U S. Management in face of Globalism: Decline: pleaee note your future challenges in HRM>

Mismanagement 101

The dollar's woes reflect the world's collective verdict on the ability of the U.S. to manage the global financial system.

Daniel Gross

NEWSWEEK

Updated: 11:46 AM ET Mar 15, 2008

Last November, president George W. Bush, in an interview with Fox Business Network, summoned his inner high-school cheerleader. "We have a strong dollar policy, and it's important for the world to know that," he said. "And if people would look at the strength of our economy, they'd realize why I believe that the dollar will be stronger." Since then, the greenback, which had been slumping against foreign currencies for years, has wilted like spinach in a sauté pan at the Olive Garden. Given that the typical audience for Fox Business Network could comfortably fit into Rupert Murdoch's downtown Manhattan loft, it's no surprise the world failed to get the message. The greenback last week hit new lows against foreign currencies. The dollar is so sad, we should consider renaming it the dolor.

At some level, the dollar's woes reflect the world's collective verdict on the ability of the United States—businesses, individuals, the government, the Federal Reserve—to manage the global financial system and the world's largest economy. Lately the verdict has been two thumbs down. Countries that outsourced their monetary policy by pegging domestic currencies to the dollar are having second thoughts. Kuwait last year detached the dinar from the dollar, and Qatar government officials last week said they were considering doing the same. International financiers are unnerved by the toxic combination of "misplaced assumptions about housing, a lack of necessary regulation and irresponsible use of debt with sophisticated financial instruments," said Ashraf Laidi, currency strategist at CMC Markets.

Dissing American financial management is an affront to national pride tantamount to standing in Rome and asking, loudly, if Italians are able to make pasta. For the United States invented the concept and practice of running large, complex systems. Along with baseball and deep-frying, management is one of our great national pastimes. The world's first M.B.A.s were awarded by pioneering yuppie factories like the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. (Wharton's founding in 1881 was quickly followed by the first time-share summer houses in the Hamptons.) Henry Ford's revolutionary assembly line was the gold standard in global manufacturing for decades. Contemporary American institutions stand for excellence in managing everything from supply chains (Wal-Mart) to delivery services (Federal Express and UPS).

Americans' ability to manage complex systems has been the ultimate competitive advantage. It has allowed the United States to enjoy high growth and low inflation—a record we haven't hesitated to lord over our foreign friends. The shelves in the business section of a bookstore in a mall in Johannesburg are stocked with the same volumes you'll find in a Barnes & Noble in Pittsburgh: memoirs by cornfed paragons of capitalism like Jack Welch, wealth-building advice from American money managers, large tomes on how Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller built global businesses from scratch.

But today? Not so much. Thanks to widespread incompetence, American management is on its way to becoming an international laughingstock. Faith in American financial sobriety has been widely undermined by the subprime mess. The very mention of the strong-dollar policy now elicits raucous bouts of knee-slapping in even the most sober Swiss banks. (How do you say "schadenfreude" in German?) Earlier this month, as oil hovered near $100 a barrel, President Bush complained to OPEC about high oil prices. OPEC president Chakib Khelil responded acidly that the crude's remarkable run had nothing to do with the reluctance of Persian Gulf nations to pump oil, and everything to do with the "mismanagement of the U.S. economy." Since Bush's plea, oil has gushed to $110 per barrel. (How do you say "schadenfreude" in Arabic?)

Americans abroad are constantly taunted by perceived failings of American management. America's aviation system is now the butt of jokes because 9-year-olds have become accustomed to removing their Heelys before boarding a plane. As my family and I passed through the snaking security line in Cancún's airport last month, we were harangued by a security guard who encouraged tourists to sing along with him: "Please. Do not. Remove. Your shoes."

The concern extends beyond airlines to America's industrial complex at large. Leery of the ability of provincial American executives, with their limited language skills, to negotiate today's global business environment, the boards of massive U.S. firms like Coca-Cola, Pepsi-Cola, Alcoa, and insurer AIG have hired foreign-born CEOs. Carl Icahn, the 1980s corporate raider, has reinvented himself as a borscht-belt comedian/activist investor, who delights conferences and reporters with jokes at CEOs' expense. On a recent "60 Minutes," Icahn complained to Lesley Stahl about the incompetence of American management. "I see our country going off a cliff, and I feel bad about it."

Icahn is moping all the way to the bank. The market's recognition of management failures gives him the opportunities to acquire companies on the cheap. But those of us who aren't billionaire corporate raiders—which is to say pretty much all of us—must manage through this management crisis on our own.

URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/123469

© 2008

The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, "rational individualism" . Paschal's comment.

Paschal’s comment on the talk by Dave Peck to my HRM 304 class, 3/4/08

Dr. Peck used part of his time Tuesday evening to quote from Rand’s novel. I was sure that he would ask you to critique her views after briefly explaining “false premise” in logic, but he did not. When one proposes a specific point of view to any group without criticism or inviting criticism we can suppose the support for that view. Knowing his shaman background, I chose to ask him to talk about it, as I knew you would probably never ever meet another “shaman in training” type of person.

In the dialogue from Rand that Dr. Peck read, Rand is critiquing the point of view that “money, or the use of money is bad, wrong or evil.” The problem with that argument is that she begins with an erroneous premise assigned to her protagonist. setting this point of view up as a Straw Man, easily defeated. It is simply not true that Money, or the use of money is bad. Money is simply a thing, a method of exchange. The use of any thing cannot be wrong in itself,

Because her premise is erroneous, therefore her entire arguement is false. Further comments below taken from "Critique of Objectivism." googled.

Ayn Rand’s philosophy is fairly summarized as "rational individualism.". Altho widely read via her two novels, Fountainhead and Atlast Shrugged, she is easily dismissed by most philosophers as simplistic, shallow, self-contradictory and mean-spirited tripe, a kind of barnyard ethics.

In her glorification of rugged individuals, she proposes no conflict of interest between rational persons, an obvious oversight. The paen to Self interest can take no account of social issues such as racism and feminism. Greed is good is the logical outcome. The frequency of self-justification is not recognised. Rand's ethics are subjectivist, not objectivist, in reality. She endorses atheism and has no concept of the common good.

By glorifying human existence and reason, she has no way to move from IS to OUGHT, to morality. Rand's view of human nature does not correspond with that of scientists, builders, scholars or anyone inreality. It is certainly opposed to Christianity, as it is a form of atheistic materialism, recognising no truth from any of the Wisdom traditions.

We can summarize Rand’s ethics as "Go For it, because this one life is all you got." She cannot and does not propose a moral code based on the absolute value of human life. Her followers have been accused of endorsing the Holocaust, war against terrorists and other such. You can find pages of many critiques of the inadquacey of her philosophy.

Rand is the deluded rational ego, alienated from mystic insight into ego's distortions
from Ego strengthening vs. ego transcendence by Michael Hoffman http://www.egodeath.com/rushrand.htm#xtocid26513

Rand is a philosophical hack. How can you critique someone who is so rabid as to refuse reading other people? In response to an interviewer who asked her at one point: "Have you read 'X' author?", she said: "No, because X is trash, and what's more, I will NEVER read X because of this".

Rand is dogmatically closed-minded about religion, and mysticism. Just because she has seen mysticism (views of the transcendent, or of faith) used in ways she politically disagrees with, she dismisses all of mysticism and any possibility that there might be any truth in it. Peart is very aware of this crucial ignorance in Rand's attitude toward the ego, which is a major factor in his interest about Rand. She is so absolutely, blindly in love with the ego, and so untainted by any degree of awareness of mystic transcendence of the ego, that she, and not the enlightenment philosophers, is the most appropriate representative of the development of the ego to the extreme height of delusion. She so absolutely rejects all forms of religion and even mysticism, that she becomes a symbol of confident delusion and gullibility in the semi-illusion of the ego. She, not the enlightenment philosophers, becomes the absolute ego -- to whom Peart issues a grave warning of impending doom in "Bastille Day", "No One at the Bridge", "The Body Electric", "The Enemy Within", and many other songs.

Can you now be more alert to word, theory of practice arising from this philosophy? In a few words, how?

MEDIA BIAS: A HARDER LOOK AT OBAMA AFTER SNL SKIT

NEW YORK — Life imitating art or just a coincidence? A study of campaign coverage found the media took a sharper look at Barack Obama the week after "Saturday Night Live" spoofed journalists enthralled by his candidacy.

The NBC comedy show on Feb. 23 opened with a mock debate where journalists were rough on Hillary Clinton while being starry-eyed about Obama. It matched complaints the Clinton campaign had made _ and she even referenced the comedy skit during a real debate last week.

During the week, Obama was the dominant person in 69 percent of presidential campaign stories, according to a study by Project for Excellence in Journalism. That's the biggest percentage one candidate had received in any week this year.

Many of the stories took a tough look at Obama, such as a Feb. 25 ABC "World News" study on his Illinois legislative record and a "CBS Evening News" report on his career three nights later.

It's hard to say whether "SNL" acted as a de-facto assignment editor, since some of the stories were probably being prepared before the NBC show aired, but it did seem to crystallize a thought that had been percolating, said Mark Jurkowitz, the project's associate director.

"There were a lot of factors at play," Jurkowitz said. "But there's no question the skit, if nothing else, was perfectly timed."

With no primaries last week, news outlets had the time to look at other stories, as well as the time to look at their own performance. The Washington Post, New York Times and ABC's "Good Morning America" all ran stories addressing whether the media has been fairly covering the Obama-Clinton contest.

"Saturday Night Live" this past weekend opened its show with another fake debate where journalists played easy for Obama. This time, the skit ended with an appearance by Clinton herself.

The project studies 48 different media outlets, including newspapers, Web sites and television networks, as part of its examination of campaign coverage.

HRM 304 CLASS: After our brief discussion last night, do we ordinary citizens trying to make decisions about who will lead us the next four years, do we need to become aware of this example of bias in what is presented to us? COMMENT?