The Ethical Barometer

I am a single parent, so, hell yeah, I have the motivation to want to have good scores. I don’t want to lose that money.

Think about the teachers who are monitoring their own students who are taking those state exams that they must pass or they cannot graduate or they go to prison – the Barometer is not really sure of consequences for students, just that they are serious.  If the consequences were not so grave, why else would teachers cheat?  And cheating they are, according to a study released by Audrey Amrein-Beardsley, Continue reading →

The Barometer recalls the 80s when we here in the USA feared that the Japanese would take over the world because they were so good with cars, real estate, and production.  Their lost decade found us pulling ahead.  And there is no need to fear a catch-up.  Folks at Kyoto University are flummoxed by a cheating scandal on entrance exams that found the questions from the two-day exam posted on the internet, followed by answers as Ask Wiki or whatever came through for the aspiring lads and lasses.  University officials believe that the applicants posted the questions on line using their smart phones.  DUH!

We here in the USA banished cell phones from exams about a decade ago.  Continue reading →

This ethics stuff is fairly straightforward when there’s not much to lose.  We tend to go wobbly when so much is on the line. However, BYU yanked the eligibility of one of its star basketball players as it heads, with justifiably high hopes, into March Madness.  The BYU player violated the university’s honor code.  Absolute, unequivocal, egalitarian standards applied.  The young man’s name is not given here because he did the right thing in admitting his breach Continue reading →

Rajat Gupta was a member of the Goldman Sachs board in 2008 (he has just resigned) when the board discussed on September 21-23 converting Goldman Sachs into a Bank Holding Company and accepting Berkshire Hathaway’s offer of a $5 billion purchase in preferred shares. Telephone records and calendar entries indicate that, on the morning of Monday, September 22, the day after the Sunday evening Goldman Sachs Board meeting, Gupta and Rajaratnam very likely had a telephone conversation. Shortly after that conversation, Rajaratnam had his hedge company, Galleon, which held no pre-existing long or short position in Goldman Sachs securities at the time, to purchase over 80,000 Goldman Sachs shares.

On September 23, Rajaratnam placed a call to Gupta which lasted over 14 minutes. Less than a minute after the call began, Rajaratnam caused the Galleon Tech funds to purchase more than 40,000 additional Goldman Sachs shares.

Gary Naftalis, Mr. Gupta’s lawyer explained, “Mr. Gupta has done nothing wrong.  There is no allegation that Mr. Gupta traded in any of these securities or shared in any profits as part of any quid pro quo.” Ah, but a director passing along non-public information can be a bit of a problem.

February 3-4, 2011

•“SEC Sues Over Bug in ‘Quant’ Program,” Wall Street Journal, February 4, 2011, p. C1 –AXA SA agreed to pay $242 million to settle fraud charges that it hid material information from clients through the use of complex computer models and a secretive culture

•“32% Admit Mooching Off Neighbor’s Wi-Fi,” USA Today, February 4, 2011, p. 1B. –Neighbors admit to borrowing their neighbors’ unencrypted Wi-Fi connections.  The number of piggy-backers has doubled since 2008. –Terrorists, pedophiles, and identity thieves are known piggy-backers but were not part of the survey (to the best of the Continue reading →