatto archetype, this recurring trope has found a welcome home in many of today’s crime novels. If one reads the crime story as a narrative about social morality, then the persistence of abject depictions of interracialism seem to affirm a continuing reluctance to perceive race-mixing favorably. Yet we also see in modern crime novels continual reference to a competing stereotype, that of the exceptional, multiracial super-being. Here, authors employ interracialism as a remedy or apology to the legacy of racism and racial division. The multiracial person is depicted as an exceptional being with physical and mental traits superior to monoracial persons. This trope also derives some of its content from the tragic mulatto tradition, but is informed more by a willingness to depict miscegenation as a socially beneficial development. In the structured and conservative crime fiction milieu, miscegenation can thus be employed to de-center traditional conventions and make bold—or naive—statements about modern American society and the role of race or interracialism in the development of a future ethos. The scope and depth of contemporary American crime fiction is vast and diverse. Like all forms of popular fiction, the crime story and its many sub-genres continue the process of evolution and reinvention. My exploration is a modest attempt at outlining basic contours of the more apparent—and, as I argue, the more troubling—trends relevant to depictions of interracialism in the genre. This article proceeds first by briefly outlining the tragic mulatto trope in earlier American literature, but will then concentrate on providing an overview of several contemporary works of crime fiction. All contemporary novels examined were chosen as examples of works which both feature prominent depictions of inter-racialism, and exist within modern times. Novels either written during or set in pre-Loving v. Virginia (1967) America are not examined in this article because they depict an earlier ethos about race and interracialism which departs from our contemporary zeitgeist. Four works will be examined specifically. Michael Crichton’s Rising Sun (1992), Lea Waits’ Shadows of the Spring Show (2005), and Richard Lupoff’s The Silver Chariot Killer (1996) are all works which prominently feature either or both of the interracial tropes noted above, and more importantly, deploy them to further their respective stories. I also examine Gary Hardwick’s Color...

City of industry: genealogies of power in Southern California

Founded in 1957, the Southern California suburb prophetically named City of Industry today represents, in the words of Victor Valle, The gritty crossroads of the global trade revolution that is transforming Southern California factories into warehouses, and adjacent working class communities into economic and environmental sacrifice zones choking on cheap goods and carcinogenic diesel exhaust. City of Industry is a stunning expose on the construction of corporate capitalist spaces.Valle investigated an untapped archive of Industry's built landscape, media coverage, and public records, including sealed FBI reports, to uncover a cascading series of scandals. A kaleidoscopic view of the corruption that resulted when local land owners, media barons, and railroads converged to build the city, this suspenseful narrative explores how new governmental technologies and engineering feats propelled the rationality of privatization using their property-owning servants as tools. Valle's tale of corporate greed begins with the city's founder James M. Stafford and ends with present day corporate heir, Edward Roski Jr., the nation's biggest industrial developeruco-owner of the L.A. Staples Arena and possible future owner of California's next NFL franchise. Not to be forgotten in Valle's captivating story are Latino working class communities living within Los Angeles's distribution corridors, who suffer wealth disparities and exposure to air pollution as a result of diesel-burning trucks, trains, and container ships that bring global trade to their very doorsteps. They are among the many victims of City of Industry.

EVA - Economic Value Added: Sifting the Direct from the Circumstantial

Ever since the accounting and financial disgraces at the turn of the new century and following the financial crisis and the resultant attack on corporate greed, Economic Value Added (EVA) has picked up momentum as a workable tool to allay and consolidate corporate, labour and objectives. It proposes a comlementary system to traditional accounting in the quest to distance financial reporting from its abuse and the creation of the despised market in performance. This Paper assesses how EVA confronts the performance/reporting and motivator/calculator issues and analyses whether the positive results emanate from its utilization.

Engaging with Climate Change Means Engaging with Our Human Nature

Engaging with Climate Change Means Engaging with Our Human Nature

Sticker Shock and Looming Tsunami

Recession is currently causing a resurgence of the academic serials crisis. Profit-mongering by commercial publishers is once again denounced as the key driver of the crisis. However, a critical analysis of institutional and bibliometric data does not reveal excessive corporate greed in recent years; instead, it suggests that the present hurdles stem largely from years of inadequate budget allocations to academic libraries and from a publishing frenzy fuelled by simplistic methods of evaluating faculty productivity. To prevent what is likely to be the publishing equivalent of a tsunami in the next few years, universities and research institutions urgently need to re-emphasize quality over quantity in the publishing process, and they must find ways to include peer-reviewing efficiency among their criteria for productivity and impact. Achieving these goals will require concerted efforts by researchers, librarians, and publishers.

Sticker Shock and Looming Tsunami: The High Cost of Academic Serials in Perspective

Recession is currently causing a resurgence of the academic serials crisis. Profit-mongering by commercial publishers is once again denounced as the key driver of the crisis. However, a critical analysis of institutional and bibliometric data does not reveal excessive corporate greed in recent years; instead, it suggests that the present hurdles stem largely from years of inadequate budget allocations to academic libraries and from a publishing frenzy fuelled by simplistic methods of evaluating faculty productivity. To prevent what is likely to be the publishing equivalent of a tsunami in the next few years, universities and research institutions urgently need to re-emphasize quality over quantity in the publishing process, and they must find ways to include peer-reviewing efficiency among their criteria for productivity and impact. Achieving these goals will require concerted efforts by researchers, librarians, and publishers.

Total Abuse of the Earth: Human Overpopulation and Climate Change

Abuse comes in many forms to humans—verbal, physical, emotional, economic/poverty, hunger, greed, and religious discrimination—sometimes subtle and sometimes with violence. These are only a few examples. What about the abuse that too many humans inflict daily on our planetary biosphere? We are addicted to oil, consumption of all resources, waste, and pollution, to name a few examples. The total planetary abuse is the extraction of hydrocarbons from the Earth and depositing the gasses and particulates in the atmosphere, oceans, soils, and bodies of animals. This form of abuse is the total pollution of our biosphere. To complicate the situation, add about 6.6 billion humans to the planet with an increase of 75 million humans annually. This is also abuse of our common shared biosphere. Combine global pollution/climate change with uncontrolled human population growth, and you have the perfect recipe for total planetary abuse. Add a few wars, unstable governments, dictatorships, corporate and individual greed, crime, lack of basic human rights and needs, violence and countries armed with every means of destruction possible, and you have a more complex recipe for total global abuse. Since this has all been said before, and many people did not heed the message or act upon the current situation, it is often necessary to remind humans again and again that total planetary abuse was never sustainable economically, socially, environmentally, or thermodynamically. For every barrel of oil extracted and consumed as an energy source, there is a corresponding amount of mass in the form of pollution (and heat as a byproduct) produced. Antoine Lavosier discovered and stated the first law of conservation of mass over two centuries ago. The mass of a closed system will remain constant regardless of the processes or event in the closed system. The mass of the reactants equals the mass of the products. Where does all that pollution from burning fossil fuels go? Into the atmosphere, ocean, soils, and living creatures of the planet while being consumed in heat engines or other devices and industrial processes. The perfect pollution machines are not very efficient. Automobiles are in the range of 20–25% efficient. The remainder is heat and exhaust pollution. Humans are not denying that we need energy for electrical generation, transportation, food production, and manufacturing to name a few examples. We all consume and we all pollute; some more than others. Cold climates are difficult to live in without energy sources for heating. However, adding 75 million more people to a bulging, hungry planet on a yearly basis is Water Air Soil Pollut (2010) 205 (Suppl 1):S113–S114 DOI 10.1007/s11270-009-0232-4

Side Effects: A Prosecutor, a Whistleblower, and a Bestselling Antidepressant on Trialby Alison Bass. Chapel Hill, N.C., Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2008, 260 pp., $24.95.

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Book ForumFull AccessSide Effects: A Prosecutor, a Whistleblower, and a Bestselling Antidepressant on TrialSPENCER ETH M.D.,SPENCER ETH M.D.Search for more papers by this author,Published Online:1 Apr 2009https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ajp.2008.08121834AboutSectionsPDF/EPUB ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InEmail Over the years, the pharmaceutical industry has offered almost all practicing psychiatrists gifts (both large and small), meals, and educational opportunities in their offices and at professional meetings. More recently, psychiatrists have been greeted in the morning with front-page newspaper exposés of huge sums being directed by these same drug companies to the physician leaders of our field. In Side Effects: A Prosecutor, a Whistleblower, and a Bestselling Antidepressant on Trial , journalist Alison Bass has written the powerful story of a leading medication, its manufacturer, and a favored psychiatrist, whose driving force was profit not treatment. Although no longer shocking in the context of so many pharmaceutical scandals, this book is still necessary medicine for the public and for physicians who wish to know the operational details of one dirty little piece of the enormous pharmaceutical-medical complex. It unfolds as the sad tale of an established and lucrative antidepressant that came to be promoted for use by adolescents based on the questionable, if not biased, support of scientific experts who were themselves the beneficiaries of the drug company’s largesse. Side Effects opens with the case vignette of a teenager who asks her primary care physician about a particular antidepressant after watching its direct-to-consumer advertisement on television (1) . Later, her symptoms of anxiety and depression paradoxically intensify after being prescribed this medication, and she eventually mutilates herself in self-destructive despair. The author weaves together the stories of the protagonists—a clinical and research psychiatrist, a public interest lawyer, and a teaching hospital administrator (2) —who together drive a successful lawsuit for consumer fraud brought by the Office of the New York Attorney General against the antidepressant’s manufacturer. Of particular interest to Journal readers is the account of the psychiatrist, who published an initial case series identifying the phenomenon of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor-induced suicidality. His portrait as an idealistic and dedicated physician is contrasted with that of a well-financed medical school department of psychiatry chairman, whose alignment with the pharmaceutical industry appears to erode his scientific credibility and jeopardize patient care. Although drug companies should not be confused with the Mafia, criticizing their products is not a smart career move for aspiring academic psychiatrists lacking the resources to defend themselves and their beliefs. In keeping with the genre, it is easy to discern who are the heroes, villains, and victims, and it is surprising and gratifying when truth and justice prevail at last, although not entirely. This well-told cautionary lacks the excitement of a novel but instead informs the reader with an actual case study with the real names of psychiatrists we know. We can see exactly how corporate greed, drug-company-sponsored clinical research, and mental health care become a toxic mix that inevitably damages our patients’ well being, our colleagues’ reputations, and our profession’s good name. Now what we need is a book showing us how to fix this mess before it is too late to save the patients and physicians who must depend on the integrity of the pharmaceutical industry.New York, N.Y.The author reports no competing interests.Book review accepted for publication January 2009 (doi: 10.1176/appi.ajp.2008.08121834).Reprints are not available; however, Book Forum reviews can be downloaded at http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org.

Richardthesecond : Adapting Shakespeare to the Local in a Culture of Global Celebrity

This essay discusses how Matthew MacFadzean’s richardthesecond adapts Shakespeare’s Richard II to both popular American (or global) culture and local (Canadian) points of orientation. MacFadzean’s solo multimedia performance treats sceptically both the notion that Shakespeare can be used as a high-culture defence against popular culture and Marshall McLuhan’s proposition that Canada is an anti-environment that renders visible the United States’ global environment. Instead, richardthesecond aligns culturally conservative views of Shakespeare with multinational corporate greed and implies that Canada cannot form a national identity that is wholly distinct from that of the United States. The play requires of its audience a sort of “triple vision,” or a fluency in Shakespeare and popular culture as well as a detailed understanding of Canadian culture. Ultimately, the demands that MacFadzean makes on his audience not only demonstrate the interpenetration of the global and the local but also expose the heterogeneity of local theatre communities.

Richardthesecond: Adapting Shakespeare to the Local in a Culture of Global Celebrity

This essay discusses how Matthew MacFadzean's richardthesecond adapts Shakespeare's Richard II to both popular American (or global) culture and local (Canadian) points of orientation. MacFadzean's solo multimedia performance treats sceptically both the notion that Shakespeare can be used as a high-culture defence against popular culture and Marshall McLuhan's proposition that Canada is an anti-environment that renders visible the United States' global environment. Instead, richardthesecond aligns culturally conservative views of Shakespeare with multinational corporate greed and implies that Canada cannot form a national identity that is wholly distinct from that of the United States. The play requires of its audience a sort of “triple vision,” or a fluency in Shakespeare and popular culture as well as a detailed understanding of Canadian culture. Ultimately, the demands that MacFadzean makes on his audience not only demonstrate the interpenetration of the global and the local but also expose the heterogeneity of local theatre communities.

Financial sustainability through contingency planning: multi-case study

As the discipline of strategic management grows from the lessons to be learned from the current financial crisis, it is important to take strategic perspectives at how industries, represented by specific companies, could be affected by such economic disasters, both in terms of internal and external stakeholders. As companies establish strategies for financially sustainability, this article looks at three major companies representing this respective industries with successful and disastrous results. Outlined are strategies and concepts that can be helpful for managers and executives to navigate in today's chaotic marketplace, citing that innovative management is necessary for businesses to survive long-term recessions and depressions and to prove the framework for long-term financial sustainability. The basic lessons to be learned are for firms not to panic due to corporate fear and greed; stay the course and recommit to their core values and competencies; and selectively cut costs.

Democracy, the Catastrophic, and Courage: A Conversation with Cornel West and David Kyuman Kim

Democracy, the Catastrophic, and CourageA Conversation with Cornel West and David Kyuman Kim David Kyuman Kim October 2008 DKK: This is a conversation with Cornel West for Theory & Event about the upcoming presidential election, about political possibilities, and about the state and status of democracy. Cornel, perhaps the most direct way to start is to ask how can we assess the significance of this election. There are "common" characteristics that are played out in terms of having the first black man as a major candidate for his party, and with Hilary Clinton as the first major female candidate for her party. But my sense is that there are many, many more things playing out in this election that make it significant. From your vantage point, from your estimation, how would you begin to break it down? CW: I think that we're dealing with an empire in decline, a democracy in decay, and a civilization that is wobbling and wavering. So this is one of the pivotal moments in the history of the United States, with significant ramifications and repercussions around the world. So when we look at this election what we're really looking at is wrestling with the question as to whether America has the wherewithal for democratic revitalization, or whether we will see the extension of a political ice age where the numbed hearts and the coarsened conscience, and the frozen democratic possibilities really reinforce the decline and the decay. To that degree, we could not be facing a more significant election. Wall Street now is in catastrophe, corporate greed running amuck, hand in hand with the indifference toward the weak and the most vulnerable at the cultural level. And then of course the same politics of fear that we've seen associated with the Southern strategy going all the way back to Reagan. McCain is a catastrophic response to a catastrophe. Obama we'll see whether he has more than a timid and anemic response to the catastrophe. I hope he does. I'm supporting him. Not just supporting him but putting pressure on him, especially his advisors. He is recycling the same old neoliberal economic advisors, which is not encouraging at all: the Rubins and the Summers and the Tysons. He needs the Robert Kuttners and the William Greiders and the Joseph Stiglitzs and the Paul Krugmans. Instead, he holds them at arm's length. That's not a good sign, at all. On the international scale, of course, both candidates fail, in a major way. They claim concern about Latin America, but they have no sense of the rise of Latin America. They are still tied to the Washington consensus. They are still tied to neoliberal economics policies. I was just in Brazil with Roberto Unger who is in the cabinet of Lula. In Brazil, they almost laugh at the kind of things said about Latin America among the Obama people. McCain they don't take seriously. The same would be true in terms of the Middle East. There is a sense in which we are wrestling with despair at the deepest level. Is it the case that the democratic project is just running out of gas? Is it the case that this is the moment for the American Gibbon? I hope not. I don't like doom and gloom, but it more and more looks that way. It really does. It more and more looks that way. DKK: Well, you've covered a lot, and have already hit on a number of important issues I'd like to talk about. Let's start with the catastrophic. Very few would deny that we're living not just in the midst of a catastrophe but multiple catastrophes. We have financial catastrophe. We have Wall Street with the banking crisis. We have political, military, and humanitarian catastrophes with wars on multiple fronts. And frankly we have a moral catastrophe, where we as a nation have legitimated the use of torture such that we seem to have lost the ability to say "no" to it. So it seems to me that a catastrophic element has found its way into multiple spheres as well into our moral...

What Went Wrong?: Accounting Fraud and Lessons from the Recent Scandals

Gary Giroux What Went Wrong? Accounting Fraud and Lessons from the Recent Scandals In the public eye, Enron’s mission was nothing more than the cover stoiy for a massive fraud. —Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind CORPORATE FRAUD, BANKRUPTCIES, AND VARIOUS ILLEGAL ACTS HAVE always been part of the business environment. Every time fiascos erupt there is a shock, but business history records dozens of major failures, frauds, and other measures of massive corruption each decade. The big ones often hit during recessions or periods of other economic problems, as expected. The high-risk firms are the most vulnerable to economic shocks. The recent scandals are no exceptions. The most important scandals are the focus of this paper and are summarized in table 1. Although the problems that exist are diverse, a few common characteristics stand out. The first is the obvious backdrop of corporate greed. Presumably, senior executives expect to get away with it. They also fit the financial-corporate culture described above. And earnings manipulation is part of (and usually central to) most of the scandals. Some of them used brazen and unsophisticated approaches (such as WorldCom), while others used new, sophisticated devices to defraud (like Enron). Determining the existence of criminal acts takes years. social research Vol 75 : No 4 : Winter 2008 1205 Table 1. Twenty-First-Century Scandals Company Year Description Enron 2001 Declared bankruptcy on December 2, 2001 after restating earnings in the 3rd-quarter 10-Q, indicating major problems with spe­ cial-purpose entities. Investigations by the SEC, Justice Department, and others; execu­ tives indicted and class-action lawsuits filed. Global Crossing 2002 Overstated revenue and earnings over net­ work capacity swaps and then declared bankruptcy; investigated by SEC and FBI. WorldCom 2002 Recorded improper expenses of $3.8 bil­ lion and then declared bankruptcy; under investigation for accounting fraud and other violations; the amount of improper expenses uncovered approached $10 billion. Tyco 2002 Conglomerate with questionable practices on accounting for acquisitions and other issues. Restated 1999-2001 financials based on merger-related restructurings plus other problems with reserves. CEO and CFO indicted. Qwest 2002 Subject to criminal investigation by Justice Department and accounting practice probe by the SEC, associated with “hollow swaps.” Adelphia 2002 Cable TV operation charged with over­ stating earnings; former CEO John Rigas charged with looting the company, which went bankrupt. Imclone 2002 Insider trading charges against former CEO for selling stock after FDA rejected a new drug; alleged to have tipped off Martha Stewart and other friends and relatives. Merrill Lynch, Salomon, Smith Barney, Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, J. P . Morgan, and others 2002 Major investment banks settled with the New York attorney general, SEC, and other regulators on deceptive stock analysis and other brokerage-related practices, similar to Merrill Lynch earlier. The total fine was a combined $2 billion approximately, plus other sanctions and agreement to correct deceptive practices. 1206 social research Table 1, continued HealthSouth 2003 Accused of accounting fraud involving $1.4 billion in earnings and $800 million in over­ stated assets. Former CFO and others plead­ ed guilty to fraud charges. The Mutual Funds Scandal 2003 The mutual funds have only limited SEC reg­ ulation requirements and often poor corpo­ rate governance, yet have been considered highly ethical. That changed when New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer sued them on several counts. Some pundits consider the mutual fund scandal as egregious as Enron. Fannie Mae 2004 Fraudulent accounting practices totaling $16 billion and extensive payouts to ousted executives; earnings restated and executives fired. AIG 2005 Internal control weaknesses and poor corpo­ rate governance; CEO fired. Stock Option Backdating 2006 Backdating options grant date to lower stock price; dozens of companies investi­ gated by SEC. Subprime Loans 2007 Massive number of mortgage loans to sub­ prime borrowers, often without documen­ tation. Mortgages then repackaged through SPEs and sold as bonds. Huge losses taken at major financial institutions and many executives fired. An FBI investigation is ongoing. Two industries were particularly prominent in the scandals: the energy companies and telecommunications. Deregulation allowed the stodgy energy companies that carried out such basic operations as trans­ mitting natural gas to become high-tech energy traders using sophis­ ticated derivatives...

The US elections and the global recession: what's next?

On 4 November, 2004, Americans elected their first ever African–American President, Barack Obama. The historic event has been hailed by the news media as signifying the breakdown of the last remaining racial barrier in US society. That’s the good news. The bad news is that President-elect Obama confronts a crisis like no other incoming President has faced since Franklin Delano Roosevelt came to office in the midst of the Great Depression. The country is fighting two wars, and the global economy just collapsed. At least American voters picked the right team to deal with the economic wreckage. In most exit polls, fixing the economy was foremost on voters’ minds, and their enthusiasm was evidently not aroused by Senator McCain’s economic advisors, who included the likes of fellow Republican Phil Gramm of Texas, who opined during the election campaign that America was a nation of “whiners” stuck in a “mental recession”. (For the record, Senator Gramm was also one of the key figures in the deregulation of the investment banking industry in 1999 that scrapped the laws and protections passed by Congress in 1933 after the last great market crash). In one sense, therefore, the election of Obama was a resounding repudiation of the economic policies of the last 8 years. Market deregulation, laissez-faire and corporate greed did in the economy. The subprime mortgage crisis and the resulting credit crunch are spilling their toxic effects to the rest of the globe, even to countries that were initially believed to be insulated from the shocks, like China. Yet it seems like yesterday that commentators were applauding the sagacity of the former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan’s stewardship of the economy—does anyone remember Bob Woodward’s act of hagiography published not so long ago, entitled “ Maestro: Greenspan’s Fed and the American Boom ” …