by Alex Evans | Oct 14, 2008 | Global system, UK
My erstwhile DFID colleague Owen Barder knows a thing or two about finance and financial services (he has, after all, been a private secretary to the Chancellor of the Exchequer and then Tony Blair’s economic affairs private secretary at Number 10, among other interesting jobs). Over on his blog, Owen’s now ruminating about the fact that since Gordon has nationalised our banks, we’re all shareholders. And he has a message for his new employees.
To the managers of the banks
Every time I have suggested things you might do differently, I have been told that this is impossible as you are under an obligation to pursue the interests of your shareholders.
Now that I am – unexpectedly – one of your shareholders, I expect you’d like to know what I would like you to do. Here are seven new instructions to be getting on with.
1. Short-term profits are not important: what is important is long-term value. I would like you to stop chasing short term arbitrage opportunities and overnight trading and focus on identifying and investing in the best-run, most productive and valuable enterprises. There will be no trading in derivatives or other purely financial products.
2. Cut executive pay immediately. From now on, nobody in the bank will get paid more than four times the salary of the lowest-paid employee. If you want to award yourself a pay rise, you’ll have to increase the salaries at the bottom.
3. All our branches and subsidiaries overseas will pay local taxes, in full. There will be no clever arrangements to transfer profits to tax havens to avoid tax.
4. No more junk mail trying to persuade people to take out new credit.
5. It is no longer our objective to inflate house prices. An increase in house prices is not an increase in net wealth: it is a transfer from those who do not own houses to those that do. We will try to dampen the housing market, not reinvigorate it.
6. Every bank that is “too big to fail” will be split up into smaller banks. We are going to reverse the cycle of mergers and takeovers that has created these monolithic institutions that have held us all to ransom.
7. There will be no lending for businesses or individuals involved in industries that are harmful to our society and planet. That means no lending to any of the following: the arms trade, advertising and marketing, tobacco, extracting or burning fossil fuels, or the motor industry. Instead, please invest more in clean technologies, technologies appropriate for developing countries, non-profit organisations and community groups.
I know that you have many new shareholders, and it will take time for you to get to know us all. My views won’t necessarily be shared by all your new bosses, but you can be pretty sure that lots of your new bosses think more along these lines than the old lot.
I was a bit hesitant about becoming a bank-owner, but now that it has happened, I think I’m going to enjoy it.
Work hard – but not too hard.
Yours,
Owen
by David Steven | Oct 14, 2008 | Conflict and security, Influence and networks, North America
In the US Presidential election, what you see in the media is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. The real action is on the ground, where decades of experiments and false starts have finally cohered into a new model of social organisation.
Read Zack Exley’s account to find out more:
We saw glimpses of the potential for this kind of organizing campaign in MoveOn’s 2004 and 2006 volunteer operations, the Dean Campaign and even the Bush and Kerry campaigns. And there are great examples of this kind of organizing if you go back to the social movements of several decades ago. But the Obama campaign is the first in the Internet era to realize the dream of a disciplined, volunteer-driven, bottom-up-AND-top-down, distributed and massively scaleable organizing campaign. For anyone who knows how many times this has failed to happen, this is practically an apocryphal event
by Charlie Edwards | Oct 14, 2008 | Conflict and security, UK
Smart Intelligence via Bruce Schneier. The following operation was used against the IRA:
One of the most interesting operations was the laundry mat [sic]. Having lost many troops and civilians to bombings, the Brits decided they needed to determine who was making the bombs and where they were being manufactured. One bright fellow recommended they operate a laundry and when asked “what the hell he was talking about,” he explained the plan and it was incorporated — to much success.
The plan was simple: Build a laundry and staff it with locals and a few of their own. The laundry would then send out “color coded” special discount tickets, to the effect of “get two loads for the price of one,” etc. The color coding was matched to specific streets and thus when someone brought in their laundry, it was easy to determine the general location from which a city map was coded.
While the laundry was indeed being washed, pressed and dry cleaned, it had one additional cycle — every garment, sheet, glove, pair of pants, was first sent through an analyzer, located in the basement, that checked for bomb-making residue. The analyzer was disguised as just another piece of the laundry equipment; good OPSEC [operational security]. Within a few weeks, multiple positives had shown up, indicating the ingredients of bomb residue, and intelligence had determined which areas of the city were involved. To narrow their target list, [the laundry] simply sent out more specific coupons [numbered] to all houses in the area, and before long they had good addresses. After confirming addresses, authorities with the SAS teams swooped down on the multiple homes and arrested multiple personnel and confiscated numerous assembled bombs, weapons and ingredients. During the entire operation, no one was injured or killed.
However, there were some tragic cases of things going wrong, and a number of schemes were eventually found out – such as the Four Square Laundry
by Alex Evans | Oct 14, 2008 | Cooperation and coherence, Influence and networks, UK
Benedict Brogan notes this from George Pascoe-Watson in today’s Sun:
The PM has decided to set up an open plan “war room” operation and is moving the heart of Government to 12 Downing Street. His move is aimed at sharpening up his Government and equipping himself to make decisions more quickly in the face of the global financial crash.
Mr Brown is being forced to quit No 10 — Britain’s most famous address after Buckingham Palace — because of planning laws. He can’t knock down walls and re-design it because it is a listed building. The only space large enough to accommodate him and his immediate operations team is 40 yards away in No 12. He will boot out his strategic communications unit and press office, and take over their space.
The PM will sit at the centre of a “spider’s web” of his closest advisers and officials so he can make snap decisions. There he will be surrounded by figures like Permanent Secretary Jeremy Heywood, private secretaries and “gatekeeper” Sue Nye. Recently-promoted Cabinet Office minister Liam Byrne will be installed, along with his deputy Tom Watson and Mr Brown’s right-hand-man Damian McBride.
Mr Brown is copying the idea from New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who advised him to follow his open plan operation. Mr Brown saw the layout in Manhattan a fortnight ago and discussed the idea with the Mayor.
by Mark Weston | Oct 14, 2008 | Middle East and North Africa
My young brother-in-law, Tolga, had a hernia operation yesterday in a large state-run hospital in Istanbul. When his wealthy aunt found out that she knew the director of said hospital, she phoned him up and asked him to make sure her nephew was dealt with by a good surgeon. At the last minute, therefore, the surgeons were switched and the hospital’s best practitioner was entrusted with the (albeit minor) op. Phew.
After the operation was concluded and the patient’s friends arrived to visit him, a male nurse forbade them entry, telling Tolga’s mother that only family were allowed in. She protested to no avail, but when she later went out to get something to eat, the nurse said, “You won’t come back empty-handed will you?” My mother-in-law, who but for remittances from my wife would have to scrape by on a tiny widow’s pension, took the nurse two packets of Marlboro (which cost the equivalent of a day’s worth of pension). In return, the nurse let Tolga’s friends in to see him and told my mother-in-law, “Don’t worry, I’ll take good care of him.” Far from being outraged, my long-suffering mother-in-law was relieved that a couple of packets of fags were enough to buy the health-conscious nurse off.
