John Fortune and John Bird on the subprime hoo-hah:
And here are my thoughts on this:
- Business decisions made by a relative few affects the lives of many.
- Much irrational emotions and "sentiments" underlie these decisions. These are unquantifiable. And yet much of the overt discussions are still based around tables of numbers. And many know the power of a good rumour to affect the global stock market.
- Many accepted entrenched conventional business practices may warrant closer scrutiny given this power to affect the lives of many.
- Greater transparency and understanding are required - the more people understand how these decisions are made and how it affects them, the better the chance of evolving business practice into something that is more positive to life on this planet.
- Many of us still see these as "someone else doing business". We feel the pain but do not yet seem to get that we as a community can change these unethical, fantastical and downright greedy behaviours. We still somehow feel that as a community, we must tolerate (and pay for) such behaviours; or that we lack the specialist business expertise to affect change so we'd better keep quiet and let them get on with it.
Well worth pondering as your mortgages increase and your superannuation/life savings decrease in value.
Thanks to Mark Swivel for pointing me to this.
