Corporations & Government or "We only look for terrorist"

[Sourdough]

This is what happens when corrupt government and corrupt corporations are in bed together. Or show me the, "We are only looking for terrorist".
http://news.yahoo.com/us-spied-brazi...034550560.html

[Sourdough]

America is going down the "Moral" toilet, with high speed indifference.

[Rick]

And you found this perplexing how? I would think at this point it's pretty common knowledge there are no closed doors with regard to the NSA. Nothing and no one is off the table.

[Rick]

Let's be a tad more fair. American government. I can still show you a lot, LOT, of people with a strong moral compass. Many of them came home with horrific injuries. Many of them stood by those injured to help them. Americans are not the problem in my book.

[Sourdough]

I agree, I also feel that we have descended to a near third world corrupt government. The SEC does no police the corporations, the corporations slide money to the officials.

Let's be a tad more fair. American government. I can still show you a lot, LOT, of people with a strong moral compass. Many of them came home with horrific injuries. Many of them stood by those injured to help them. Americans are not the problem in my book.

[Rick]

I don't know about the bribes part. I can tell you that we tried to do business in a couple of different countries in which bribes were required and we backed away because of that. Corporations don't have a conscience or a soul. There may be corrupt people within the organization just as there are corrupt people in society. But corporations are not good or bad. I can tell you in my experience those individuals that were corrupt were dealt with pretty swiftly and we had quite a few that fell into that category. The thing that does bother me is that the individuals are not prosecuted. They lose their jobs and all accrued benefits and sometimes that's pretty substantial when you add in stock options and bonuses, but they walk away free, which I think is wrong.

The SEC does police individuals and corporations. We've seen example after example of folks that have gone to jail because they did something illegal and hundreds of corporations fined for wrong doing. I think the SEC has learned a lot over the last 6 years. They probably were too lax going into 2007 but that was just the nature of life back then. We've obviously seen what that got us.

Just google SEC fines you get article after article of fines that have been imposed. I think the problem is you don't read much about it unless the fine is substantial. However, the SEC recently fined JP Morgan $410M for manipulating energy markets in the West and Midwest and you haven't seen much press on that.

I do agree that American government is a critical care patient that doesn't seem to realize how sick it is.

[Sourdough]

But what is a $410M fine if they profited 12Billion. It sounds like a like, but is just a hand slap.

[Rick]

That's a valid point and with someone like JP Morgan fines might be part of the cost/benefit modeling they do when they decide to pull something like that. I've never worked for an amoral company. But I have worked with amoral individuals.

[Rick]

The thing about a moral corporate culture is it can be the hardest thing in the world to foster and the easiest thing in the world to lose if you don't manage correctly. However, once the top leaders lose their moral compass then everyone below them follows suit in short order.