11. NO ORDINARY TIME ~ CHAPTER 15 - 17 (379 - 455) (01/01/10 - 01/10/10) ~ No spoilers, please

[Vincent]

Stockholders may benefit or lose - the big bonuses the banks paid before the collapse were not lost as stock value was -
But for knowingly (and sometimes unknowlingly) legal wrongdoing managers can be held legally liable. And they shodl be .

With the great distribution of stockholders these days it is hard, with big firms, to hold indiviual stockholders responsible for illegal acts of the corporation (it is a real task to study and vote on all the proxy measures for annual meetings etc.)

The biggest holders of stock, who might maybe overlook less perfect acts, are mutual fund companies.

It may be impossible to send corporations to prison but they can be fined and people, Madoff for example, can go to prison.

In the 70's when OSHA (the Occupational Safety and Health Act) was beginning and enforcement of safety rules was being pressed a judge in Pennsylvania actually put a foreman on a shop floor who did not enforced the safety glasses rules in jail for 90 days, I think that is how long, after a worker lost an eye.

Stockholds may benefit as a group but managers benefit more directly from cost cuttings - both innovative and clever and illegal and corner cutting. And in America the beneift can be mush bigger than in Western Europe for example.

[Bentley, Group Founder, Leader, Chief]

Hmmm...what about Enron executives...they of course represented the corporation. But just a reminder that we are getting just a tad off topic for this thread.

There is the Off Topic thread or even the constitution, amendments, bill of rights threads.

Great thoughts though.

[Alias Reader]

Chapter 17 page 446

I own, but have not yet read, a book that some here may be interested in. If you want to read more about Father Charles Coughlin, who is mentioned on page 446, you may want to check this book out.

Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin, & the Great Depression by Alan Brinkley

Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/Voices-Protest-...

Of great moment for students of history and for general readers concerned about our society in crises, this is the highly praised study of two fascinating, disturbing political figures who brief but vast popularity explains much about Depression era America. With this book, Brinkley "has staked out a strong claim to be the successor to Schlesinger and Freidel in writing the history of that most convulsive of decades, the 1930s"
---- The Washington Post Book World

[Bentley, Group Founder, Leader, Chief]

Thank you Alias

[Alias Reader]

You're welcome. :)

[Elizabeth S]

There is a wise quotation in Chapter 16 from Eleanor that I thought is very appropriate for the students of History that we all are:

"To undo mistakes is always harder than not to create them originally, but we seldom have foresight. Therefore we have no choice but to try to correct our past mistakes." (See page 430, adjustment in punctuation made.)

I think study of history can help us have a little more of that foresight. Studying history also helps us recognize what can reasonably be done to correct past mistakes, while still using that foresight to avoid new ones. Tricky balancing.

[Bentley, Group Founder, Leader, Chief]

Great quote Elizabeth...doesn't it seem though we are always undoing past mistakes..I am still wondering when the learning comes in for various countries and I am not excluding our own (smile).

[Elizabeth S]

So true. (smile back)