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Lie More, as a Business Model
- eragnew 14y agoFor large banks, it has been for a while. #justsayin
- MaysonL 14y agoGoogle "municipal bond price fixing" for another big ripoff the banks have been running...
- joezydeco 14y ago...or "Deep Capture" for another example.
- ebrenes 14y agoHasn't it always been a fairly well established business model? If anything the success of this model means we're seeing it more and more in ever more gigantic failures. Whereas before it seemed confined to snake oil salesmen and politics...
- mey 14y agoI have a bridge I'm looking to sell.
- mc32 14y agoNot to mention "snake oil" liniments and other forms of quackery.
- dredmorbius 14y agoObligatory: real Chinese snake oil is a valid cure. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=snake-oil-salesmen-knew-something http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=snake-oil-s... The problem then (as now) was charlatans claiming similar properties from substances which lacked the original's active ingredient: high Omega-3 oils. I see this as the fundamental Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance problem: what is quality, and how does one identify it?
- wmil 14y agoAnd the "Snake Oil" being sold in the US wasn't quackery. It was typically a combination of alcohol, morphine, and/or cocaine. People weren't stupid -- it definitely made them 'feel better'.
- smashing 14y agoI have stock in a social networking company I am looking to sell.
- yashchandra 14y agoYou mean officially ?
- leot 14y agoDon't worry, in the "long run" the laissez-faire approach to corporate regulation will "end up" minimizing malfeasance and maximizing freedom. Liberty just needs more time. Like, say, another year. Two, max.
- pohl 14y agoIt's impossible to tell the spirit in which this comment was intended.
- anonymoushn 14y agoI'm not sure that providing subsidies to large banks and refusing to enforce the law when they commit crimes is a laissez-faire approach to corporate regulation.
- ubernostrum 14y agoEnforcing a law? You mean a law regulating business? gasp Someone fetch the smelling salts, I think I may faint!
- nuaccnt 14y agoThis is the discourse equivalent of going to a party, pulling your pants down in the living room and taking a shit on the floor.
- mc32 14y agoWhat happens when there are substantial barriers to entry _and_ there is collusion; how would "laissez-faire" economics deal with it, in timeliness which would make it tenable for actual people. I'm actually curious to know.
- moocow01 14y agoI used to buy into the MBA mentality. Now I really think MBA / todays managerial wisdom is slowly destroying the world. The business climate in most corporations is plain awful and most people don't even realize because they don't know what a healthy business environment looks like. It seems that these days that as long as your numbers on your spreadsheet match up, it doesn't matter how you got them to match just as long as they match up somehow. Lying is just one of the many unethical techniques that are now common tools to deliver shareholders "value".
- jimboyoungblood 14y agoit's not just an mba or big company problem. i've seen some outrageous misrepresentations made by startups/founders. not talking about random guys off the street either- these have been funded by well-known VC's and accelerators. as an investor, i've learned to be very wary..
- mathattack 14y agoThis isn't about spreadsheet crunching, or even shareholder value. It's about personal incentives - unlimited upside, limited downside, and no concern on the ethics involved.
- yuhong 14y agoYea, the wrong incentives can be worse than no incentives at all.
- zerostar07 14y agoSo, time for technology to fix this, right?
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- wdr1 14y ago"Give a manager a numerical target & he will hit it, even if it means destroying the company."
- Spooky23 14y agoObviously the author of this article is a socialist... The financial industry is driving innovation by applying the principles of capitalism. The only reason the bankers are lying is that government meddling is making their capitalistic process illegal. Of you want bankers to be 100% truthful, don't tie their hands behind their backs with quaint concepts like usury, proper underwriting of loans, etc.
- eru 14y agoIn that vein, it's probably best to get rid of deposit insurance, too.
- enraged_camel 14y agoI don't know why you got down-voted to oblivion. I found your sarcasm to be pretty funny, personally.
- sophacles 14y agoThe poe factor or this post approaches 1. I am either frightened or in stitches... I'm not sure which.
- pcrh 14y agoWhat is probably unsurprising, but should have been expected, is that banks and major business interests got seriously upset when they found that they were lying to each other. Clearly the earlier financial upsets, which were caused by them lying to the public, were not really their fault.
- nerd_in_rage 14y agohasn't lying has always been a business model?
- dredmorbius 14y agoIt's been a business practice, certainly. And it's been part of law and lore since the dawn of history. The code of Hammurabi includes punishment for false witness: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3153879?origin=JSTOR-pdf http://www.jstor.org/stable/3153879?origin=JSTOR-pdf In Dante's Inferno, the penultimate (8th) circle of hell is for the fraudulent (the 9th and innermost is for traitors -- another form of fraud, if you like): http://www.wolfram.demon.co.uk/rp_dante_hell.html http://www.wolfram.demon.co.uk/rp_dante_hell.html
- speedracr 14y agoNPR's Planet Money has devoted a 20min episode to explain the LIBOR manipulation - worth a listen if you want to brush up on your interbank financial knowledge. http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/07/03/156222428/episode-384-the-little-lie-that-rocked-the-banks http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/07/03/156222428/episode-...
- shaggyfrog 14y agoThe title of the linked piece is "Lie More, as a Business Model", and serves just fine as a headline for Hacker News. Not sure why the headline was turned into a linkbait question instead.
- theorique 14y agoThey lied.
- vibrunazo 14y agoThere's a better euphonic marketing jargon for "lying". It's called "marketing" :)
- portentint 14y agoBECOMING a business model? The liars tend to win, because they make the superior claims. And for whatever reason, the customers can't give up on the idea that maybe this ONE outrageous promise, this ONE time, is actually for real. It's like playing the lottery: Statistically you're better off running outside and screaming "THROW MONEY AT ME". But people still play.
- jaggederest 14y ago> running outside and screaming "THROW MONEY AT ME" On Sand Hill Road, these days, that seems to work.
- larrys 14y agoThe press is the watchdog of things like this. Unfortunately the press has been gutted and all the old white men with years and years of experience have left being replaced by people like Catherine Rampell (attractive, young, and only 5 years out of Princeton). This is not a rant against woman (I've seen this pattern with both young men and young woman) and it's not a rant against young people (there are some areas where you want a young person personally I don't feel that economics (while not brain surgery) is one of them). http://www.linkedin.com/in/catherinerampell http://www.linkedin.com/in/catherinerampell http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/r/catherine_rampell/index.html http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/r... Here is Catherine on TV: http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/300818-6 http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/300818-6 Most interesting is that she actually founded the economics blog 1 year out of Princeton. Edit: Not to mention the money to keep an eye (and hire experienced people) is also not there anymore, not supported by legacy advertising monopoly.
- dredmorbius 14y agoThe press is also highly compromised when it consists of and is driven by business interests: Disney/ABC, Time-Warner (CNN), GE (NBC), Murdoch, ClearChannel. Even PBS and PRI see major funding from the Koch brothers, WalMart, Comcast, and other major corporations. Or oppressive states (curious how RT and XinHua are growing at present).
- guelo 14y agoI'm really confused by your rant on a story that is not about journalism and is being reported by Simon Johnson who is one of the "old white men" you seem to prefer. You use the weak link of "The press is the watchdog" and then pivot into an ad-hominem attack against a reporter that has nothing to do with this story and that you apparently know a lot about for some reason. It's kind of weird.
- larrys 14y ago"rant on a story that is not about journalism and is being reported by Simon Johnson" Johnson is the real deal I have no issue with him obviously. Catherine Rampell is founding editor of the Economix blog. "ad-hominem attack against a reporter" It's an attack against the New York Times the paper of record not Catherine. "has nothing to do with this story" afaik she decides what gets onto the blog or not. She is the gatekeeper. "you apparently know a lot about for some reason" Not really. Just what I've linked to. Took a second to do the links after a search. "It's kind of weird." Why? Edit: I might add also I love people who imply someone isn't being nice to someone "ad-hominem" by not being nice ("it's kinda weird")
- orangethirty 14y agoI've been searching for a business co-founder for a while, and this is one of the things that turn me off about some business people. They seem to believe that a business is built with Hype and not a real product. Sure, that is how you might get some funding, but its not how you build a sustainable business.
- vwoolf 14y agoLying is a business model for too many businesses; I'm reminded of Go Daddy's wholly-owned subsidiary, Standard Tactics, and how the latter would register expired domains, while Go Daddy would volunteer to "negotiate" with itself (see the whole account here: http://domainnamewire.com/2008/12/03/standard-tactics-llc-how-godaddy-profits-from-expired-domains/ http://domainnamewire.com/2008/12/03/standard-tactics-llc-ho... ). It's very hard to fight this sort of thing, as an individual, much like it's hard to avoid Barclay's (or its larger competitors, like Bank of America or Chase).
- patrickgzill 14y ago"This way to the Egress => "
- billrobertson42 14y agoThis is not new. Fabrication was one of the factors leading to famine during the great leap forward. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution#Great_Leap_Forward https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution#Great_Leap...
- bootload 14y ago"... Today’s banks represent the incarnation of profit-seeking behavior taken to its logical limits, in which the only question asked by senior staff is not what is their duty or their responsibility, but what can they get away with. ..." Martin Wolf, FT. No, as long as the money kept rolling in, a blind eye was turned to the kind of behaviour described. Hard times has changed what is acceptable practice.