What a horrible month to be a banker. Except, I suppose, for the millions in cash they pocket – although that cash suddenly seems a little dirtier than it did before.
Even Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney weighed in Wednesday, calling banking culture "deeply troubling," saying that bankers have to "substantially raise their game to levels of conduct that in any other aspect of life, are expected."
Read more: Mark Carney's new rule for banks: Don't be evil - Business - CBC News
Showing posts with label Corporate ethics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Corporate ethics. Show all posts
7/18/12
7/3/12
Corporations take ethics very lightly and most get away with "murder"
World’s worst corporate abuses includes issues as diverse as assassination, torture, kidnapping, environmental degradation, huge political campaign donations, violently repressing political rights, releasing toxins into pristine environments, destroying homes, discrimination, and causing widespread health problems.
Only very few corporate ethics abuses have resulted in these companies being forced to close down. In most cases they usually pay their way out of their problems and often their top management also usually gets off scot free and many even still stay in charge of their corporations
Global Exchange recently put out a list of "most wanted Corporate Criminals gives you information about the abusive behavior of this year’s worst corporations, and tells you who is responsible, and how to connect with and support people who are doing something about it.
The List
1. Bank of America for funding of environmentally harmful coal industry, excessive campaign contributions
2. Chevron for damaging ecosystem and people of Ecuador, repression of protest to oil extraction, Brazil spill
3. Century International Arms for producing Romanian AKs, which are frequently smuggled into Mexico
4. Halliburton for hydraulic fracturing, involvement in the Gulf spill, bribery in Nigeria
5. The Hershey Company for refusing to use fair trade labor and continuing to support labor that violates human rights standards
6. Monsanto for promotion of monocropping, involvement in government, refusing to label product, bankrupting small farms
7. Pacific Rim for mining in El Salvador
8. TransCanada for plans to construct Keyston XL Pipeline
9. Veolia for operations in Israel, high prices and bad service, privitization of water
10. Wal-Mart for unfair treatment of employees, use of sweatshop labor, bribery in Mexico
In more recent developments
British GlaxoSmithKline pharmaceutical company has agreed to pay $3 billion US in criminal and civil fines and plead guilty to misdemeanour criminal charges related to the sale and marketing of its antidepressants Paxil and Wellbutrin and the diabetes drug Avandia in the largest health care fraud settlement in U.S. history.
US Federal regulators propose a $3.7 million civil penalty against the TransCanada owners of a pipeline that ruptured in 2010, dumping more than three billion litres of oil into a Michigan river.
Barclays Plc was fined 290 million pounds ($451.4 million), the largest penalties ever imposed by regulators in the U.S. and U.K., after admitting it submitted false London and euro interbank offered rates.
EU-Digest
6/24/12
Market Failure at the Rio+20 Earth Summit - by Patrick Bond
Given the worsening world economic crisis, the turn to “Green Economy” rhetoric looms as a potential saviour for footloose financial capital, and is also enormously welcome to those corporations panicking at market chaos in the topsy turvy fossil-fuel, water, infrastructure construction, technology and agriculture sectors.
On the other hand, for everyone else, the Rio+20 Earth Summit underway this week in Brazil, devoted to advancing Green Economy policies and projects, appears as an overall disaster zone for the people and planet.
Meanwhile in Mexico, the G20 meeting of the real powerbrokers this week included a Green Economy session. But more serious distractions for the elites include ongoing southern European revulsion at harmful public policies cooked up by bankers, and potential war in the Middle East.
It’s critical to pose the Green Economy from this class-analytic and eco-centric standpoint, especially because inside the official Rio Centro, negotiations on a bland pro-market text continue through to June 23. There, progressive civil society strategies to insulate basic human and natural rights – e.g. to water – are being foiled by negotiators and by the host neoliberal Brazilian government, which is channelling reactionary positions from global North negotiators, especially from Washington, Ottawa, Tokyo and Tel Aviv, the main saboteur-regimes when it comes to water justice.
Read more: Market Failure at the Rio+20 Earth Summit » Counterpunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names
On the other hand, for everyone else, the Rio+20 Earth Summit underway this week in Brazil, devoted to advancing Green Economy policies and projects, appears as an overall disaster zone for the people and planet.
Meanwhile in Mexico, the G20 meeting of the real powerbrokers this week included a Green Economy session. But more serious distractions for the elites include ongoing southern European revulsion at harmful public policies cooked up by bankers, and potential war in the Middle East.
It’s critical to pose the Green Economy from this class-analytic and eco-centric standpoint, especially because inside the official Rio Centro, negotiations on a bland pro-market text continue through to June 23. There, progressive civil society strategies to insulate basic human and natural rights – e.g. to water – are being foiled by negotiators and by the host neoliberal Brazilian government, which is channelling reactionary positions from global North negotiators, especially from Washington, Ottawa, Tokyo and Tel Aviv, the main saboteur-regimes when it comes to water justice.
Read more: Market Failure at the Rio+20 Earth Summit » Counterpunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names
5/2/12
Communications Industry: Rupert Murdoch's Fox broadcast licences targeted by US ethics group - Ed Pilkington and Dominic Rushe
A Washington-based ethics watchdog is calling on federal regulators to revoke News Corporation's 27 Fox broadcast licences in the wake of the highly critical report on phone hacking from the UK parliament.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (Crew) has written to the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Julius Genachowski, calling on the regulator to pull the plug on Rupert Murdoch's lucrative television licences on grounds of character.
The letter argues that the final report of the UK Commons culture, media and sport committee, which concluded that Murdoch was not fit to run a major international company, had implications for the US regulators that they had now to act upon.
Melanie Sloan, Crew's director, said that the Murdochs had clearly failed the character test that is embedded within US media law as it is within British. "If they are not passing the character standard under British law, it seems to me that they are not going to meet the character standard in America."
For more: Rupert Murdoch's Fox broadcast licences targeted by US ethics group | Media | guardian.co.uk
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (Crew) has written to the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Julius Genachowski, calling on the regulator to pull the plug on Rupert Murdoch's lucrative television licences on grounds of character.
The letter argues that the final report of the UK Commons culture, media and sport committee, which concluded that Murdoch was not fit to run a major international company, had implications for the US regulators that they had now to act upon.
Melanie Sloan, Crew's director, said that the Murdochs had clearly failed the character test that is embedded within US media law as it is within British. "If they are not passing the character standard under British law, it seems to me that they are not going to meet the character standard in America."
For more: Rupert Murdoch's Fox broadcast licences targeted by US ethics group | Media | guardian.co.uk
10/29/11
Koch Industries: manipulation of corporate ethics, illegal sales and political involvement
A Bloomberg Markets investigation has found that Koch Industries -- in addition to being involved in improper payments to win business in Africa, India and the Middle East-- has sold millions of dollars of petrochemical equipment to Iran, a country the U.S. identifies as a sponsor of global terrorism.
Even a decade after former President Bill Clinton banned US companies from trading with Iran, Koch Industries continues to cut deals with a nation that was considered by America to be a threat to national security.
Charles, 75, and David Koch, 71, each worth about $20 billion, are prominent financial backers of right-wing groups including the Republican, T-Party and others which believe that excessive regulation is sapping the competitiveness of American business.
In 1980, David Koch ran for vice president on the Libertarian ticket, pledging to abolish Social Security, the Federal Reserve System, welfare, minimum wage laws and federal agencies -- including the Department of Energy, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency.
Koch-Glitsch is part of a global empire run by billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, who have taken a small oil company they inherited from their father, Fred, after his death in 1967, and built it into a chemical, textile, trading and refining conglomerate spanning more than 50 countries. Koch Industries is obsessed with secrecy, to the point that it discloses only an approximation of its annual revenue -- $100 billion a year -- and says nothing about its profits.
Sources interviewed by Bloomberg have said that employees of Koch Industries are lectured on “the Koch method” while conducting business, which broadly referred to lessons in cheating to make the most for the company. One former employee even added that she was told to lie about cancerous emissions that the corporations were aiding in pumping into the atmosphere but refused to alter data.
Interesting was that when John Boehner became the speaker of the House esarlier this yesr, following the Congressional elections victory of the Republican/T-Party, the first "guests" to visit him in his new Chambers were the Koch brothers.
EU-Digest
Even a decade after former President Bill Clinton banned US companies from trading with Iran, Koch Industries continues to cut deals with a nation that was considered by America to be a threat to national security.
Charles, 75, and David Koch, 71, each worth about $20 billion, are prominent financial backers of right-wing groups including the Republican, T-Party and others which believe that excessive regulation is sapping the competitiveness of American business.
In 1980, David Koch ran for vice president on the Libertarian ticket, pledging to abolish Social Security, the Federal Reserve System, welfare, minimum wage laws and federal agencies -- including the Department of Energy, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency.
Koch-Glitsch is part of a global empire run by billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, who have taken a small oil company they inherited from their father, Fred, after his death in 1967, and built it into a chemical, textile, trading and refining conglomerate spanning more than 50 countries. Koch Industries is obsessed with secrecy, to the point that it discloses only an approximation of its annual revenue -- $100 billion a year -- and says nothing about its profits.
Sources interviewed by Bloomberg have said that employees of Koch Industries are lectured on “the Koch method” while conducting business, which broadly referred to lessons in cheating to make the most for the company. One former employee even added that she was told to lie about cancerous emissions that the corporations were aiding in pumping into the atmosphere but refused to alter data.
Interesting was that when John Boehner became the speaker of the House esarlier this yesr, following the Congressional elections victory of the Republican/T-Party, the first "guests" to visit him in his new Chambers were the Koch brothers.
EU-Digest
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