Greed - the problem with Corporate America

Did you read the article in today's WSJ about some workers who were being exploited by the government - and - if they were going to continue to be exploited and left hungry and penniless on the streets, they would resign? In New York City? Can you believe it - reading the article I couldnt help wondering whether these were poor laborers in servitude. Oh No! These were fat AIG executives who were crying about a year's pay!!! Each of these people make in a year what most people in America dont make make over a lifetime of working!! Even the CEO threatened to resign over pay!

This the problem with Corporate America and our lifestyle today - we are greedy people - who will cry and beg for help when we are down, but the minute we are up, we forget what brought us down and go back to our old ways of thinking and working. It is AIG and other financial insititutions who have made the hard earned savings of ordinary Americans disappear in thin smoke through their excessive risk taking, which in turn was driven by misaligned and often excessive incentives. Greed.

What else can explain this behaviour? Cant executives at AIG, deal with a pay cut for a couple of years while they get their house in order? I am not talking of an ordinary manager making less than $100k a year - I am talking about executives who make $500k a year and more. I dont think anybody on this planet needs more than 500k a year to have a reasonable, and healthy lifestyle! The only reason this happens is because of Greed! Nothing else can explain it.

And herein lies one of the biggest dangers of our society - we have over time, focused so much on individual happiness that we have forgotten about societal good. We are no longer interested in making the types of sacrifices our forefathers made to make this nation strong. We run the risk of being weak if all we ever focus on is individual happiness. I am a firm believer in capitalism, in markets and free entreprise. But the modern day guardians of capitalism (CNBC and the likes) have taken this to such an extreme that they do not realise the dangers of capitalism - greed driving excesses that can eat away our society.

And this is the difference now between Asia and America - no CEO in China or Singapore would dare say that they wouldnt do a job when their national pride was at stake - (which in this case is Americas), just because they were being only 500k a year!!! No - such CEOs and executives would be quickly shown the door.

And it is more than America's pride that is at stake - we do have to prove that we can recover and that our country is the center of innovation in this world, where dreams are realized and where people enjoy personal freedom. At the same time India and China are catching up on the innovation race. Their capital markets are developing agressively. Already there is an ever so slight shift in the balance of power from the west to the east. If we are not humble and driven by the desire to re-build the nation, we will become like the old powers of the middle ages - like Portugal, Spain, Italy and Britain, who are no longer as relevant as they used to be.