Arianna Huffington: Why It's Wrong When Wrongdoers Are Allowed to Admit No Wrongdoing. "The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting. " So wrote Milan Kundera in The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. It is one of my favorite quotes and it popped into my head as I was reading about last week's settlement between JPMorgan and the SEC in which the banking giant agreed to pay a $25 million penalty and cancel $647 million in fees owed by Alabama's Jefferson County as the result of a complicated derivatives deal that blew up in the county's face.
As part of the settlement, JPMorgan neither admitted nor denied wrongdoing -- despite ample evidence that it had engaged in plenty of wrongdoing. Things like paying off local officials with millions to win no-bid contracts worth billions and convincing county officials to switch from fixed-rate bonds to bonds hedged with risky derivatives -- a switch that has driven Jefferson County to the brink of bankruptcy. "We have been victimized by our creditors," said a county official. Sustainability Virtual Summits: a virtual event series focusing on sustainable Information and Communications Technologies. Keynote Speakers Achim SteinerUNEP Executive DirectorUnited Nations Under-Secretary General Dr.
Helmut ReisingerSenior Vice PresidentOrange Business Services Nick EarleSenior VP, Services Europe & Global EnterpriseCisco Systems Inc. Vineeth RamVP Global Strategic MarketingPanduit Corp Jean-Marc LagoutteGroup CIODanone Guido JouretVP & CTO, Emerging Technologies GroupCisco Systems, Inc. Georg KellExecutive DirectorUnited Nations Global Compact Axel HaentjensVP Marketing, Brand & External CommunicationsOrange Business Services Peter WertmerSr. Marc FossierChief Corporate Social Responsibility OfficerFrance Telecom - Orange Group Joanne TyreeChief Information OfficerPanduit Corp Stephen HarperGlobal Director, Environment & Energy PolicyIntel Corporation Ludwig GraffDirector, Verizon Core Network & TechnologyVerizon Communications ICT for Smart ICT ICT for Collaboration and Unified Communcations ICT for Smart Grid Smart grids will be one of the major components of a new, low-carbon economy.
We can't grow ourselves out of debt, no matter what the Federal Reserve does | Charles Eisenstein. Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke told Jackson Hole economic symposium that the bank would help promote a stronger economic recovery. Photograph: Stringer/Reuters Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke's pledge at Jackson Hole last Friday to "promote a stronger economic recovery" through "additional policy accommodation" has drawn criticism from economists, liberal and conservative, who question whether the Fed has the wherewithal to stimulate economic growth.
What we actually need is more spending, say the liberals. No, less spending, say the conservatives. But underneath these disagreements lies an unexamined agreement, a common assumption that no mainstream economist or policy-maker ever questions: that the purpose of economic policy is to stimulate growth. So ubiquitous is the equation of growth with prosperity that few people ever pause to consider it.
Economists say this is a good thing. Obviously, it isn't true that the more we buy, the happier we are. Does that sound scary? Charles Eisenstein. CPSL Business Platforms | Progressive Business Commentary and Action on Sustainability | Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership | CPSL.