The Ethical Barometer

Robert Moffat, former senior VP at IBM.  The 11th individual of the 21 indicted to enter a guilty plea in the spider-web-like case of alleged insider trading by Galleon Group.  Mr. Moffat acknowledged that he passed along information on how sales of IBM products were going, particularly when they were “not good.”

Google co-founder Sergey Brin on why Google reversed its position on doing business in China. Previously the company was doing business there in order to “advance the bar.”  Well done, sir, but “discomfort” is a detached and sterile term to describe one’s reaction to violations of human rights.

A former lawmaker in Kentucky who is in prison for murder asked to be moved from protective custody so that he could join the ranks of the prison proletarian masses for gridiron bonding.  Neither rain nor snow, nor sleet, nor murder most foul can stop the loyal NFL viewer.

Harry Markopolos, on investment fund advisers and their take on Bernie Madoff, in his new book on the $65-billion Madoff Ponzi scheme, “No One Would Listen.”  Still, they kept investing.

Bhairavi Desai, executive director of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, upon the Taxi and Limousine Commission’s disclosure of a report that found taxi drivers were pushing the button on the meter of their cabs so as to charge the outside-five-burroughs rate, a rate that is two times that of the inside-five-burroughs rate.  On 1.8 million rides, passengers paid, on average, an extra $4-$5 per trip.  Mr. Desai, the Barometer believes another form of systematic failure occurred.

Former Utah House Majority Leader Kevin Garn upon his admission that he had indeed paid a woman $150,000 in 2002 in exchange for her promise to keep quiet about their naked hot-tubbing 25 years earlier when she was 15 and an employee at Mr. Garn’s company.  Mr. Garn was running for congress at the time.  He lost the race, and the young woman told anyway.  See the left of The Barometer’s home page, “Never trust the people you cheat with.  They will throw you under the bus.”

William Schlich, former lead partner on Ernst & Young Lehman team. June 5, 2008.  In July, 2008, the E&Y team told Lehman’s audit committee that the allegations were unfounded and immaterial. Lehman would file for bankruptcy on September 15, 2008.