A Clutch of Random Goodies- finance, net neutrality, deficit…

Here is just a clutch of good randomness that has been accumulating on my desktop…

PS featured image is Simon Johnson.

Bucknell and Truth

Bucknell gets unexpected reward for being honest about a mistake.  Is this worthy of an ethical snap?

Net Neutrality?

What the hell is net neutrality?  Baratunde Thurston  one of our tech/no speakers, explains it so well, it got picked up by Raw Story.   I love how Bucknell can be a producer of information and wisdom and not just a user. 

Organization Theory is Cool

A book review about organization theory I really need to read.  Orgtheory.net is the one blog I wish I read more.

Learn from Nice Rich People

Lessons for failure and management from philanthropists.

We are drowning in deficit! (are we?)

Compare your answers to the US public and, um, the reality.

Change Doesn’t Happen.  Until it Does.

From AFL-CO vs Home Depot, through Frank-Dodd, to Citigroup.  Is corporate governance and executive compensation changing?  Maybe.  Read abotu some pretty big changes at the link.

Is a Tax Better than Regulations?

You want policy ideas?  You like finance? You dislike “regulation” that tries to dictate firm behavior?  Try this one.  Instead of trying to tell financial firms what they can or can’t do, how much capital to have on the books, and so on, how about you tax a vice- like we do with alcohol and tobacco- and simply tax financial transactions to make trading for the sake of microscopic gains on immaterial price shifts non-economic?  Read. here about Europe’s experiment with a different, and I would argue,  less intrusive form of regulation to change financial markets and firms.

You want even more financial regulation news?

You are really, really troubled.  I hope Vinny, Loukas, Mike, and… (who else are finance jocks?) are reading this. Simon Johnson.  yes, THAT Simon Johnson, had this blog post about the 12 “angry bankers” of the Fed and their ideas to push for transparency in money market fund valuations as part of the (yes, that same one) Frank Dodd bill reforms that created the systemic risk council.  In a nutshell, the financial industry does NOT WANT such valuation while the regulators do.

I am never surprised when practicing “capitalists” fight against actual free markets (with liquidity and transparency).  Businesspeople are often, perhaps usually anti-capitalist if you define capitalism not as maximum wealth accumulation, but as free markets that expand the prosperity of a society.  Am I alone in seeing this?

Related articles

• Simon Johnson: “Some of These Institutions Have Become Too Large” (huffingtonpost.com)
• Goldman Sachs Releases Dodd-Frank Act Stress Test Disclosure (fool.com)
• Does Dodd-Frank really end ‘too big to fail’? (washingtonpost.com)
• Baratunde Thurston explains what the hell net neutrality is (rawstory.com)
• HedgeFundMarketing.org Forecasts Bigger Legal Departments in Wake of New Regulations (prweb.com)
• New SEC Chief Arrives with Gold-Plated Resume, but Much of Dodd-Frank Remains Unimplemented (forbes.com)
• Comedian Baratunde Thurston – ‘Perception and Comedy’ (fora.tv)
• FCC Chairman takes the hot seat at wireless gathering (reviews.cnet.com)
• $ustainability (bizgovsocvii.wordpress.com)

Natural Capitalism

I am just now picking up Lovins, Hawken,and Lovins Natural Capitalism book.

I am wondering if I could use it in a module on alternative perspectives on capitalism module. I also was wondering what has happened since it was published in 1999.

There is a is a website called natcap.org.

Here I found a more recent edition with a new introduction. http://www.naturaledgeproject.net/NatCap2005.aspx.

What I like best about it is the focus on solutions. I feel like that would mitigate people who dismiss change as naive idealism.

Through the looking glass: Putting a Value on a C.E.O.

January 28- Update:

Maureen Dowd Agrees with me:

“If you don’t pay your best people, you will destroy your franchise” and they’ll go elsewhere, he said.

Hello? They destroyed the franchise. Let’s call their bluff. Let’s see what a great job market it is for the geniuses of capitalism who lost $15 billion in three months and helped usher in socialism.”

My father in law sent me this article from two weeks ago int the NY Times.

Dealbook – Putting a Value on a C.E.O. – NYTimes.com
“By itself, more share and retention-based compensation is not the magic bullet, because it certainly didn’t stop us from running up very large losses,” Mr. Bischoff said.

This ranks up there with all time statements lacking any humility or self-awareness.  If you look at the explosion in financial sector profitability (much of it inflated) and bonuses and other stock-based payments, and then at the continued pay out of bonuses even as the financial sector sank, then the premise of this statement by the Chairman of Citigroup, which is that more of the same compensation schemes _may_, (may!) not help avoid large losses is weirdly up-is-down through-the-looking-glass logic that can only make sense to the world of Wall Street and high finance.  If you are the CEO, of, say, I don’t know, a car manufacturer, and your firm looses more than half of its value in one year, than you d not get a bonus.  You probably lose your job.

The article goes on to repeat the logic of more of these compensation ideologues several times that if firms do not continue to pay out huge bonuses tied to stock options, than they will lose the top management talent they need to compete.  ha ha, ho ho!  I am drying my eyes.

Let’s list some accomplishments of this great management talent (all are sarcastic, BTW)

Because they have done such a great job so far.

Because they did not create the conditions for this financial mess by advocating deregulation and obfuscation of financial systems under the guise of free market theory.

Because they designed and staunchly defend as in the general interest stock option compensation that creates clear and perverse incentives to smooth earnings, game financial accounting, and other malfeasance (whether deliberate or convenient).

Because they have not hijacked the very governance mechanisms meant to curb the abuses of greed in a free market- corporate boards and regulatory agencies.

Finally, is there a labor economist in the house?

The argument is that if not, as a group, paid super premiums over all other types of organizational leaders, from medicine, higher education, the frickin’ president, manufacturing, and every other sector of American economic activity, then oh no! there will be a mass exodus of CEO and top management.  Really?  And where in the hell where they go work?  Boeing?  Chrysler?  Schering Plough? Best Buy?  Given the vast pool of educated and experienced mangers and even financial managers in the world, you don’t think we could possibly find people willing to work for $2,$4,$6 million in total compensation? Especially if that is twice what they ear now (or more) and not any better than what they could get elsewhere.

The notion somehow massive bonuses and total compensation are the only way to keep people performing as the CEOs and top leaders of banks, brokerages, investment banks, and so on just seems laughable.

Long Tail Debates

Wish I had more time now to review this:

Long Tail Stops Wagging.

Matt Stoller over at Open Left argues that this means that technoutopian libertarian dreams are dead and there is a necessary role for government.

Maybe.  I have never read enough of the Long Tail arguments to have a Strong opinion, but I do want to point out that there maybe radical inequality in revenues between a Google or Facebook and other web services that aim to make a profit.  In fact, a long tail is premised on that.  But, the question was whether a business can survive in the long tail, as opposed to have equal revenues.  If you have the head and not tail then you have an oligopoly which was never the merit of the long tail.

Finally, aggregators seem complicated.  They get a little revenue from a massive volume of transactions, but if those transactions are distributed to a number of smaller players (ebay, Amazon marketplace, emusic, and so on), then you may have a viable market where one did not exist before- again, it is about viability, not equality.

Is this for real?

A direct mail marketing message came to me today ahead of the Academy of Management meetings.

Is this for real?

Do you have questions about life?

Stop by the McGraw-Hill/Irwin booth Sunday, Aug.9 and Tuesday, Aug. 12 from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. and get lifes questions answered by our psychics!

Soc Net Books to Explore

Charles Kadushin sent out an email awhile ago asking for reviewers for Social Networks.  i would love to see the network folks sink their teeth into the explosion of general audience/practitioner books out there.

he listed the following at the time as possibilities:

Social Networks and Marketing, by Christophe Van den Bulte and Stefan Wuyts, Marketing Science Institute, 2007.

Andy Sernovitz and Guy Kawasaki, Word of Mouth Marketing: How smart companies get people talking. Kaplan Publishing, 2006 Mark Hughes, Buzz Marketing, Penguin 2006 Dave Balter and John Butman, Grapevine: the new art of word-of-mouth marketing. Penguin 2005.

Add Seth Godin’s Tribes: We need you to Lead us (2008) to the list.

Last Chance to Apply to Be an Obama Organizing Fellow!

Maybe some current or former students check in…

Maybe this campaign is going to be a case study in managerialism in politics married to netroots.  Centrally controlled message and tight finances (managerialism) with people2peole tools and emergent organizing on the ground (netroots).  so, this counts as an OT post also.  :<)

Barack Obama : : Change We Can Believe In | Sam Graham-Felsen’s Blog: Last Chance to Apply to Be an Obama Organizing Fellow!
Today is your last chance to apply to be an Obama Organizing Fellow this summer. This is your opportunity to be on the frontlines of this movement for change, bringing Obama’s message to voters across America, precinct by precinct, block by block…

Applied SNA-ASNA 2007 // Call for Papers

ASNA 2007 // Call for Papers
ASNA 2008 will primarily provide an interdisciplinary venue with focus on applications of social network analysis; however, submissions on theoretical and methodological issues regarding SNA are also welcome.

I don’t know how many times I can bounce over to the EU in the Fall, but this looked interesting.  I have been itching for awhile to get a better handle on applied SNA.   Outside of Valdis Kreb’s InFlow and Rob Cross’ Network Roundtable (and The company Visible Path), I don’t know much about applied SNA over here.

I should find out what kinds of meetings are over here of this nature.

Plaxo Is Said to Be for Sale

Social Net Site Is Said to Be for Sale – New York Times

They were getting beat out by Facebook and LinkedIn.  What has happened with Orkut, Friendster, Tribe.net, and other SNS (social networking sites)? Will they adapt, consolidate, or disappear?   Seems like a good case study of an emerging field of competitors.  Do new rules apply, or the same old industrial organization and strategic evolution? Or, like the persistent synthetic worlds Castronova described (like Ultima Online), will they persist due to the stickiness of social ties?

Research Ideas for My Students

Hello folks. This is by no means a comprehensive set of resources. It more reflects sources that seemed to be of interest to two or more of you AND that I thought might not jump out at you as pertinent. It is a mix of search terms, blogs, or alternative media.

EVERYONE should make an appointment with a Bucknell research librarian.

Mob Mentality

□ See Swarm intelligence as a search term. Also this book and tool.

□ See Smart Mobs as a search term. Also, this site and book.

How context shapes roles

□ Stanford Prison Experiment

How social network effects company

□ Work by Rob Cross

□ David Krackhardt

□ David Obstfeld

□ How brekatoroughs happen…

□ Blogs: Search them for your topics.

Orgtheory http://orgtheory.wordpress.com/

Complexity

Connecetddness

Visiblepath

Terrorism

□ Saddam Hussein and his network

□ RAND corporation

□ Orgnet

Torture:

□ Experts on torture

□ A historian of torture

□ Overview of news on detainees

Financial Bubbles…

□ Bill Moyers with Kuttner

□ Interviews with Greenspan

□ Greespan debate Naomi Klein, a critic (bubbles and feds role comes up)
Fanatic communities

□ MeetUp

□ Org theory post

Size of communties

□ Gore-Tex maker

Advertising

□ No logo- a critical assessment of advertising and capitalism.

□ Viral garden blog

Iraq:

□ Fiasco

□ Cobra II

□ Assassin’s Gate