We have all read of Bill Clinton's exuberant efforts on behalf of his wife, efforts that managed to set his own reputation back several levels closer to his true soul; his stubborn resistance to meeting with the "naive" man who beat his wife and stole his children-the black voter- seemed the act of a little boy wearing little boy thoughts. During the primary he imagined that he could say certain things to achieve specific result, and somewhere along the way the thinking was faulty, or the calculations of his own ability to deceive was too great, or simply his mouth mismanaged what his mind intended.
But is not only the politician who presents an image or words to create a desired effect and to eyebrow cocking result. Corporations constantly rework their images via ad campaigns, hoping that the words presented create the desired impression. Drift over to the Cassandra Does Tokyo blog where we see the Belgian Fortis trying to rework their image using a tag line that rather says the opposite of what an international banking and insurance concern might want to present to the public. Somewhere the concept took the long winding wrong road to presentation, as "Cassandra" adroitly points out through the use of stick figure art. In these times when financial firms are shaky and hiding buns of goodness knows what in the oven, they should be trying to inspire confidence, no?
But that does not come close to what Carl Ichan, American financier, has to say on his own blog. First we see him assuring a commenter that it is indeed him sitting in front of the computer in the midnight hour, the infidelity reality show "Cheaters" playing on the telly in the background, a cold Mountain Dew at arms reach:
It's me. I’m taking this blog seriously. I intend to spend some time with you on this blog so that we can make a difference in corporate America. I hope we will change the course of corporate governance in this country.
In the next comment we see someone taking him to task over outsourcing:
So, outsourcing jobs to other countries doesn't hurt economic survival?
It's not always about the money Mr. Ichan. Sometimes, the CEO not only has a right to the shareholders who invest in the company, but to the hard working men and women who make the company by building the products, marketing the products, the people selling the products, etc. etc.
After a sip of Mountain Dew, and a brief turn to the television where he wonders why people would expose themselves on a television show as liars, cheats and pursuers of immediate gratification, he responds:
A major reason we have to outsource is because our companies have become so ineffective that we have to outsource in order to get anything done!
Hmmm. He might want to rephrase parts of that answer, though we admit he was a bit more expansive than we have indicated here (in addition to the fact that his post appears to have actually been done at 11:15 a.m while in his boxers at brunch).
So there you have it. I am sure Ichan was not dissing the American workers on purpose since the presumed reason we cannot "get it done" is because we are not utilizing Ichan billionaire wisdom to dump the corporate managers so that we "CAN" get it done. You know, the way the new masters (Cerberus) at Chrysler are getting it done.
I cannot believe Ichan helps anyone except himself, but there are somewho probably would applaud his actions, shareholder gains being more important than the question of long or short term damage.
If we were not extremely lazy over here, and recovering from the depression of growing one year older today, we might take a peak and see if the companies he was involved with ultimately benefited in any real way from his wisdom.
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