Recent headlines blasted “Starbucks to Close 8,000 U.S. Stores for Racial-Bias Training After Arrests.” Starbucks executives’ response to the recent arrests in a Philadelphia café are unprecedented. Starbucks is known as a strong company with a concern for its employees and a socially responsible agenda in its community. It has a reputation for excellent customer service…. [Read More]
How to Take Apart the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau!
Pryor to acting director Mick Mulvaney’s appointment to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Mr. Mulvaney had called the CFPB a “sad, sick joke” and called for an overhaul of the agency, including curtailing its budget. Well, it looks as if Mr. Mulvaney is fulfilling his promises, even to demoting the “Consumer” in the Consumer Financial… [Read More]
What do Lehman Brothers, Enron, and Citigroup Have in Common?
What did WorldCom, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Washington Mutual, Enron, Tyco, HealthSouth, AIG, and many other well known companies have in common? In the last decade-and-a-half, we have seen some of the biggest accounting scandals in history. This last week, I had the privilege of speaking to the Texas Association of College and University Auditors,… [Read More]
Finally! There’s a Corporate Ethics Revolution Going On – PwC CEO Survey Results
In his 2018 letter which accompanied PricewaterhouseCoopers’ (PwC) 2018 CEO survey, Bob Moritz, the company’s international chairman recommended several thing’s CEO’s must do if they are to survive in this century. For the last 20 years, PwC has conducted an annual survey of 1293 CEO’s in 85 countries. • 40% of these companies had revenues of $1 billion… [Read More]
Ethics Rule: Achieving the Gold Standard
The CFA (Chartered Financial Analyst) Texas Investor Summit, sponsored by the CFA Society of Dallas-Fort Worth and the CFA Societies of Texas, was held in Dallas this past week and featured Robert S. Kaplan, President & CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, and Robert Jenkins, London School of Economics and a member of the… [Read More]
Citigroup: The Poster Child of Bad Mortgages!
This past Sunday the PBS documentary produced by WNET, New York, about Sherry Hunt, one of my former chief underwriters (Sherry blew the whistle on Citigroup four years after I was thrown out for warning about their bad mortgages), and myself aired on KERA Channel 13, Dallas PBS. The documentary, entitled “The Whistleblower,” is the first episode in… [Read More]
The House the Revolving Door Built
Last week, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions named Geoffrey S. Berman as interim U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. Mr. Berman’s appointment was reportedly supported by President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. This high profile office is responsible for Wall Street enforcement and has traditionally been one of the most aggressive pursuers of… [Read More]
Tax Cuts: Will the Rich Get Richer?
So who will really benefit from the latest tax cuts and overseas repatriation? Will companies invest more in their employees and infrastructure so the middle class and society as a whole benefit or will the rich get richer and companies use the “tax gifts” to buy back more stock and engage in the financial engineering … [Read More]
Will Small Investment Advisory Firms Go the Way of Community Banks?
This last week I was honored to be invited back to speak to a conference of the Investments and Wealth Institute, a highly regarded professional association for financial advisors, investment consultants, and wealth managers who embrace excellence and ethics. As I was preparing, I noted the strong parallels between the breakdowns of ethics in banking,… [Read More]
Consumers are Mad as Hell – The Big Banks Have Won Again!
Well so much for the CFPB and their attempt to protect the consumer. They’ve been shot down! The Senate has voted “to strike down a sweeping new rule that would have allowed millions of Americans to band together in class-action lawsuits against financial institutions.” The “vote is a giant setback for every consumer in this country,”… [Read More]
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