I remember back in November 2009 reading this article:
Almost immediately I contacted some bankers I knew in New York and said that whichever Corporate Communications person(s) advised them to do this interview should be reprimanded because there were bound to be repercussions to what is such an obviously self-congratulatory (and seeming hubristic) piece.
It probably attracted attention and scrutiny towards Goldman Sachs for all the wrong reasons — even though I think that Goldman Sachs’ intention may simply have been to say, “Our good teamwork is what’s made us survive this financial crisis better than our competitors.”
In my view, CEOs have every right to be proud of their teams if — against the most challenging market conditions — they manage to outperform their competitors in profitability terms. However, given the underlying context of global government bailouts, mass unemployment resulting from the fallout of the Credit Crunch and the widespread disappointment and anger by shareholders who had seen their portfolio values plummet, it would have been a whole lot SMARTER STRATEGICALLY not to rub everyone’s nose into it by saying they are “doing God’s work”.
In this climate, it would be better for ALL the banks to essentially just focus on rebuilding their balance sheets, implementing smarter risk management capabilities and check points, lending and servicing their clients, restoring market confidence, contributing positively towards sector reform, steadying themselves with consistent quarter-on-quarter profitability and keeping themselves off the front pages for the next 18-20 months.
As it is, the Corporate Communications team at Goldman Sachs will now literally have to “do God’s work” and produce some miracles for this SEC civil case not to affect the bank’s share price or brand reputation.
US-based readers may want to watch the ‘Colbert Report’ on Goldman Sachs;
Well, it was bound to happen. It was simply a matter of when. The UK Chancellor in his Pre-Budget Report has announced the following measures to deal with the challenges (read SIZEABLE DEFICIT) the UK finds itself in:
* A 0.5% increase in National Insurance Contributions from everyone earning over GBP20,000 per annum as from 2011.
* Government borrowing in 2009 will rise to GBP178bn instead of the previously forecasted GBP175bn.
* Immediate introduction of 50 percent tax on any individual discretionary bonus in the banking sector of more GBP25,000.
More information is available on these sites. Please note that they link to original source materials from HM Treasury, professional perspectives from accounting firms like PwC and also to media commentators. When assessing a budget (any budget) it’s wise to examine it from a 360-2020 rather than just accept whatever the government, opposition party, professional advisory or media position is.
The issue with budget numbers is that they are often “sliced and diced” according to some pre-existing political strategy (whether that’s between actual political parties or business units within a company or left-leaning, centrist, right-wing mouthpiece), so it’s better to be as analytically impartial and objective as possible!
Interestingly, my mother and I very recently had a spirited debate about whether bankers’ bonuses should be taxed. I explained to her about RBS’s board arguing that they should be able to pay their bankers GBP million bonuses from a GBP1.5 billion bonus pool:
My mother said that it is “NOT RIGHT” that bankers responsible for the global financial crisis and decimating the value of people’s shares and life savings should be rewarded for their “lack of fulfillment of responsibility — the responsibility to take people’s money and GROW IT, TURN IT INTO A PROFIT, A YIELD, ETC.”
I explained to her about current EU laws of employment contract and how some people are arguing that to tax bankers’ bonuses would:
(1.) Contravene EU human rights (apparently).
(2.) Be unenforceable because it would require EVERY financial institution’s participation or bankers would simply move from one culture that pays them a poor bonus to one that pays more.
(3.) Result in an exodus by financial institutions from the UK to more favorable tax regimes like Switzerland or Ireland.
She was fairly disappointed that some bankers are adopting this position and also angry that ordinary households have had to bail out the banks and now are expected to stay schtum about GBP million bonuses from failures. She noted that it sends out the wrong message: we will reward you, regardless — even for your incompetence.
I also tried to explain to her the concepts of retrospective clawbacks and how the lawyers are saying that that’s not easy to enforce either.
She didn’t buy that either.
She was so shocked by the bonus culture of the banking sector, I reminded her: “I don’t make the laws, the rules and the codes of conduct.”
To which she replied, “Well, the people in power need to change the laws, rules and codes of conduct if bankers are losing everyone money.”
“Ah,” I said, “Not EVERY banker is losing their shareholders, their clients and their bank’s money. Now, let’s think of former colleagues of mine who are highly competent, socially responsible and work seriously hard and smart. Should they be penalized by some knee jerk blanket tax on all bankers because of a handful of idiots who happened to have controlled US$ billions of what is now known to be toxic mortgage assets?”
“No, of course not! If they do a good job they should be rewarded. It gives them an incentive to work hard and smart.”
“Right. Also, how would you like it if I was still a banker, called you one day and said, “Mama, you know how I worked 18 hours a day, completed Project XYZ, we earned US$ millions in the transaction………And now because of some idiot mortgage guy my bonus is going to be taxed 50 percent………..How would you feel if I called you and said this?”
“I’d be upset and angry for you. Why should you lose a bonus you worked hard towards.”
“EXACTLY!”
Great……so I’m looking forward to our next conversation when I explain to her about the Pre-Budget proposals — LOL!
Here’s the thing: as a former banker I’m more than informed about how the bonus system actually works and that some bankers merit and earn their bonuses more than others. By my rule book this would include:
* long-term strategic benefits on behalf of their clients (i.e. consistent increase in profit over 3-5 years);
* wider community engagement (e.g., they assist in outreach programs with local schools in deprived areas); and
* foster the positive reputation of their team, their unit, their bank and their profession.
Unfortunately, some bankers simply don’t have these considerations. They’re selfish, egotistical and into hubris (and destroying other’s lives and finances in their wake).
However, there are also some OUTSTANDINGLY BRILLIANT BANKERS who complete their responsibilities with insight, seriousness and with high morals and standards. It’s not their fault the “Triple I’s (ignoble, incompetent idiots) lied to them about the toxic mortgage poo-poo and they’re now the ones having to clean up the mess AND getting their bonuses taxed.
Today is my birthday and instead of writing about how glamorous I’m going to look for my birthday, I want to focus on a serious topic.
In the past fortnight a number of articles have sparked some attention:
I am also mindful of the excellent BBC documentary series ‘The Love of Money’:
SHOULD BANKERS RECEIVE BIG BONUSES?
Yes, SOME of them should. There are bankers who are a total waste of space; they do little of the work, are “me-me-and-moreme” and get excessive credit. However, there are also bankers who work incredibly hard, apply their smarts (and expensive MBA educations) appropriately and are the difference between companies (and entire countries) increasing in value, output and ultimately corporation tax towards government treasure chests for the building of schools, hospitals and other social infrastructure.
Still, legislation should be introduced so that there are no wholesale bonuses across-the-board — even for those who may have contributed to the global financial crisis in the first place.
The City and Wall Street are supposed to be MERITOCRATIC places so rewards (if any) should be based on the banker actually achieving objectives of merit on behalf of their clients, wider society and positive wealth creation rather than wealth decimation.
MY EXPERIENCE OF BANKING
My path into investment banking was unusual. Unlike most graduates I wasn’t part of the graduate trainee program and I also didn’t progress because of nepotism, old boys’ networks or because I was in a personal relationship with someone in a position of power. Nonetheless, within the space of two years I went from being a data input temp in a back office function to this in my mid-20s:
* CEO-Chairman’s Office, specializing in strategic investments and corporate strategy;
* a designated “revenue generator” (about 90% of employees are designated “support” and less than 10% are “contract”). Big-time revenue generators are known as “rainmakers”; they’re the ones who make those US$billion deals happen and, yes, they’re the ones who get the eye-watering US$ millions bonuses the media love to write about.
* creating and running e-Intelligence;
* being co-responsible for the Strategic Investments portfolio of 50+ constituents which included the likes of Perot Systems and all the major trading platforms in the world;
* being board observer on 20+ technology investments globally;
* having input on what was invested in, written down and exited (I wrote the Strategic Investments policy as well as co-authored the termsheets for Private Equity third party agreements);
* one of only 30 employees world-wide to be taught Corporate Finance by the Dean of INSEAD before he stopped his classes due to other commitments.
It should be noted that long before the bank I was known in my own right in other positions of leadership like: managing 15 country coverage in a dotcom, responsible for the ‘Risk Banking Survey’ of 3000 banks globally aged all of 22, Academic Board and Student Council member at university, responsible for European drinks projects at the second largest aromachemicals company in the world when I was 19, model student at high school (English and Chinese, plus Royal Institution maths master classes for gifted children), school monitor in junior school from 8-11.
Others have commented previously about my prodigiousness. The truth is that a person can only be as good as the people who are their role models and mentors and I’m blessed to benefit from being taught, trained and nurtured by some of the most phenomenal, wise and generous people in the world.
SEXISM + PROMOTION IN THE CITY
Luckily for me, my direct manager was and continues to be a BRILLIANT leader. He’s married to an incredibly smart and talented MBA (who was previously a top-flight management consultant), so he appreciated and understood how to develop my intelligence, knowhow and drive to collaborate successfully, and he did everything he could to be an OUTSTANDING ROLE MODEL — both in terms of delegating and entrusting me with responsibilities as well as simply being a supportive, meritocratic and decent human being.
From all the positive feedback that the Global Heads of business and senior MDs provided about me, my line manager went to a Special Committee to present the rational case for why I should be promoted as an “exceptional case” to bank policy.
HR informed us that I was the first and only person in the bank’s history this happened to.
Years after we no longer work together we stay in touch and meet up if we’re in the same city. His proven leadership skills is why his team is ranked #1 in their specialism; if you are lucky enough to work with an outstanding manager you’re inspired to work 8000% harder, simply feel motivated to go those extra miles and want to aim even higher to achieve team success. It’s that simple.
It is not at all the case that the City and Wall Street are populated by egotistical Neanderthals. There are good men and women there who are super-smart, work exceptional hours and who also care about their teams and others. However, it would be denial to say that discrimination and inappropriate behaviors don’t exist in high finance.
THE GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRISIS
It would also be denial to say that the system(s) should stay the same and it’s “business as usual” after the recent global financial crisis. Very senior people I’ve spoken with in the last year are absolutely appalled at the outright incompetence, excessive risks and lack of information/communication between and within business units. The corporate financiers, commodities traders and oil analysts are keen to distance themselves from the guys who structured those toxic mortgage CDO assets.
The Private Equity sector is particularly annoyed because the effects of that near-collapse of liquidity now mean that there is hardly any capital around, so they’re finding it tough to raise funds. That doesn’t augur well for companies seeking investment in 2009 and 2010 because it means the funds are at depleted levels. Any funds which are available are being ploughed into existing portfolio companies and, if start-ups are lucky enough to attract investment, the terms are a lot tougher than during times when the financial system was awash with cash and liquidity. For example, start-ups are now having to give away more equity in their company for less investment than during boom times.
TALKING HEADS & WALK THE TALKERS
What has been noticeable during recent outpourings of commentary about the global financial crisis is that about 99% of commentators have no or little direct experience of corporate strategy and implementation at the highest levels of banking. Yes, Nouriel Roubini, Paul Krugman and Alan Greenspan as well as entire rafters of financial journalists and politicians would be included in this. Their perspectives are intellectual abstractions or politicking rather than pragmatic first-hand experience.
The question has been asked by lots of people, “Why did no one see this coming? Why couldn’t the economists predict this bust? Where were the risk managers?” Apparently, some leading economists including those at the Bank of England replied to the Queen’s question of the same with this:
“In summary, your Majesty, the failure to foresee the timing, extent and severity of the crisis and to head it off, while it had many causes, was principally a failure of the collective imagination of many bright people, both in this country and internationally, to understand the risks to the system as a whole,”
The answer is simple: they have NEVER seen the blueprints and balance sheet strategies of any of the investment banks. They have also never been charged with the responsibility of implementation — and we all know that ideas and theories are one thing but SMART EXECUTION IS WHAT’s VALUABLE. Besides which, those commentators have no access to the systems and blueprints that govern how banks operate. Not even the bank’s own economists and Heads of Risk Management do. The management consultants who come in to help shape a little bit of the strategy are also not getting the 360-2020 insights.
The blueprints are what give any bank their competitive advantage over their peers and are so confidential that no more than a dozen people are privy to and have clearance to them. 99% of people don’t even know they exist.
I do because I worked directly on them, and they are………….COMPLEX.
The most obvious Achilles of banks is that, despite very sophisticated technology, a lot of information remains silo and business heads do not share sufficiently or effectively to enable everyone to risk manage appropriately. There is a culture of “knowledge is power” and some business heads hold that information so closely it makes it impossible for people trying to design appropriate corporate strategies to be able to do so.
In spite of any personal charm and reason I may have, there were times when Fixed Income business managers absolutely refused to cooperate in information exchanges. This proved to be their own (and the bank’s) downfall because we all know now that the more Fixed Income refused to disclose information about the real state of the mortgage CDO portfolio, the longer the toxicity was allowed to stay on the balance sheets and internal books, and pollute the other performing assets.
So whilst my e-Intelligence creation spread and sling-shotted knowhow across the silo businesses (so that more people would be on the same page and playing field), some business managers engaged in information hoarding which resulted in no one being aware of the risks on their books until it was far too late and the bank ended up writing down US$ BILLIONS and being bailed out by the government. Moreover, a lot of people lost their employment unnecessarily.
The value, capital and employment decimation is affecting everyone. That’s why there is such brouhaha over the bonuses issue from the Obama administration as well as the Mayor of London, who was previously the sole principal political defender of the City.
STEPS FORWARD FOR THE FUTURE
Personally, I’d like to see technologists become a lot more involved from the outset in the entire process of restructuring the global financial system (and it sorely needs this to prevent recurrences of the last 24 months), so that it not simply the theoretical or political points-scoring framework of some politicians and commentators, but based on PRAGMATIC IMPLEMENTATION.
It beggars belief that the 2009 World Economic Forum and the various G20 summits had hardly any senior technologists discussing how technology can be deployed to tackle those silo information issues — whilst still preserving security and competitive advantages — and creating early risk warning systems, across a whole range of financial products and interconnecting them, that can be universally accessed by the banks for a fee.
My experience has been with consortia trading platforms; that’s how I know something tangible can be created and I even know how the terms of agreement and service level agreements would work and be written.
Equally importantly, we need our smartest economists and corporate strategists to collaborate and construct new economic models wherein:
(1.) VALUE explores quality factors and not pure quantity dimensions of GDP, trade deficits and ISLMs (investment savings, liquidity of money).
(2.) comparability is on a more like-for-like basis;
(3.) consequentiality of consumption can be charted and is transparent;
(4.) philanthropic allocation as a compulsory and not simply voluntary facet of business models that is distinct from corporation tax; and
(5.) contextualized connections between information that seems silo but is actually critical in sense-making.
360-2020
There are all sorts of reasons I’m developing this system. What has been obvious is that we need the ability to discern, categorize, tag and synch data objects, situations, relationships and more in a way which is pragmatic, anticipatory, contextualizing, consequential and smarter than what has been available before.
It is not simply a matter of having real-time updates provided by the likes of Twitter nor is it about the categorization afforded by the Semantic Web Stack and RDF nor is it about semantic social networks.
The facts are e-Intelligence had a real-time IM channel and that IM had been created back in 1999. Separately, the M+A dotcom had an ontology authoring tool which enabled text to be classified as people, places, organization, date, etc. and that had been created back in 1998. The social networks of today are not that different from the virtual communities of the 1980s like the WELL (Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link), just as Larry Brilliant has commented on:
This is why when I observe that Web technology has not made that much progress (and certainly not the type of leap I personally would like to happen) I’m basing that observation on historical, practical and personal experience.
Is there anything like what I am trying to do with 360-2020 already out there or even in idea generation? No, it’s not. I’ve even examined various sentiment analysis methodologies along with what’s happening in semantic scraping and I have a 99% confidence that it is on no one else’s horizons except mine.
That’s good.
The Chief of Staff of the big bank once observed I was “left of field” and they needed to get me thinking more along the same lines as everyone else, doing what others were. This was after I presented a strategy paper that offered alternative strategies to the US mortgages market and which presented competitive matrices and growth curves that were different from then accepted convention. I used elliptic shapes instead of nice round circles to represent competitive potentials, and my growth graphs didn’t show straight-line trajectories but rather curved humps which plateaued before a new injection of strategy created new curved humps.
Five years later, I read in some management consultancy reports that elliptic shapes had become industry standard and saw some corporate finance reports which showed those curved hump growth curves.
LOOOOOOOOL.
So……….on my birthday, I can say this happily: “I’m glad I think the way I do, can do what I can and am who I am because I was spot-on about the Asian collapse back in 1997, spot-on about the investments I was involved with, spot-on about the risks of overloading into the US mortgage CDO even way back in 2003, spot-on about the need to evolve some of those accepted management consultancy frameworks and spot-on about various Semantic Web plays and their limitations.”
In a few years time, I’m probably going to prove spot-on about the creation of a Conscious Web and those new economic models too.
Meanwhile, I need to go and find shoes and make-up to match my party dress………….LOL.
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360-2020: MY SYSTEM, MY VALUES
GC asked what would happen if Google came along tomorrow and offered US$10 million for 360-2020. Could I imagine what else I could do with that US$10 million? What other ventures?
I said that if Google wanted to become a STRATEGIC INVESTOR with a sub-3% equity stake at US$10 million, I might consider that. To sell out 100% to Google at US$10 million is not a value proposition because I’ve observed at close quarters quite a few of Google’s flagship products. As with anything, some work better than others. Overall, of the big techco’s, Google has a lot to merit it.
My considerations would involve my confidence about Google’s commitment to realizing a Conscious Web — one in which tools are available to help us understand the context and consequences of our choices and actions across a range of major issues: consumption, climate change, education, global economies, etc.
The ultimate strategy of 360-2020 is towards the realization of a Conscious Web.
That’s why I’m allocating my brainpower, knowhow and energies to it.
The news item that’s capturing my attentions this weekend relate to Lord Adair Turner, the Chair of the FSA (UK equivalent of the SEC, btw), and his proposed Tobin tax on bankers’ deals. It’s being reported and commented upon in the UK media but less so internationally.
Whilst critics of the proposals have been quick to wave the usual autopilot flags about “protecting London’s status as a financial center” and how financial institutions and bankers would “leave London in droves” if such a tax is implemented, there are merits to the proposals — albeit, it could be strategically positioned better than Lord Adair’s approach and more targeted in its applicability.
Instead of reacting to the idea of it the way media pundits who have little or no direct experience of banking, I’m going to try to be practical about it and highlight what considerations the banking community are likely to be taking into account.
Here are a few challenges with taxing bankers’ deals:
(1.)Almost no banks are going to readily disclose the bonus structure by which they reward their deal-makers and revenue generators. It’s part of how competitive advantages are maintained by attracting and retaining top talent.
Therefore, getting any idea of the appropriate rate of Tobin tax is going to be difficult and would depend on self-administration/regulation by the individual banks to comply if the tax is introduced.
(2.)Transaction values can be difficult to pin down precisely and are dependent on the accounting rules and jurisdictions applied, particularly those involving privately-owned entities or those not listed on the major exchanges.
This would make like-for-like Tobin taxation to apply across all transactions tricky to administer and achieve.
(3.)Post-transaction valuations are also variable so it’s not always clear what contribution the bankers have made to any increases in valuation — if any — and which part is attributable to the company’s management and which to external market forces like customer loyalty and goodwill.
This is all before we need to pin down the exact people who did most of the work on the transaction — typically the Directors, Associates and corporate finance bag carriers who receive less of the transaction bonus than the lead rainmaker(s). Therefore, to tax each individual banker on a transaction at the same level would be inappropriate. The duration of a transaction would also affect the quantity of bonuses involved.
All these factors considered, the principles of Lord Adair’s proposals seem to be socially responsible ones: to make the global banking community more accountable and to increase their contribution towards socially useful activities rather than “socially useless” ones.
Coincidentally, I was discussing something related with my friend Marta whilst in Spain. About 5 years ago we had an idea for a socially responsible website to distribute goods handmade in developing economies like Peru, South East Asia and some African states. As part of the model I thought up there was also a program oriented at corporations to increase their global consciousness about social responsibilities. The other side of the equation was a ploughback into the indigenous population of 25 percent of net profits, investing in infrastructure like schools and clean water.
Marta and I revisited this model during my trip and she noted that the global financial crisis was surely making us all aware that business, as a whole, has to become more socially responsible. I pointed out that Harvard MBAs have proposed and been signing up to their own Ethics Code:
However, what’s still missing — and is a commercial opportunity gap — is the creation of companies with the types of tools, products and services which can help this and the next generation of corporate leaders to PRAGMATICALLY commit to a new modus of ethical decision making, implementation and behavior.
It’s one thing to study about Hobbes, Locke, Smith’s “invisible hand of good” et al as part of an Ivy League / Oxbridge / Top 10 MBA course on business ethics and tick the boxes which say, “Yes, we know about codes of ethics as well as corporate tort, balance sheet restructuring and Porter’s competitive matrix” and another to have tools — and here I mean tech ones — with which to systematically abide by and implement according to codes of ethics signed up to…….
Tools, products and services which foster not only changes in mindset but, more importantly, CHANGES IN ACTION.
Otherwise we’ll find ourselves in (yet another) cycle of repeated economic and corporate irresponsibility. It’s not an easy or overnight fix but it does require collective imagination, will and optimism.
The Tobin tax — although a step in the right direction — is not that imaginative. Tax is a word that’s universally hated. In Chinese, the word’s homophone is the same as for the word “broken, shattered and splintered” and “rotten in character” (yes, seriously).
It’s preferable to think of the Tobin tax instead as a “COS” (contribution optimizing society). It would be a variable percentage amount — rather than a fixed annual rate — allocated by financial institutions, from their transactions, towards local communities and enterprise that’s distinct from the budget allocated for promotional and PR activities or their lending practices. Variable according to the reporting month in which the transaction is booked on the balance sheet in the financial accounts.
Only time will tell whether the global financial institutions care purely about making money for themselves and several handfuls of top bankers or whether they care about local communities and the rest of the world too.
Today the FT is carrying a forum discussion on Queen Elizabeth II’s question, “Why did no one see this crisis coming?” Some of the comments are spot on and some are grossly wide of the mark and delve into all sorts of irrelevant macroeconomic theories about the roles and forecasting perspicacity of economists.
Incidentally, the reply provided to the Queen was:
“A failure of the collective imagination of many bright people” who were all “doing their job properly on its own merit.”
LOL, a diplomatic and charming platitude albeit not one which helps us to collectively accept fault, learn from mistakes or progress towards implementable solutions.
TWAIN’S ANSWER
Firstly, banking is not about imagination. It’s about facts, numbers, analysis and decision-making (including sometimes misinformed judgment by those with sign-off power). It’s about bottom lines, value propositions, growth potentials, hedging strategies, risk management and product innovation. Unfortunately, few bankers will have the imagination à la a Steve Jobs, a Steven Spielberg or a Tim Burton to envisage the potential horrors, carnage and devastation of portfolio and value decimation, and also how to create a much more beautiful scenario of wealth creation triumphing over the financial carnage.
[Besides which, bankers are trained to deploy words like "resizing" rather than carnage so already this shows lack of verbal imagination.]
Secondly, not all bankers are bright — although the ones who are are seriously brilliant, dynamic in their intelligence and phenomenal. Meanwhile, some may be academically highly qualified (every Ivy League / Oxbridge / Tsinghua / INSEAD / Bocconi MBA under the sun), yet unfortunately they may also lack common sense and a commitment to ethical corporate social responsibility even if they’ve studied it and passed the academic exams.
My great friend GC and I recently discussed how Harvard MBAs have created their own code of ethics:
Thirdly, not all bankers do their own jobs properly. For example, I’ve inherited investments which were poorly due diligenced, burning cash at unacceptable rates, had barely any business model and an underperforming management. As soon as the investment was under my responsibility that changed. I’ve also read internal and external management consultancy reports which were so nonsensical it made me put a freeze on buying them.
My colleague (Harvard, Cambridge) put into my evaluation review that I’m “prodigious, highly competent and have excellent collaboration skills” but this isn’t true of all bankers and even I have my odd moments where I don’t meet my own high standards — like the time a Director of Compliance almost derailed one of my negotiations through his own misinformation and ignorance, and I became a lot less charitable in my collaboration with him. Still, I managed to make a successful case for our Legal Counsel’s nomination to the newco’s executive board, so my annoyance didn’t last long. LOL.
Most importantly and relevant to how economists missed the signs of crisis is this: economists in banks get nowhere near the information which really matters — the balance sheets on whatever transactions and bond issuance are being included into the risk management systems to comply with various Basel II, international GAAP and regulatory body requirements.
That’s not the economists’ fault. It has to do with Chinese walls between business units and lines of responsibility. Chinese walls are oriented to protect confidentiality but they may also exclude information being passed to enable business units to risk manage and do their jobs. It’s the way the system is: needs improvement, work-in-progress.
Anyway, only a handful of people in CEO-Chairman’s Office may get clearance to that confidential analysis, so there’s actually little chance of any economist anywhere being able to accurately call the crisis — even if some may be being celebrated by the media as economic sages.
The media itself has some failings in its role as the Fifth Estate, to help us keep society in check and optimally functioning, wrt the global financial crisis. Some of the opinions from their business journalists have been laughable, although there have also been some excellent coverage too — such as by the New York Times and the Washington Post.
Interestingly, in one of the FT links, Galbraith is quoted:
JK Galbraith remarked that one of the greatest pieces of economic wisdom is to know what you do not know. Regulators and supervisors did not know complex financial products and processes, or the impact of low economic volatility on risk management systems.
I’d place an addendum to Galbraith: “An economic wisdom is to understand that to achieve perfect information for properly functioning capitalism, as proposed by Adam Smith, it’s our responsibility to find the information we don’t know and to assimilate it into our systems.”
This takes us towards buildingcontext, clarity and consensus views in a truly democratic, open and capitalistic model.
Anyway, what’s the solution to prevent future global financial crisis of this ilk? Simple: build a consortia platform involving the banks, the governments and the regulatory bodies on an international basis to share and flag bubble build-ups.
Is it do-able? Yes.
Does the technology exist? Yes.
Will it synch with the vested competitive advantage interests of different groups? Yes.
How can I be confident about this? Well, you see all the institutional trading platforms out there from Equities to Fixed Income to IR-FX? Who wrote some of their investment proposals, negotiated terms of agreement, got weekly updates from their CEO/CFO/CTOs, was involved in writedowns/reinvestments and knows how their technology works and interconnects on a cross-organizational basis?
Yes, yours truly. My sole stipulation now would be that anyone who wants me to be part of project managing the build would have to remunerate me extremely well for my knowhow.
Plus that no one’s allowed to comment on my prettiness* and just lets me get on with the project.
FINANCING VIA SOCIAL NETWORKS
The FT also carries this article on how some tech entrepreneurs are crowdfunding by leveraging social networks:
This is not a new concept, it’s how some independent film producers have been raising up to GBP1 million to make their features. What the article points to is how difficult it is in the current environment to raise new capital, especially in Series B and C rounds for development financing.
Ergo, tech start-ups would be well advised to abide by Sequoia Capital’s points about conserving cash and not burning it on poor marketing strategies.
My observation from crowdfunding via socnets which is different from the VC approach is that:
(1.) It triggers issues relating to compliance with FSA/SEC/Consob etc. rules regarding investment advice and protection of investors’ interests.
(2.) Social network investment is more likely to be a one-off transaction whilst the VC is more likely to repeat reinvest.
(3.) VCs and their network of investors tend to be able to bring expertise and contacts to the company which people on a social network merely taking a “punt” of GBP10 or less may not be able to offer.
(4.) The administration involved is different. With crowdfunding there are more investors to update and the paperwork may not be of a regulatory standard.
(5.) VCs have a more established path to institutional investors which is important if your strategy is likely to involve plans for floatation or acquisition by a media giant.
Anyway, it’s a personal choice: go with a handful of VCs and investors you meet face-to-face where you can develop deep and longer-term relationships of trust or go with many kind-hearted strangers on a socnet whom you may never meet face-to-face because of geographies and get to know each other better online.
Why connect the dots? Well, because we can — if we really want to apply more than 10 percent of our intelligence and find solutions to major issues like these: global economic stability, education equivalence, climate change, gender contribution, etc. etc. etc.
If we don’t do it now, we and our children will simply find ourselves in the same situation (global financial crisis and absence of sense).
CONNECTING THE DOTS: THE TECH CONTEXT
Here are some articles on how technology could be applied to prevent a future global financial crisis:
Worryingly, it’s notable that even in the 2009 World Economic Forum’s Global Advisory Council on Technology and Education, whilst participants recognized that everyone was being impacted upon by the banking crisis, very little discussion took place on how technology can help us learn from our mistakes of the value-destroying experience.
GAC on Technology and Education was very much a pimple on the flea of the dog. Technology and education was seen as one of many areas that impact on economic development, but which in reality has little direct or immediate relevance to the current world financial crisis. Thus you will see that in the final summary reports of the global summit, technology and education was not even mentioned, it being considered a subsidiary area of technological innovation.
There is no trace on the WEF site itself of any session even covering the harnessing of technology towards future risk prevention. Moreover, I’ve watched countless interviews with heads of regulatory agencies, CEOs of banks, tech CEOs and government officials and, with the exception of Geithner’s proposals on an integrated OTC information platform, almost no one seems to have given this any serious consideration.
Interestingly, China (including HK) and Singapore have a higher proportion of women in senior management positions than their Western peers, according to Grant Thornton analysis.
Moreover, the Chinese attitude and cultural observances towards savings and avoidance of debt+consumption may also explain why it’s likely to lead the global recovery. Unfortunately, certain economists have attributed the cause of the financial crisis on the Chinese propensity to save, without understanding anything about Chinese rationale or acknowledged that the root of the crisis lay in the US mortgage market and incompetent bankers creating complex SPVs which they themselves had no idea of how the over-leveraging would later cause the unravelling of!
(source: Merrill Lynch, 2009 Global Macro Year Ahead)
There’s an article in this weekend’s Observer which says the Treasury select committee is now investigating the role and contribution of women in the City (aka the British Wall Street) and whether having more senior women would have and can prevent the type of meltdown we’ve experienced over the last 18 months.
This topic of how male testosterone may have caused the global financial crisis versus how female oestrogen could potentially prevent it has been covered on sites ranging from the UN to Scientific America to Management Today.
Some articles like Michel Ferrary’s (Professor of Management at Ceram Business School, France) in the FT even present the case that French companies with more senior women in the boardroom are faring better:
Last year, Hermès was the only large company whose share price rose (16.8 per cent) and it has the second largest feminised management (55 per cent). Companies with a highly feminised management, such as Sanofi (44.8 per cent female managers and a 27.3 per cent share price decrease), Sodexo (43.39 per cent female managers and an 8.3 per cent decrease) or Danone (38 per cent female managers and a 29.6 per cent decrease), declined less than the CAC 40 (a fall of 42.7 per cent).
Conversely, stocks of companies with mainly male management have decreased more than the CAC 40. For example, Alcatel-Lucent (8.6 per cent female managers) saw a 69.3 per cent decrease, Renault (21.7 per cent female managers) an 81.3 per cent fall and Arcelor Mittal (12.3 per cent female managers) a 67.4 per cent decline.
(source: FT, Why Women Shine in a Downturn — Michel Ferrary)
The sooner we can build a coherent and robust Global Brain platform that can make sense of the better practices from different cultures and which takes into account male AND female contributions to decision making, risk taking, value-risk-reward paradigms and problem solving, the more we’ll advance as a species.
The week opens with the Conservatives in the UK trying to present the case that THEY rather than the Labor government have the sensible solutions to reform of the financial sector:
Needless to say, Labor and the Liberal Democrats have been on all the broadcast channels to criticize the proposals in the same way the Conservatives did the Labor and LibDem suggestions.
TWAIN’S TRUTH
None of the political parties have it right or are remotely close to it. Reform proposals which are written without the insights and direct experience contributions of corporate strategists (who have actually worked in CEO-Chairman’s Office of a Tier 1 bank) are, frankly, a waste of paper and consultancy fees. Unless we know exactly how the balance sheet is structured, all the business unit line items in the accounts, all the in-house developed risk management techniques and, therefore, how capital adequacy provision requirements are satisfied, then the reforms are mere academic conjecture rather than pragmatic prognosis.
In each bank, there are probably no more than a dozen people who are allocated the responsibility of looking through the blueprints of the bank’s financial positions. The blueprints — rather than the published annual report and analysts’ notes — are what really matter and the insights on how the bank maintains / improves its competitive position relative to its peers.
I know this because I had access to a blueprint.
It’s a document no journalist, accountant, management consultant, government policy-maker, academic or politician would ever gain access to. It’s a document (or series of documents) not even some of the Global and regional heads of banks have clearance to view.
So when I read all the politicking from the main parties about “deep and wide-ranging” reforms, part of me LOLs. It’s not depth nor width that’s needed. It’s whether the reform is SPOT-ON and appropriately CALIBRATED. It’s like gold / oil. There’s no point digging a wide, deep hole to drill when the oil source is actually somewhere else.
Anyway, instead of becoming skeptical about the human ability to learn from mistakes let’s concentrate on what we humans are capable of when we are our smarter and more aspirational selves. The inspirational people for this week are without peers in their daring and conviction towards a journey unknown.
There’s a scene in Indiana Jones: The Last Crusade which perfectly captures the concept of leaps and of belief:
It may seem like a strange connection, but whether in the Hollywood dream factory or in our historic reality our species is driven towards search+discovery, adventure+risks, reaching out to others+unknowns, and philosophy+belief. This is true regardless of what our professional callings may be.
They’re qualities true of the inspirational people this week.
And purely for fun, here’s a TheOnion spoof, showing the NASA simulator prepping astronauts for a Larry King interview:
A LITTLE GIRL CALLED EVA: an inspiration towards motherhood?
Today I also want to write about something extraordinary and coincidental that happened to me yesterday: I got my first-ever maternal twinges.
It should be noted that my mother is 60 this month and she’s the only one of her friends who has no grandchildren. Her friends are scattered all over from China to LA and, regardless of the socio-political environment they exist in (liberal / one-child policy, feminism / equivalence, patriarchal / matriarchal)……..they ALL have grandchildren.
She’s asked all the time about me and my “situation”, aka a euphemism for spinsterhood — LOL. Then she has to endure all their boasting about their grandkids. I remind her that not a single one of her friends has a daughter who was top of school or has ever worked in CEO-Chairman’s Office of a Tier 1 bank. Besides which, she knows I’ve always been more oriented towards my to-dos than in the opposite sex. At our end of junior school dance, I was asked by 5 different boys to be their date and I only went AFTER I’d finished making the centerpiece paper maché mermaid. The dance had a different theme every year: cowboys + Indians, dinosaurs, the ocean, farmyard, etc. Ours was the year of The Ocean.
I have 0 regrets about my choices.
I don’t regret beating the boys in school in the exams (including the so-called “male” subjects of maths, physics and chemistry) because I will never regret making my parents proud and, in reciprocation of respect, for all the time-knowledge they and my teachers gifted me. I don’t regret turning down 3 marriage proposals because my logic knew the guys were incompatible — despite their desire to get married to satisfy parental / societal demands; I believe in marriage based on genuine compatibility. I also don’t regret not believing the ex-manager (not the brilliant dynamic one but the one with the MBA Bocconi) who sat me in a private room and said, “We were destined to meet. I really really like you.” He soon proved to be someone incapable of “walking the talk” whilst I earned my promotion into CEO-Chairman’s Office through hard work and Twain brains. What was his reaction? Professional jealousy. Thank goodness I chose my career over a charming but shallow non-friend!
Funnily enough, he once said that men must be scared to ask me out. I still say, “XLNT!” because, right there, is an automatic Twain brain filter for all the wrong guys like him. LOL.
[Hint to female readers: a man who is genuinely a man's man, has real cojones, is secure in himself, truly loves and respects you will help you become CEO of the world's biggest and best company if that's what your aim is. If your aim is to be a stay-at-home mother whilst he's the primary breadwinner, he'll happily help you realize that too. A real man won't try to turn you into arm candy, his PR support or less than the person you are.]
Anyway, all about little Eva…………………..
So I went for a swim at my gym and in the ladies’ changing room I happened across a 4-year-old American girl called Eva. She was a complete stranger and I only discovered her name because her two older sisters kept calling it.
There was something special about Eva which I’ve rarely seen in other kids (and they’re everywhere, kids). She was self-possessed, assured and took no prisoners. I didn’t see her at first as much as HEAR her. I heard her vociferously defending her rights to be left to do it herself and for them not to try and take her swimming cap away from her. Then I heard the pitter-patter-shuffles of her feet as she ran round the corner into the area where I was.
Oddly, she reminded me of me at that age. She had dark, bobbed hair and watchful eyes. Everything about her made you pay attention. Not in the way that bawling babies and cheeky, dimpled smiles do. It was in her aura. There was quite simply……..a fully-formed CHARACTER to her. A big personality for someone so small and young.
Then I saw her clamber up onto an alcove about 2 feet up and she disappeared from view. I had to walk past where she was to reach my locker and as I did, I noticed that she was sitting in the alcove — legs crossed, comfortable in her own space — and completely concentrated. Her towel was neatly folded and she was trying to figure out how to stretch out her new swimming cap before putting it onto her head………OVER HER SHOES. The shoes kept slipping from their vertical positions but, when they did, even more determination sparked up in her little face. After a short while, she decided they were easier to manage when they were horizontal.
I thought this was cute, funny and ingenious, and left her to her mission. I could have told her to try stretching the cap over her knees but I didn’t want to startle her since she was by herself and I was a stranger.
Later, as the gym and ladies changing room was closing, I heard and saw her again. She was handing over a towel and asking one of her older sisters to wrap it around her “just like Mommy does”. The poor sister, who must have been about 8, complied and said, “It’s not as good as Mommy’s but it’s okay for now.” She’d wrapped the towel around little Eva’s waist and rolled the top to secure it. However, this didn’t satisfy little Eva at all. She scrunched up her face, shivered slightly and started to sulk-sob, “But I’m still cold! It’s SO cold!”
By the look of despair on both of her sisters’ faces it was fairly clear that they didn’t know what to do and that little Eva was on the verge of a full-blown bawling session. Uh-oh. We all know that when kids start to cry they’re almost impossible to stop. The sheer momentum of their frustration, confusion and lack of emotional tools to handle it means it often just snowballs from a few sniffles into “WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH! Nobody cares!!! WAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!”
There’s about 10 seconds between a child sniffling and the bawling. The smart parent is the one who stops them from damaging their vocal chords and suffering emotional distress, imo.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a spare clean towel without any owner. I went over to it, picked it up and walked over to little Eva. I handed her the towel and reasoned with her calmly, “Well, if you’re cold, do you want to maybe use this one?”
She glanced up at me through her fringe, a little shy and apprehensive at a stranger speaking with her. Then she nodded slightly and took it.
“If you wrap it round your shoulders that’ll make you warmer, hmmn?” I suggested. Again a nod, bolder this time. So she wrapped the towel around her shoulders with some help from her older sister.
“Now are you warmer?”
“Yes,” another little nod.
“Good.”
“Thank you,” her poor older sister said. Then little Eva just beamed like she’d been given Supergirl’s cape and it was hers, ALL hers.
I smiled, finished packing my gym bag and left. Half an hour later, I was in a cinema watching John Woo’s brilliant Red Cliff, which tells the classic Chinese story of the battles (military, philosophical, political and literary) between the Kongming- Zhou Yu alliance against Cao Cao.
Completely my kind of movie; as I mentioned in a previous post, I rarely pay to watch romantic comedies because they’re usually not well-scripted, too saccharine and not witty — unlike the romantic comedies of old. In fact, there was more romance and humor in Red Cliff than in any recent romcoms. Hollywood could learn a lot from Chinese action-dramas.
Now, even after the film I thought of little Eva. It’s difficult to explain or to pinpoint how it happened but in the instant I handed her the towel and reasoned with her I felt a surge of what must be maternal instinct. It was really odd.
I’ve babysat my much younger cousins in Canada and, yes, felt that sense of adult responsibility of showing them how to cross roads safely, remove bones from their fish and push them on swings high enough where they shriek with glee but not go white with fear that they’ll flip right over the bar. However, I didn’t feel any maternal twinges.
Clearly, the Morgan Stanley note on socmedia is not the most important report that was released today; although, it is something of a novelty since it’s co-authored by a 15 year-old, is only a handful of pages long and provides some coincidental LOLs. The “serious must-read report” label belongs to the UKFI’s 83-page 2009 Annual Report. Inside, the British government’s appointed portfolio managers of its stake in RBS, Lloyds, Bradford+Bingley etc. set out their strategy for the disposal of those investments and how their shareholdings have fared to-date.
It’s not surprising that financial news coverage on the report has been relatively superficial and only focuses on the headline number of the US$10.9 billion paper loss. The full document is definitely worth reading and analyzing in more depth and with more care because each UK household effectively has GBP3,000 at stake — given that the government used GBP70 billion of taxpayers’ money to acquire up to 70 percent of RBS and 40 percent of the combined Lloyds-HBOS holding.
So as some readers are aware a SemWeb play, which is such a disappointment I won’t even namecheck them and give them free PR, deleted vital content of mine on some baseless — and frankly stupid — issues of theirs. This brought to the fore all the typical online concerns relating to:
* stewardship of users’ content and IP;
* trust between the online provider and the content generator;
* how people can misinterpret and misunderstand each other’s meanings and intent (semantic differences of perception), so how can we expect machines to understand humans; and
* whether various parties can overcome their egos and psychological constructs to genuinely collaborate towards the Global Brain.
Clearly, the CEO of the SemWeb play and I do not have the same vision for or insights on the Global Brain, rewarding content contributors or fostering constructive and democratic relationships. It’s just as well that my content is no longer subject to his team’s control, oppressive deletion or influence since he’s the person who spun a whole heap of garble about Semantic technology, Google not having any semantic capabilities in its search algorithms and customer care which have proven to be completely off-the-bullseye. After all, he and his team willfully closed their public feedback channels not once but at least THREE times despite my advice to the contrary.
Anyway, today I’m reminded of how justifiably annoyed I am at his deletions of my content.
As I mentioned last week I met a Google engineer who’s using MapReduce to populate large volume data onto a map. Now, I know for a fact that what we all need is an early detection system for build-ups of economic bubbles and I believe that something like MapReduce could potentially be an element of this system. Therefore, I was going to send her an 80+ page PDF of some economic statistics some clever guys had generated back in Sept/Oct 2008. Unfortunately, they’ve presented their findings in a static format and it would be really helpful if their data was actually in a timeline or MapReduce form.
So that’s my good intention: share this economic analysis with Ms. Google MapReduce and do my itsy-weensy bit to accelerate us reducing our risks of repeating the recent global economic crisis.
However, here’s where the chink in the sense chain appears: the SemWeb platform. I entrusted the link to and contextualization of that PDF to the SemWeb platform. I no longer have access to that content. This means that the sum effect is:
* the SemWeb platform wasted my time; instead of putting the link and contextualizing it with fellow contributors on their site I’d have been safer putting it into my Gmail or my own blog; and
* the SemWeb platform is (yet again) responsible for a delay in human progress and collaboration.
* the SemWeb platform and its team has increased ignorance, discontent, annoyance and the system’s stupidity rather than advanced Enlightenment.
Yes and I do hope that the upcoming Google Wave “blows them out of the water” because that’s what their inconsiderate actions and disrespect towards users have resulted in: disappointment and disloyalty.
Meanwhile I have to go rooting for this PDF again. This time I’m bookmarking it direct into my browser.
Last night there was an interesting documentary on the BBC which examined Deng Xiaoping’s “Open Door” reforms of the 1980s, which led to a new era of Chinese trade with other countries and has created the economic powerhouse of modern China as well as some of the corruption issues that underpinned why the student and worker demonstrators took their causes to Tiananmen Square that fateful month in May-June 1989.
Deng’s policies are something I explored in some depth as part of my economics papers at U. My econometrics lecturer was originally from Beijing University and we examined the Tiger Economies as a case study. The paper got a 1st (75%). Years later I wrote about foreign direct investment in China for my Diplôme Française des Affaires II exams (all in French). Moreover, as a banker, I analyzed QFII investment funds and the structural reforms of the stock exchanges as well as Intellectual Property issues governing technology transfers between indigenous and foreign companies.
In short…………….I know a bit about China — and not only because my family is Chinese and my parents contextualize its socio-political-economic history for us at every opportunity. About 80 percent of the books at home were written in Chinese.
The documentary achieved what few documentaries before it has: identified that protesters were NOT marching for Western-style democracy (multi-party elections, freedom of speech, human rights), but rather the cessation of corruption at local party level, i.e. a constituency or ward office as different from the Politburo which is equivalent to the Oval Office or the Cabinet. Some people may argue, “Yes, but the Chinese Politburo isn’t elected by the people whereas Ministers and Senators are.” To this I’d highlight that the Treasury Secretary and others are Presidential appointments rather than publicly elected and there are now more than a handful of Cabinet ministers who aren’t publicly elected but appointed via the bestowment of life peerages. The Prime Minister himself was not voted into office by the electorate.
So as someone who knows how the Communist Party is structured compared with the four branches of American government and Parliament etc., I tend to view events with a more contextualized perspective.
As the BBC documentary notes: ordinary people did not object to being governed by the Communist Party. However, they did deeply resented some local officials accepting bribes and green lighting factory builds which either excluded them from employment or took their land from them and gave it to others. As one commentator (an American who’d been in China since the 1940s) pointed out, banners stated: “We believe in the………CORRECT Communist Party” which is different from a corrupt one.
Coinciding with the student movement was rising inflation and a period of social uncertainty whether Deng had a grip on the economy. Therefore, it’s not surprising people went on the march.
Watching the documentary, I came away with renewed admiration for Deng Xiaopeng. Absolutely not for the Tiananmen Square events: no one of a sensible and moral humanity would condone bloodshed — much less deaths within the imposition of martial law. Instead, to understand Deng, his reforms and his lifelong struggle to modernize China, it may be worthwhile to read Deng Xiaoping’s philosophy of governance and ideas for modernization long before Tiananmen blemished his reputation:
My favorite quote of his which my mother taught me when I was young is this:
It doesn’t matter if a cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice.
The Western equivalent would be: “The ends justify the means.”
He was a remarkable man purely for the fact he was consistent, persistent and steady in his vision, convictions and implementation of modernizing reforms, which have liberated 250+ million Chinese out of abject poverty and made education more accessible. The Chinese are now one of the most educated nations in the world with the ratio of female: male graduates and professionals almost on a par (so much for the supposed oppression of female rights that Western feminists wrongly assume). This may not be fully-fledged democracy of the hue recognized and acknowledged by Western standards, but those feats in themselves are democratizing.
Here I’m also going to remark that Deng was visionary and perspicuous about the risks of introducing wholesale democracy too quickly to China; for example, the dismantling of the Communist Party to be replaced by multi-party elections and complete media freedoms. Unlike Mao who was a poetic philosophical ideologue, Deng was eminently pragmatic and strategic. He recognized that unlike the US and Europe which have developed democratic values, Constitutional cornerstones and free elections over millennia (since the days of Aristotle and Plato) and which have been allowed to integrate this way of existence into its manageable populations progressively over time, it would have broken China and its billion-plus people to move to full democracy when it was still unknown how much Deng’s economic seeds would take hold and whether growth and prosperity were sustainable.
In seriousness, would any Western democracy with a heart and intelligence want to tip China and its people into turmoil and chaos in the pursuit of their version of instant democracy? There would have been economic instability in China with reverberations around the world worse than the current global economic crisis. Moreover, ironically, China’s current relative economic strength is what is helping to prop up Western debts and deficits.
Now imagine if Tiananmen, internal Party machinations and external pressures towards democracy meant that Deng’s reforms had been allowed to die. Imagine if Deng at the grand old age of 89 had not stood up against the hardliners who wanted to raze his reforms and revert to Maoism and state control instead of Deng’s model of state enterprise, private entrepreneurialism and Open Door policies to foreign investors. Imagine if democracy was introduced and millions of people decided they didn’t want to work in state-owned factories anymore. China would now not be one of the economic pillars supporting the global financial system or acting as a counterweight (the Oriental savings instinct against the West’s borrowing / hire purchase / credit card / debt propensity), which regulates and calibrates vital capital flows necessary for international trade, investment and GDP growth.
Interesting when it gets interconnected this way, hmmn?
What the documentary showed me is that it’s only with hindsight and wiser, nuanced context that we can better determine whether any political leader made the appropriate choices at that time-space to do what they considered to be suitable for their people and the future of their way of life.
This applies to Deng and the Tiananmen issue, Thatcher and the Poll Tax riots, Bush+Blair over the war in Iraq, Putin+Medvedev over Georgia, Sarkozy over the French suburb riots, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and now the Iranian election case.
Often, when one country tries to persuade / coerce another country to be like them or do what they do — whether this is a full-flight democracy, a Fascist dictatorship, a Communist construct, an Islamic republic, a federal constitution etc. — they may not take into consideration that what seems right or suits their population and their dynamics may not be right or fit the other’s population.
The external country is thinking with its own hat on (and all those inherited historical elements and frames of reference / context) when it needs to think AS THE INDIGENOUS POPULATION thinks with all of their inherited context.
So what about what’s happening in Iran? What should we as ordinary, unelected global citizens do?
We absolutely cannot and should not incite regime change for our own motivations and / or from our own democratic instincts — even if it may not be appropriate for Iranians, their religion and their cultural heritage. ANY AND ALL CHANGE HAS TO COME FROM THEIR FREE POLITICAL WILL, DRIVE AND CHOICE. The spark and the oxygen for change has to be theirs, their families, their communities and owned by them.
Nevertheless, we do have a duty as considerate neighbors to be aware, to bear witness, to educate and to emotionally support fellow ordinary, unelected global citizens. We can start by reading and understanding reports from Iranian voters inside the country and what’s happening there:
Yes, we can link to their videos. Give media space to their voice and text. Vote, tweet and Digg their content if it increases awareness and provides them with some comfort that their concerns are being heard and witnessed.
Equally, we need to remember that democracy has many forms, means different things to different countries, needs to arrive in its own time and it may / may not be suitable or can be implemented in the way we initially think. Consider again China. Consider also the political history and here+now of Westminster / the Senate / the Reichstag / the Assemblée Nationale / the Senato della Repubblica / etc. It’s evident that no single cradle of democracy is perfect, final, definitive or absolute. Let us not have short memories or amnesia or be ignorant. The path to democracy has been bloody, violent and treacherous and it includes these events: civil wars (American, Roundheads versus Cavaliers, etc.), World Wars, assassinations, falls of Empires and peasants’ revolts.
Democracy is a continuum. It’s not a time snap.
It evolves according to the needs of the people of here+now, reflecting on whatever frames of reference and wisdoms they’ve attained from those to lit the way before, and then re-imagining and re-shaping it for theirs and future generations.
The Iranian people have their own ideas of democracy and the form it should take. Give them the time and space to discover it and mould it with their own free hands, voices and senses. Let us be witnesses to their history rather than be the makers of it.
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