Help your trillion-dollar clients or quit!

Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs - Greg Smith, New York Times:

"Over the course of my career I have had the privilege of advising two of the largest hedge funds on the planet, five of the largest asset managers in the United States, and three of the most prominent sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East and Asia. My clients have a total asset base of more than a trillion dollars. I have always taken a lot of pride in advising my clients to do what I believe is right for them, even if it means less money for the firm. This view is becoming increasingly unpopular at Goldman Sachs. Another sign that it was time to leave. ...

I attend derivatives sales meetings where not one single minute is spent asking questions about how we can help clients. It’s purely about how we can make the most possible money off of them. If you were an alien from Mars and sat in on one of these meetings, you would believe that a client’s success or progress was not part of the thought process at all."

***

With clients to "help" like these ... what kind of person is doing the "helping"?

My read about this much-talked about piece: This is a frustrated guy who feels he didn't get his share of the cooperate pie and so is "exposing" his decade-long masters -- doubtless because he feels they weren't paying/promoting him enough, so that he could, sooner than later, be their Wall Street master, clearly his no. 1 ambition. No need to read between the lines.

Pretending to be a ping-pong playing idealist (as he describes himself in his article, "modestly" citing one of his many resume-worthy achievements) who wants to "help" loaded investors -- after more than ten years Working for the Man -- is no way to be persuasive about one's intentions/honesty, especially when Americans are struggling to pay for mortgage/grocery/high gas/medical bills at awful time economically, marked by the disparity between the Wall-Street rich and other Americans.

"A" or "an" historical reference?

Tina Blue, "A Historical? An Historical?"

"Korny 2012" -- What it really is: a Facebook ad

Given the multitude of comments on the "Kony 2012" video, I don't have much to add to this debate, except to note that this corny, slick, superficial, dumbing-down visual piece of simplification appears to be essentially an advertisement for Facebook. References in the film to Facebook's powers of agitprop abound, and include an image of Fakebook's founder, the mean, odious Mr. Zuckerberg, evidently meant to be a hero in the struggle against evil in our social-media interconnected world.

So, on a most elementary level, what the YouTube sensation is really "communicating," in certainly not a subtle or particularly subliminal way, is twofold:

(a) To "fb friends," especially young ones: Facebook is an groovy, easy-to-use tool to fix problems you need to know little about; it makes you feel good as you click away on your computer, safely absconded from the "real world" you're trying to save. Well, ok, in your solidarity with the Korny Movement, it may ask you to stand outside of a government building with a banner. Far easier than being beaten up by the police in Cairo.

(b) Far most important, to the real-power guys who really count in this world (I wish I were just kidding), among them advertisers, the veritable, so-called really "visible" message of "Kony Invisible Children" is that  Facebook can mobilize at a moment's notice millions of potential consumers (suckers?) globally; there's no better place anywhere, physical or virtual, to get big, big bangs for your ad bucks by manipulating -- through fancy graphics, instant communications, putative cyberspace "interconnectivity."  Through these means, it appeal to a vaguely defined "good" cause -- millions of the well-meaning uninformed worldwide so that they will buy what you want to sell.

Substitute "invisible children" with "things go better with Coke" (what's the real difference between these two activities, from a marketing "strategic planning" point of view) -- and the Korny 2012 marketing message becomes crystal clear: buy/use Facebook.

Image from

Zombies chase down couch potatoes and the unprepared

Zombies chase down couch potatoes and the unprepared  - Kim Painter, USA TODAY 3/8/2012 4:41 PM 

How did zombies become the go-to mascots for health, safety and emergency preparedness? Blame the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Ever since the CDC started its tongue-through-cheek "zombie preparedness" campaign a few months back (because if you can prepare for a zombie apocalypse, you can also prepare for a hurricane, earthquake or pandemic), it seems everyone wants a piece of the undead. The latest:

 --A new smartphone app called "Zombies, RUN!" prompts runners to run faster to escape rotting, brain-hungry invaders. The running game is designed for experienced joggers who need an extra adrenaline rush or for novices who just need a push off the couch. "We have all the built-in instincts in our brains to run away from predators," says one of the developers.

 --Michigan State University is offering a new online course entitled: "Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse -- Catastrophes and Human Behavior." Mostly, it's about how people get through plagues, meteor strikes and such. But students also will form survivor groups to deal with a simulated "zombie pandemic," because, as instructor Glenn Stutzky says, "zombies make everything more interesting." (At least Stutzky was the instructor: A zombie appears to eat his brain in a rather graphic promotional video for the class).

Meanwhile, the folks at CDC continue to enjoy the company of zombies -- despite the fact that a fictional version of their Atlanta headquarters was destroyed during a zombie pandemic on AMC's The Walking Dead. Ali S. Khan, director of the CDC's public health preparedness office, reports that he was one of about 2,500 people who ran from a muddy zombie mob just a few days ago. The event was a 5K fundraiser. Khan writes at his blog: "What better way to improve your race time than to be chased by zombies?"

Notes from the Underground: Mortuary Science

Notes from the Underground:

 As a near-daily shopper at the Giant store in the North-West section of the District of Columbia (a twenty-minute drive from the heart of the Imperial Capital, Washington, time-of-drive depending on traffic conditions), I am struck not only by the extravagant prices of this Dutch-owned Giant establishment (in the Maryland/Virginia 'burbs you pay far more less for food) -- but also by the fact that "mortuary science" seems, at the risk my exaggerating, to have gone virtual with this DC supermarket's employees.

A charming lady in charge of flowers at this store left her job (I was told by one of her colleagues) to work at a funeral home. And today, while buying "discounted" avocados, an equally sociable check-out employee (with wonderful fake eyelashes) told me that she was studying "mortuary science" at a local learnery, not mentioning (as I assumed; her supervisors were nearby), that she would leave her current job.

I could not help but wonder: I should follow eye-lashes' example. Death management is the ultimate safety in these hard Great Recession times, as our extinction, no matter what, happens.

Forget social security checks. Work for a funeral home.

well written or well-written?

http://christianq.hubpages.com/hub/Well-Written-Hubs

The 24 Best Things Montaigne Ever Said

RasoirJ, "The 24 Best Things Montaigne Ever Said," 317am.net