financial meltdown | Bulldozer00's Blog

At The Top Of The List

December 19, 2013 bulldozer00 2 comments

Because of the widespread wreckage caused by the 2008 financial meltdown and the fact that not one single gov-handout-taking banker fat cat is behind bars, I harbor a deep disdain for financial institutions. Since the impeccably infallible Goldman Sux is high on my turd list, I quickly snatched up Steven Mandis’s “What Happened to Goldman Sachs: An Insider’s Story of Organizational Drift and Its Unintended Consequences” to harden my mental model of the company. One of my favorite passages in the book is:

Before this increased emphasis on quantification and accountability, people were willing to make more time for each other and help think through issues. Bankers didn’t worry about filling out time sheets or taking credit. They worried instead more about giving clients better advice. – Steven Mandis

So, if your org’s so-called leadership starts cranking up the volume on “metrics!“, “accountability!“, and/or “performance management!” in textbook MBA fashion, then beware of what the future holds. It simply broadcasts their knee-jerk cluelessness and utter lack of ideas on how to really improve your borg.

Categories: business Tags: bailout, financial meltdown, Goldman Sachs

Bastions Of Objectivity

October 9, 2011 bulldozer00 Leave a comment

Experts don’t think, they know. (just like Bulldozer00)

In theory, high brow academic disciplines are supposed to be bastions of dispassionate objectivity. However, in the Oscar-winning documentary “Inside Job“, several of the most highly esteemed professors of economics are laughingly called out onto the mat by Charles Ferguson (ala Mike Wallace style) for taking payments from the financial institutions that triggered the 2008 meltdown. These dudes wrote papers and gave speeches praising the virtues of “no regulation” on junk bundles of sub-prime loans, credit default swaps and all other kinds of financial “innovations“. That in itself wouldn’t be so bad, but when these bozos shoveled their BS “expertise” onto laymen like you and me, they didn’t even disclose that they were being paid by the big bad dudes who figuratively deflated your pension and 401-K account.

Along with Kevin Smith’s “Red State“, former software-weenie Charles Ferguson’s “Inside Job” are the best two movies I’ve seen this year. If you’ve still retained your Netflix subscription after their recent price change fiasco, put these movies at the top of your queue.