It is interesting how far people can go to further their own advantage. How little they seem to care about the implications of their actions, or simply the message they convey. This week I couldn’t help wondering if the CEO’s of those banks that received bailout money and spent it on themselves - rather than on getting the economy back on track as they were supposed to- were really content with the choices they made. I mean, did they think it was the ‘right thing to do’ to spend millions of other people’s money and prefer not to disclose what they did with it? Or was it more a matter of seeing whether they would get away with paying their executives extraordinary bonuses, private jets, or exclusive holiday trips for their 3% top customers? (Ref Bloomberg.com). We will probably never know, because almost all of these banks will return the money rather than offer transparent explanations as of the whereabouts of these emergency funds. “We’d like nothing better than to pay it back early,” said Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis (same source); isn’t that nice, but why, you’d ask, if that money was needed so desperately after the financial meltdown? - “They (all these banks) don’t want the government involved in their business, it’s as simple as that.” So I suppose they weren’t really in a cash crisis, then?
Ethics as a sign of weakness
For these banks to return the moneys rather than become constructive aids in a deep economic crisis tells us exactly what their working principles are. I read about them in a completely different but equally depressing context, but they somehow seem to fit:
“To use everything as a means and themselves as an end.”
Considering how much positive transformative work could have been done by powerful institutions such as banks if they really would have put their heads to it, is sad and frustrating. It seems as if most of them only thought about enriching themselves whilst millions of other people lost their homes, went bankrupt, stopped going to college, or have to work three jobs now. Their major leadership mistakes were:
First, their lack of Transparency in their dealings with the bailout funds which made everyone wary about their use (rightly so, as it turns out.) Second, they showed no foresight and will to work towards the common good. They didn’t see the enormous potential not only to rescue thousands of individuals but maybe to do their bit to boost the economy (which would have helped them, too).
But let’s wake up now from our dream of ethically responsible banks. Many simply follow the same hard-core business philosophy as summarized in this book that I'm reading:
“Whoever says that it’s amoral, that life can’t exist without ethics, that the economy has limits and must obey certain rules, is merely someone who has never been in command, who’s been defeated by the market. ”
There you go. And let’s add one more:
“Ethics are the limit of the loser, the protection of the defeated, the moral justification for those who haven’t manage to gamble everything and win it all.”
These sentences keep taking my breath away. Do you think that this is what some leaders believe? Can you seriously do business with other human beings whilst maintaining an attitude like this? Well, thinking of Madoff & Co and what wonderful example we experience again this week by watching banks with names such as JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs und Lloyd Blanfein, screwing their way back out of deep trouble, I think the answer to both questions is Yes.
Where did I get these references from? The real-life thriller Gomorrah by Roberto Saviano provides us with (almost too) deep insights into the human soul in this mind blowing book. The fact that he describes the attitude of the Camorra clan, business-Mafiosi operating in Southern Italy, is a sheer coincidence. I swear.
I look forward to your comments, or emails to andrea@derlercoaching.com
No comments:
Post a Comment