1/01/2007

culture of greed

A few days back I posted about US$40 million bonuses and today there is an article in the Straits Times titled, 'Fat bonuses for London bankers creating backlash.' The issues are the same, all the bankers are paying themselves crazy. And this has led to Tony Blair saying 'inequality matters. The big gap between those at the top and those at the bottom makes for a sick society'. And Cabinet Minister Harriet Harman called for 'action to stop these excessive ridiculous bonuses'. This perceived culture of greed represented a serious problem for business, acknowledged Richard Lambert, director of the Confederation of British Industry. I am not against individual enterprise and earning big bucks. But these fat bonuses are obscene and they are taken from the real owners and workers who have no control over them. It is left to a few sharks at the top to decide how much to share the loot. There is no control and accountability to the real owners, the minority shareholders, the small people in the streets. What corporate governance when everyone is scratching everyone's back? Power must be returned to the real owners of the wealth, and profits must be spread more downwards to the workers that are struggling to make ends meet. Why would these greedy honchos want so much money when a year's bonus is enough to last them several generations? It is all greed and the lack of corporate governance to control the excesses. In today's Straits Times there was another article about the role of independent directors and accountability. I don't think the problem is just in the independent directors.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

The Lee's family lead by examples and the rest of greedy business-man will follow. Monkey see, monkey do. what's wrong with that, Redbean ??? If our gov could not set good examples, why expect other want to follow suit of setting good example ??? Didn't we need to look gov as role model ?? If gov is greedy, so should we as business-man. Gov is our role model of doing business.

Chua Chin Leng aka redbean said...

our govt is not greedy lah. don't anyhow say such things. our govt are made up of men of the highest integrity to serve the people and nation.

that is a fact that the whole world knows.

we are what we are today because of the good works done by the govt.

and there is nothing wrong with people wanting to be rich. all of us wants to be rich too. that is the motivation for people to work and strive for.

Anonymous said...

Redbean,
when gahmen want to be rich and wealthy without transparency and accountability, how do we know our money is managed properly and even especially the media is controlled by them to make everything look rosy and may not reflect the reality ??? Do they really deserved the salary ???

It's one thing to be rich, it's another to be greedy without control.

Redbean, don't u agree ?