Trusting our Leaders

I recently read an article about a senior stock broker in London, who has been banned from finance for life by the British equivalent of our SEC.  His offense was failing to pay his train fare for his daily commute into London.  Now while this may seem extreme, it wasn't a one-time mistake, but a deliberate systematic scheme to avoid paying full price for his commuting trips, because the system was based on trust.  He settled the civil part of the case with the train company for over $60K, based on the cost of 20 years of commuting.  But then when his identity was publicly revealed months after the settlement, he lost his job managing a hedge fund, and was banned for life from trading in the London market.  Now the question at hand is, was that the right reaction and consequence for his offense?

Most of the sources quoted in the article thought it was an outrageous over-reaction, but I have no problem with the idea that "a single lapse in judgment could ruin someone's career or life."  I am not creating that idea as a new rule, I am merely recognizing that it already exists as a rule.  If you, in a lapse of judgment step in front of a train, you die.  Our actions have permanent and irrevocable consequences.  So it stands to reason that other decisions you make should have the potential to destroy your professional career, or your financial well-being.

Now to be clear, there is a difference between a mistake made out of confusion, and a deliberate action for one's own gain.  Filing the wrong tax form because the system is more complicated than you understand, is totally different than filing the wrong tax form, and pretending to be confused by it, to avoid paying so much.  They are both mistakes, but one is a deliberate mistake.  One indicates that you are incapable, the other that you can't be trusted.  Since the financial industry is based on trust, the fact that someone can't be trusted to act with integrity in small financial matters, should disqualify them from being trusted in large financial matters.  The same is true for lawyers misrepresenting their clients, or doctors who act against their patient's best interests.  If they can not be trusted, they should not be trusted.

Where does forgiveness fit into this?  Forgiveness does not remove the natural consequences of one's transgressions; it just releases the need for revenge.  Banning someone for life is not done out of vengeance, but to protect the integrity of the system, and ensure that those involved are people who can be trusted by both investors and the public at large.

This is similar to the questions we frequently face in regards to the personal lives of our political leaders.  Should their personal indiscretions affect their positions in the world of government and business?  My answer is "of course," but there is currently a lot of public debate about this.

I was a big fan of Gen. Patraeus as his career took off after his successes in the war on terror.  At the rate he was advancing in Washington, through the Pentagon and CIA, it was anticipated that he would soon be a presidential candidate, and stood out as a beacon of integrity in a corrupt system.  But it was eventually revealed that he was cheating on his wife with the girl who was writing his biography.  I still agree with his politics, and know that he has accomplished a lot for this country, but I can't support him as a leader.  If his wife can't trust him with their relationship, how can we trust him with our country?

Obviously Bill Clinton is a prime example, and the public ruled in his favor in the election process, but I still think they got it wrong.  It just reflects how much our culture has abandoned any sense of accountability or holding people responsible for their actions.  And it is not limited to sexual issues.  In the same vein, his wife was running the State Department during the Benghazi crisis, and it was handled poorly, resulting in the permanent death of multiple Americans.  She didn't resign, but left office at the end of that term.  It seems pretty that their deaths should have ended her career; it was her responsibility to protect them, and she and/or her subordinates failed to do so.  With her rise as a presidential candidate, that issue is being dismissed, because "it took place years ago."  The victims are still dead, so I don't think that the issue has been fully resolved.

Our decisions and actions matter, and have real consequences.  We need to recognize that, and shouldn't try to create a system that minimizes those consequences and accountability.  People should not be isolated from the consequences of their actions, especially those in positions of power.  Doctors, lawyers, and stock brokers are governed by committees that set standards for their conduct and enforce those rules.  But with elected offices in our political government, we the people set the standards, and enforce the rules, based on who we vote for.  So we need to vote for people we can trust to act with integrity, as that is the only way to fight corruption within government.

Hollywood is a Comedy in International Relations

There has been a lot of talk in the press recently about the hacking of Sony's network, with many different reactions.  It appears that forces originating in North Korea were able to breech Sony's network, and steal massive amounts of data.  This potentially valuable or embarrassing data is being held hostage, with the threat of publicizing it if they don't cancel the release of a movie that is very offensive to the North Korean government.  The movie is rumored to graphically depict the assassination of Kim Jong Un, the country's dictator.  There was also a public threat of physical violence against the company and its employees if demands were not met.

After weeks of debate, and a progressive series of data leaks, Sony has canceled the release of The Interview, the movie in question.  This has resulted in further widespread criticism of Sony, which has been mounting as the leaks revealed issues within the company and its leaders.  Now in as much as canceling the movie is caving to terrorist demands, and encouraging attacks like this in the future, I oppose their decision.

But many people are bringing the freedom of speech into the situation, as an issue at stake.  And I think that is the wrong approach, and not really relevant anyway.  The principle of freedom of speech (and/or "expression") applies to government intervention, and nothing else.  The government has not required Sony to cancel the movie, at least not publicly, so their freedom or rights have not been violated, at least not by the government.  They have clearly been violated in some form by the attack, but their "rights" have not been.  And just because we have the right to do something doesn't mean that it is right to do it.

Now let's look at it from the other side.  Someone in North Korea deserves a huge promotion at this point.  Not because what they did was right, but because it was seemingly impossible.  Early on, I found it hard to believe that North Korea could be to blame for this, because I didn't think they were that competent and capable.  Most of what I hear about North Korea supports the idea that the country is led by people who live in their own deluded fantasy world, with no grip on reality.  I could easily imagine Kim Jong Un demanding that his military put a stop to this movie by force.  I could not imagine them ever coming close to succeeding at that task.  But it appears that they have, against all odds.  The North Korean government tried to settle the issue peacefully, lodging an official protest with the UN, which was totally ignored.  So they moved on to more extreme measures.  Now regardless of the means they used, let's look at their objective.  Would we allow a movie to be released that portrayed the assassination of Obama?  I can assure you that we would not, and there are actual rules about that, enforced by the secret service.  We have movies about assassination attempts, against fictionally US Presidents, but the assassins are never the protagonists, and we would never graphically portray their potential success.  So I think the North Koreans have justification for being upset about the movie itself.

So should it be released?  We can ignore the freedom of speech argument, because even in the US, the freedom of speech does not extend to advocating killing political leaders.  And a movie production in the US would be shut down by the government if it was about killing the current president.  And while North Korea seemed like a safe and politically correct target for a comedy spy movie, it is not the same as using a fictional enemy.  And actually portraying the killing of a real political leader, who is still alive today, as a desirable outcome, is clearly inappropriate.  So do the filmmakers have the "right" to do something like that?  Possibly under existing US law, but not if it was a US President.  Is it the right thing to do?  Surely not, but it is outrageous enough to garner more attention and therefore more profit.

So not showing the movie might be the right thing to do.  The issue is that they are making that expensive decision for the wrong reasons.  They are canceling the movie to avoid being liable for the consequences of showing it, not because it is an inappropriate thing to show.  It is unfortunate that the current outcome promotes hacking and terrorism as a viable way of accomplishing legitimate objectives in the future.  And the responses from both the media and the public to that decision just illustrate how out of balance their values and priorities are.  They are almost as out of touch with reality as the North Koreans are usually portrayed as being.

Climate Change

The weather has been in the headlines a lot recently.  There were two major stories yesterday.  The first was that the Pineapple Express storm was supposed to bring the heaviest rainfall in 6 years.  Second, linked from the same page, was a study claiming that the current drought is the worst California has experienced in 1200 years.  So the one thing we can safely conclude, is that we can't believe everything the media is telling us.

We would have no idea of many of the current pressing issues we are facing, if the media wasn't constantly telling us about them.  They are "pressing" because that means we need to stay updated on them as they develop, and therefore need to continue using the media.  But humans have a terrible memory, and this has nearly always been true.  Half of the Old Testament is saying "don't forget what the Lord your God has done to bring you out of Egypt," and the people constantly forgot anyway.  Things always seem more extreme in the present than in our memories of the past, even if they are factually identical.

Daylight savings time is a great example.  Every fall, I always feel like "I know it is supposed to get dark earlier, but it never used to get dark THIS early."  And every spring I hardly notice as it changes back.  If I didn't fully understand how this worked, I would probably believe a news story about how the increase of the tilt of the earth's axis was making the seasons more extreme, and the days even shorter than usual in winter.

The same is true of weather: it always FEELS hotter this summer than last year, and colder this winter than last year.  It didn't rain this much last year.  It hasn't snowed here in years.  So nearly any weather forecast can be fabricated into a plausible pressing issue that we should all be concerned about.  And my favorite part, that many of these fabricated issues are supposedly caused by our actions.  They ARE caused by our actions, not necessarily from pollution, but they are created for political reasons.  From the global cooling scare in the 70s, to the global warming scare of the 90s, it is something that the government can claim to be protecting us from, if we give them more control over things.

The current "climate change" issue was a rebranding on global warming after it became obvious to even the most gullible that the earth wasn't always getting hotter.  It's a brilliant marketing plan, because climates DO change; it's a fact of life, look at Greenland.  That became un-farmable and froze over hundreds of years before the industrial revolution brought measurable pollution from man.  It isn't always bad change either.  The current polar melting has led to valuable new navigable water routes that the world is beginning to fight over.

This week, the flooding proves that it did rain, although not as much as the hype would lead you to believe.  Our reservoirs are still very low, which is the primary statistic used to measure the drought, but we control how much is retained there, at least to a degree.  If there is no water, we can't divert it, but when there is water, we can choose to let it flow, or store it.  Folsom Lake was empty this summer, but I drove to LA two months ago, and saw Pyramid Lake on the way there.  It is filled to capacity, within a foot of the top.  So there is water, but it is being sent to LA, to meet the growing needs there.  And the drought scare is used to support the $8B proposition to fund more water delivery to LA, to alleviate the man-made drought in NorCal.

Cancer Treatment

So I guess I do some pretty random things.  I spent 12 hours yesterday with someone I hadn't seen in six years, driving through the traffic and rain in the Bay Area.  He needed someone to accompany him to his cancer treatment in San Francisco on short notice, and since I was free that day, I offered to go.  We have had pretty much no contact over the last few years, but once a camp friend, always a camp friend.  And Facebook has a strange way of facilitating those random connections at unexpected times and places.  I met up with another friend from Arizona a few years ago, when we both happened to be visiting PA at the same time.

Anyhow, the long gap in communication didn't present an issue, and we struck up a conversation as if it had only been since last week.  But luckily we had a lot to talk about, since rainy traffic left us on the road for hours longer than expected in each direction.  When we actually got to his appointment, it felt a bit strange to me to be in a cancer research center, realizing that most of the people sitting around me had serious forms of terminal cancer.  Everyone I know is dying to some degree, but most of us at a much slower rate than certain others.  That is a lot more clear in an environment like that.

I was actually sitting right there for an hour and a half as they drew blood and gave him chemical transfusions, as he drifted in and out of consciousness due to the effect of the drugs.  I was trying to read a book the whole time, but was frequently distracted from that by people coming and going, both the patients moving to the overstuffed chairs overlooking the city while they got their transfusions, and the staff that attended to them.

As we were leaving, I overheard an elderly gentleman talking to someone else in the waiting room, "this chemo process can be rough, but it is better than the alternative.  Back in the day they just sent you home to wait to die."  Most of the patients were much older than my friend, and I hope the only younger person I saw was there for his parent.  But many of them appeared to be in their forties and fifties, and looked fairly "normal," not as I would have anticipated a cancer patient to look.  It makes you wonder how many other people are dealing with that, and just not sharing it with others.

I also came to realize that the drugs they were dealing with in that facility are very expensive, to the point of shipping one dose at a time, and ordering what is needed for every appointment they schedule, instead of drawing from a stockpile on hand.  The pharmaceutical industry involves a lot of money, because the cost of the equipment they use, and the amount of testing they do.  So it is to be expected that the drugs will be expensive.  And I don't think there is much issue of abuse of these items, since no one is going to get addicted to the "kick" of chemotherapy.  Hopefully we will have better solutions in the future, as further research is developed and ideas are tried.