Rather Than Giving the Execs 700 Billion Fish, Teach Them How to Fish

I gave this written “lecture” on Yahoo a few days ago in order to drive a point home. The point I wished to drive home was that it doesn’t do a lot of good to give poorly trained executives $700 billion to make the same mistakes over and over again. The government, or someone, needs to put them through a training course, similar to one taught by the late A. Edwards Deming, that teaches the executives how to perform in this kind of market. In other words we do not need to give the executives 700 billion fish, but rather, we need to teach them how to fish! Also, I am not coming down on the universities and colleges and grad schools to which these execs attended, rather I am saying that perhaps the execs just did not show up to class that day! It is also possible that good teachers are looking elsewhere for more pay but the old ethics may still be in place in that many professors do not care about money as they do about giving their knowledge to others.

One thing is certain, however, and that is that these government bail-outs will not work unless some new techniques are taught and absorbed by todays executives. The ones who remember Keynesian economics have retired. The new execs do not understand the old principles. We’re in deep trouble unless our current management is brought up to speed. How could the government miss this simple concept? Easy! They are all young, new workers who do not recognize the problem. It takes old school people to recognize old school problems.

I’m with Mel in that I still don’t know what a Neo-Con is. I’m guessing at New Conservative?

Still don’t know really what that implies.

All I know is that everyone on here, with few exceptions, are not getting your point. I doubt they are old enough to remember the Keynesian economics taught back in the 1960’s. According to Keynes the more you give to the CEO’s the more trickles down through the economy. But that was back when the money was intended do and was used for the purpose of buying more machinery, and corporate spending to improve their position in their industry. The trickle down was achieved when they spent the extra $500 million on equipment which put money into the pockets of the equipment makers workers, as long as the mfg’r shared with his employees, and then the workers would go out and buy new clothes, or the washer they needed, or whatever, but it would stimulate the economy through the “trickle down effect”.

This only works when the Execs follow the Rules!

And now is when you are right in that the execs are hoarding the money which defeats trickle down. The execs think that this money is for them … but they have not been trained properlyby their supervisors or the chairmen of the board, or their alma mater, which I’m sure is the hiring boards assumption, “that the execs hired have been properly trained by the schools. This does not allow for the fact that many professors are underpaid so the good ones often seek employment elsewhere and the chaff are left behind to teach our newest execs to be.

The same thing happened in Japan in the 1970’s when the Japanese came into prosperity but the “youth” decided to ignore “tradition” and they went out and bought leather suits and such extravagance at the cost of their worker’s bonuses. As you know, this resulted in the total collapse of the Japanese economy.

Had the American execs been smart enough to look at history and see what happened to the Japanese they would have recognized the symptom and prevented it from happening here. But, once again, the execs here were young and untrained in the “ways of finance” ala Keynesian Economics and therefore were doomed to defeat.

It’s too bad that the govt did not put all these executives through a crash course in school before giving them that $700 billion, since, without the proper education they will merely do the same thing all over again!

The problem is the stubbornheadedness of youth (”I know old man, I know, you don’t need to tell me, I’ve been watching and I know exactly what to do). When you and I were kids and we had that attitude we were taken out back behind the football field and beaten. When I went to the Jesuit high school that I attended the Jesuits would always welcome any kind of disagreement. They would sit down and logically work it out and teach us the ways to deal with the problem in a logical way. This one day in class John Petucci, who was a 275 lb half back for the football team, stood up and said Fr. Rooney, you are so full of it, I challenge you to a fight! Fr. Rooney was kinda old, like 60 or so, but he was also an ex-golden gloves boxing champ and even though he was half the weight of Petucci he said “Football field after school, 3pm”. The end result was that Petucci did not make it to the next football game because he ended up with a broken arm and dislocated jaw. But forever after that he listened attentively in class and realized that Fr. Rooney maybe did know what he was teaching.

The lesson here is that the execs need to be taught what to do. We need A. Edwards Deming to come back to life, or someone, such as you or me, to teach these recently diapered babies what the hell business is all about.

Happy, overpaid execs do not improve the bottom line! What improves the bottom line is giving the money to the workers and making them happy. Let the Line Man drive around in a shiny new Cadillac so that it shows the people under him what can be achieved with hard work People will begrudge an exec who is overpaid but if Joe the Foreman is overpaid because he increased the bottom line by 15% then that is totally different.

I am not trying to “speak down” to anyone here but rather point out that the teaching nowadays need to be vastly improved.

My supervisor at my job 7 years ago used to tell us that there is no such thing as a bad employee, there were only bad supervisors. He explained that if we did not do our job properly it was because we were improperly trained. It was then up to him to teach us what we were missing. He would remind us up to three Times what we were supposed to do and then if we still didn’t get it he would give us a red slip and put an ad in the paper for someone to replace that person. Everyone there understood how to do their jobs and to

do them well, the ones who didn’t had been fired long ago.

Peace, Love, and Light!

I AM

Dartagnon

So, you see why we are in for big trouble unless drastic measures are taken immediately to implement new ideas and new ideals. We need to stop giving everyone free fish and start teaching them how to fish. The faster we all learn this, the faster we can begin to climb out of this economic crevasse into which we have, as a nation, fallen.

Thank you for your time and attention.