Filed in archive
Ethics
on September 3, 2010
There is a certain delicious irony when we read the story of how Facebook founder and chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg now wants to protect his privacy. Zuckerberg, who is now embroiled in a court case with a New Yorker Paul Ceglia who claims he owns most of the social networking site, says the other party is trying to get legal discovery into details about Zuckerberg's private life.
Irony of ironies. This is the man who has made a fortune collecting information about his web site's users. Facebook keeps launching features that keep raising privacy concerns from civil liberties groups.
And Zuckerberg himself has said that the age of privacy is over. Speaking at a public function earlier this year, he said: "People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people. That social norm is just something that has evolved over time. We view it as our role in the system to constantly be innovating and be updating what our system is to reflect what the current social norms are."
But then, he would say his privacy is sacrosanct.
Filed in archive
risk
on September 3, 2010
The world is headed to a food crisis. Russia has announced a 12 month extension of its grain export ban, coinciding with riots in Mozamique that have left seven dead. The Financial Times warns that this could lead to a repeat of the 2007-08 food shortages which set off riots in countries around the world and helped trigger the collapse of governments in Haiti and Madagascar.
At the same time, The Independent reports that freakish weather conditions and soaring demand from China, Brazil and other fast-emerging economies have pushed meat prices around the world to a 20-year high, sending food prices to their highest level in two years. This will push inflation higher right around the world. It's a warning for governments.
This week, I wrote a column about how the world was headed towards a global famine and we could be seeing the first signs of this happening.
The French and Russian revolutions showed us the political fallout from food crises. Hopefully, the looming food shortage might galvanize governments into acting.
Filed in archive
Ethics
on September 2, 2010
BP went on an advertising spending spree during the Gulf oil spill, all to bolster its appalling reputation. According to USA Today, the company spent $93 million on advertising after the Gulf oil spill.
BP had in effect tripled the amount it had spent on advertising. It was spending anywhere between $1 million to $5 million a day on advertising.
Not that any of this has helped restore BP's reputation. Associated Press reports that BP has since been denied a potentially lucrative license to drill for oil off the coast of Greenland, its plans to begin deep-water drilling in Libya and the North Sea have been delayed, and its vast offshore US operations remain under a cloud.
Don't expect BP to be awarded with major projects over the next year or so. Reputation management can only go so far.
Filed in archive
risk
on September 2, 2010
Peak oil is going to happen soon and could lead to the collapse of democracy, according to a secret German military report that has been leaked online.
Der Spiegel reports that a German military think tank warns that there is "some probability that peak oil will occur around the year 2010 and that the impact on security is expected to be felt 15 to 30 years later."
The document warns that this could threaten democracy , creating "room for ideological and extremist alternatives to existing forms of government." Fragmentation of the affected population is likely and could "in extreme cases lead to open conflict."
Besides the political upheaval, it warns of market failures, colossal tax hikes, food shortages and widespread rationing.
But then, maybe the prospect of peak oil might be just the thing governments need to address climate change. According to a Lloyds of London study, climate change, breakneck development in China, India, Brazil and South Africa and constraints on easy to access oil are creating the problem.
Graham Wayne in The Guardian says peak oil might actually give governments room to tackle climate change without alienating vested interests.
"Since it will happen far sooner than any of the more serious impacts of climate change, we should abandon attempts to stop fossil fuel use because of climate change and concentrate on reducing fuel use, controlling energy prices and keeping national economies reasonably stable. That's a sell the public will buy into: the price of petrol or heating oil, the security of their jobs, the scarcity of resources - these are things the public can feel and see, and that contrarians cannot obfuscate out of ideological opposition. Peak oil is inevitable. Something has to give, and it's consumerism. Governments know this perfectly well. What they really need is some externality, something abstract they can blame - deflecting the public wrath from the ballot box. Western governments need a villain. Oil at $200 a barrel fits the bill perfectly."
A similar point is raised in a new study from The Australia Institute which suggests we have to bring in road pricing, get rid of low fuel taxes, invest more in public transit systems and encourage use of alternative fuels like biodiesel, ethanol, LNG and CNG.
It looks like we might run out of cheap oil before we work out what to do about climate change. The prospect of peak oil might force us to deal with both issues. Can we kill two birds with one stone?
Filed in archive
executive pay
on September 1, 2010
While America's unemployment rate continues to climb, the fat cat chief executives are cashing in. In fact, they are making money off the jobless.
Research released by the left leaning Institute for Policy Studies found that the CEOs who sacked the most workers took the home the biggest pay rises. By sacking workers, they cut costs which drove up their profits which increased their bonuses.
"In 2009, the CEOs who slashed their payrolls the deepest took home 42 percent more compensation than the year's chief executive pay average for S&P 500 companies. Most careful analysts of the high-finance meltdown that ushered in the Great Recession have concluded that excessive executive compensation played a prime causal role. Outrageously high rewards gave executives an incentive to behave outrageously, to take the sorts of reckless risks that would eventually endanger our entire economy," the Institute says.
The Institute found that the average CEO on its list of the 50 layoff leaders made $12 million in 2009 compared to the average $8.5 million that CEOs at S&P 500 companies received. The average CEO on the list announced 10,627 layoffs at his or her company between November 2008, and April 2010.
In other words, chief executives cashed in on layoffs. Just the sort of stuff that is fuelling the populist anger sweeping America now.
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