From the category archives:

Outrage of the Week

Outrage of the Week: The Madness that is Becoming Citigroup…

February 26, 2009

To say that one of the most storied banking names in the world has become a ward of the state is to diminish the extent of the reliance.  Citigroup has taken on the likeness of a crippled orphan in a Dickens classic, unable to stand on its own and unlikely to survive against the bitter [...]

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Outrage of the Week: The Real John Thain Revealed

January 25, 2009

The sudden fascination on the part of the former CEO of Merrill Lynch with expensive antiques paid for by beleaguered shareholders illustrates once again that sound judgment is the most underrated and unevenly dispensed attribute among modern leaders today. A year ago, at the beginning of 2008, investors in U.S. financial stocks had already begun [...]

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Outrage of the Week: The Two Americas

January 16, 2009

On one side, there are the quiet heroes who perform deeds of courage and generosity every day, often saving their fellow citizens from disaster. On the other, there are the overpaid CEOs at Citigroup and Bank of America who cannot even save their own companies from their misguided schemes and have made them financial wards [...]

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Outrage of the Week: The Day Canada’s Doors Closed to the Voice of the People

December 5, 2008

When Canada’s Parliament is reconvened on January 26th and gets down to any meaningful business, it will have met for a total of 13 days over the past half year. By that time, a new President and Congress will be in place in the United States along with the most comprehensive program to restart the [...]

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Outrage of the Week: Leadership Abdicated

November 21, 2008

It was a week that illustrated how not to be a leader. The CEOs of the big three auto makers appeared before the United States Congress, and showed a level of ill preparedness on even rudimentary questions about their bailout pleas that would have incurred the ire of a fifth grade teacher.  Their separate arrivals in three [...]

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What If Citigroup Had a Real Board? Part 2

November 21, 2008

There is a reason why the bank’s board appears little more than a bystander to the destruction of shareholder wealth.  A good part of it has to do with its discredited governance structure. Watching Citigroup’s shares crash through the 10 dollar level, then nine, then eight, seven, six -like some kind of inexorable countdown leading [...]

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Outrage of the Week: Paulson and Bernanke Flunk the Confidence Test

November 14, 2008

In a time when the restoration of confidence, perhaps more than even financial liquidity, is paramount in calming markets and providing stability, neither the Treasury secretary nor the chairman of the Fed acquitted themselves well this week. As the war in Iraq unfolded, and then morphed into disaster in its first several years, the world discovered the [...]

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Outrage of the Week: Bankers Binging on the Bush Bailout Bonanza

October 25, 2008

Even in the face of their debacles of historic proportion, many of these institutions persist in acting in a manner more resembling an economic sociopath than a responsible steward of the public interest, whose salvation has essentially been made possible and underwritten by the American taxpayer. Reminiscent of another major Bush administration blunder where what [...]

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Outrage of the Week: Ten Million Missing Canadians

October 18, 2008

Canada, too, needs to turn the political page.  That process is not assisted when citizens slumber while their political leaders tap dance silently across the stage in the dark, hoping that no one will notice how mediocre they really are. Half-a-world away, in a country where hostile fire is heard on a regular basis, Canadians [...]

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