“Why Don’t You Just Use This Receipt?”

Posted on October 21, 2011 by mmjdiary

The Barometer needs to stay away from gas stations. The portrait of America painted there is worrisome. Once again, the task of filling up a rental car was at hand. Gas pump #8 had a receipt dangling from the previous purchase — a receipt for $68.05. The Barometer’s rental car fill-up was $6.86, but no receipt arrived. The trek into the clerk for a receipt was more of an exchange. The $68.05 receipt turned in along with a request for a new receipt on Pump 8. The puzzled clerk looked at the receipt left by a previous patron, an amount 10 times the Barometer’s fill-up and asked, “Why don’t you just use this receipt?” Well, such skullduggery in submitting expenses is not the stuff of good business relationships. But, and here comes that concept of volume again, Continue reading →

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The CEO of Mercedes U.S. Is Fired for “Iffy” Spending

Posted on October 20, 2011 by mmjdiary

According to news reports, now former U.S. Mercedes-Benz CEO, Ernst Lieb, seems to have pulled the oldest tricks in the books: getting home repairs done at company expense and charging the company for personal travel. Why, the heads of carpentry shops and sales folks have been known to do the same. Somehow we expect something more creative from a CEO. Using the company’s shipping abilities to evade sales tax on art work. Financing your daughter’s Hollywood film career. Earning commissions from off-shore shell companies for selling the company assets. These are the stuff of CEO-level “iffy” expenses.

Creative though they may not have been, the alleged improper expenses felled Mr. Lieb. Daimler AG cut its successful CEO loose. These are tawdry allegations. Mercedes Continue reading →

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In the “No Good Deed Goes Unpunished” and “Voids in Math Word Problem Training” Departments

Posted on October 8, 2011 by mmjdiary

The Barometer stopped to fill up the tank for a rental car. Return a rental car with less than a full tank and one child’s college fund will need to be depleted. At the point of the fill-up, the odometer had added a mere 42 miles from the time the car was rented, complete with a full tank. Indeed, the tank was above the needle when Hertz turned over the keys.

The gas pump was behaving strangely. At first, it would pump in only one-half gallon. This was not a smart car, so the tank could not be full with just one-half gallon. Undeterred, the Barometer tried again. The pump began pumping, but only after the price per gallon switched from $3.37 to $0.337. The pump was relentless and the car that had gone 42 miles on a full tank required 6 (and some change, literally and figuratively) gallons for a fill-up. A hummer equipped with IED shields gets better mileage. But, at $0.337 the six gallons were a bargain, bringing up a grand total of $2.07 for the gas-filling episode.
Though late for a flight, the Barometer trekked into the AM/PM mart to let the good folks working there know two things: (1) That their pump was pumping furiously at $0.337 per gallon; and Continue reading →

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“The family is heartbroken because fraud is not our way of life.”

Posted on October 5, 2011 by mmjdiary

A statement from the family of Mr. Kweku Adoboli, former UBS trader, who is under arrest for allegedly attempting to hide $2.3 billion in losses from his trading activities on the bank’s Delta One ETF desk. The slightly different phrasing is apt. Newspaper headlines of late aside, fraud really should not be a way of life.

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Taking the SAT For Others For a Fee

Posted on October 5, 2011 by mmjdiary

Samuel Eshaghoff, a mere 19 years old, was arrested last week on charges of scheming to defraud, falsifying business records, and criminal impersonation. It seems that the Emory University freshman was paid $1,500 to $2,000 by five of his friends at Great Neck North High School in Nassau County, New York to take their SAT exams for them. A sixth student, a female, paid nothing, but Mr. Eshaghoff still took the test for her?? The Barometer is puzzled as to what consideration might have changed hands, as it were, in this transaction. One more puzzler for the Barometer: How did one Samuel Eshaghoof manage to sail by the proctors as a female high-school student? His photo shows him to be a strapping lad who has spent some time in the weight room. No wonder he was charged with criminal impersonation. Good to know that the monitoring of security on the college entrance exams is just aces these days.

How did New York authorities catch on? Well, Mr. Eshagohoff overdid it. He got the five students scores of 2200 out of 2400 possible on the exams, but the dunderheads who paid him Continue reading →

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“You will not become a saint through other people’s sins.” Chekhov

Posted on October 5, 2011 by mmjdiary

An elegant phrasing of the classic rationalizations: “I’m not as bad as _____.” and “Everybody does that.” and “If you think this is bad,you should have seen _________.” Our ethical standards do not improve just because we are not doing what the others are or are a steo ahead of others’ moral development. Ethical standards and, hence, our characters, improve when we make better ethical choices.

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“The company added capacity, and costs, at a time when it was having trouble with sales.”

Posted on September 17, 2011 by mmjdiary

The Wall Street Journal, September 16, 2011, describing how Solyndra, the government-backed solar panel company, went south. The company, now in bankruptcy, didn’t seem to have anyone within the company or on its board who understood the concepts that business students learn in their introduction to business, i.e., you begin with a product that will sell.

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When You Put in a Hotline, Be Prepared . . . At Least in Russia

Posted on September 14, 2011 by mmjdiary

Bless their hearts, the folks at BP put in a new hotline at their Russian TNK-BP joint venture. Apparently, there was a great deal of pent-up frustration back in the former USSR. The results are stunning:
• 365 cases of bribery/corruption
• 37 resulting criminal cases
• 92 employees disciplined
Doing business in Russia is not for the faint-hearted, but it is good for the hotline stats. Also, such results mean permanent employment for compliance officers at BP and any other companies doing business in a land that has two quids for every quo. The silver lining is that BP employees feel comfortable raising the issues. That willingness to speak up is about 90% of the battle when it comes to ethical culture. Also, if one examines the Russian culture Continue reading →

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“In my own mind, the line between permissible ‘detective work’ and impermissible insider trading was not always clear, especially with regard to companies broadly covered by the news media as to which there was a wealth of publicly available information, including frequent leaks, rumors and speculation about corporate transactions and other important developments.”

Posted on September 14, 2011 by mmjdiary

Convicted insider trading felon and former Galleon hedge fund owner, Raj Rajaratnam, in an interview with a probation officer who is writing his presentencing report. How about drawing a line when a board member calls with info on what just happened at a board meeting? That’s not detective work. That is inside information. In fact, it just doesn’t get more inside than that. Really a good thing that he opted not to testify at his trial.

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Solyndra – The Little Company That Couldn’t – Something Even Its Employees and External Auditors Knew

Posted on September 10, 2011 by mmjdiary

The Barometer heard a caller on a talk show discussing two things: (1) She was one of 1,100 employees laid off from the failing solar-panel maker, Solyndra LLC; and (2) She and the other employees knew as the company’s facilities were being built that the business would fail because factories in China were producing the panels at a fraction of Solyndra’s cost. One never knows on talk-show callers. They could be sitting at the computer with tin-foil hats on as they swap conspiracy theories about s’mores. Low and behold, a mere few days later, the FBI Continue reading →

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“This is a firm that understands that it is in the interest of their stockholders and their customers and the world that they live in to give back.” New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg

Posted on September 9, 2011 by mmjdiary

What firm would that be? Why, Goldman Sachs, of course! It all depends on the meaning of the term “give back.” ‘Tis lovely to give back philanthropically. However, some of us who were investors, customers, and taxpayers would just like Goldman to give back the money it made whilst operating under fairly wild interpretations of the terms, “fiduciary duty” and “loyalty.” Goldman’s lack of disclosure on its activities and positions hinged on whether it owed those duties to customers. Incredulously, the folks at Goldman concluded, “No, we need not tell them we’re betting against the very instruments we are selling to them.” Legally, they were absolutely correct. Ethically? Well, you can’t contribute your way out of poor ethical choices that involved taking advantage of others Continue reading →

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Steve Jobs, Milton Friedman, and Generous Philanthropy

Posted on September 5, 2011 by mmjdiary

The New York Times is flummoxed. Their beloved Steve Jobs is not a member of Giving Pledge, the Buffett/Gates organization that urges billionaires to give away at least half of their fortunes to charity. Oh, and Andrew Ross Sorkin, of the Times’ “Dealbook” column simply cannot figure out why Jobs has no business school, hospital wing, or Bono campaign named after him. (Andrew Ross Sorkin, “The Mystery of Jobs’s Public Giving,” New York Times, August 30, 2011, p. B1) Further, why wouldn’t Jobs join in the tech billionaire cause du jure to end polio? Maybe it’s because Jobs is smart enough to figure out that we did that in the 1950s. Children suffer Continue reading →

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In the pot and kettle department: Wikileaks

Posted on September 2, 2011 by mmjdiary

Wikileaks has filed suit against the British newspaper, “The Guardian” for alleged gross negligence of its reporters in publishing the passwords to the unarchived and uncensored diplomatic cables that Wikileaks had obtained via unauthorized means. This move reminds the Barometer of the time Shawn Fanning sought to stop a t-shirt vendor from selling t-shirts with the Napster logo on them because, well, the Napster logo belonged to him and could not be used without his permissions, licensing, and/or authorization. The nerve of these folks who do the same thing the litigants have been doing. A classic ethical analysis asks, “How would you feel if you were on the other side?” When our ox is gored, our own conduct seen in others somehow gets the blood boiling.

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“Suffice it to say that this is not two or three rogue employees at the customer service level doing this on their own. This was a corporate decision to engage in this conduct. Larry Page knew what was going on.”

Posted on August 27, 2011 by mmjdiary

Rhode Island U.S. Attorney Peter Neronha, who led the probe that led to Google paying a $500 million fine and admitting that it had accepted advertising revenues from Canadian pharmacy websites illegally selling prescription drugs in the United States. Mr. Neronha’s case found that Google knew about the violations in 2003 but did not stop the practice until 2009 when it was caught in a sting operation by undercover government agents.

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