Download FF3.90130619 - Financial Seminary

Somewhere in the seventies, or the sixties, we started expecting
to be happy. I think we have lost the old knowledge that
happiness is over-rated—that in a way life itself is overrated.
We are the first generations of man that actually expected to
find happiness here on earth, and our search has caused such
unhappiness. The reason: if you do not believe in another,
higher world, if you believe only in the flat material world
around you, if you believe that this is your only chance at
happiness--if that is what you believe, then you are more than
disappointed when the world does not give you a good
measure of its riches, you are in despair.”
Peggy Noonan
Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness
1
“My advice to a school of business management is to
teach the business manager to give unlimited love and he
or she will be more successful."
Sir John M. Templeton
“Education which stops with efficiency may prove the
greatest menace to society. The most dangerous criminal
may be the man gifted with reason, but with no morals.”
Martin Luther King
2
“Wall Street says: split yourself off from your values
and invest strictly for profit. We say: invest with as
much integrity as possible. An uncomfortable state
of dissonance occurs when our actions are out of
alignment with our hearts. It is possible to live with
such inconsistencies only by putting on blinders--by
maintaining that an investor has no responsibility
for the actions of the companies in which his or her
money is invested. But such conflicts are real, and
no amount of denial can make them disappear.”
Investing With Your Values
3
4
“The investor likes to think of himself as a force for
honesty and transparency, but he has proved in
recent years that he prefers a lucrative lie to an
expensive truth. And he’s very good at letting
corporate management know it. Investors, in
their shortsightedness, encourage companies to
neglect their social responsibilities.”
Michael Lewis
The Irresponsible Investor
New York Times Magazine
June 6, 2004
5
March 2009
6
“Those who buy counterfeit designer goods project
a fashionable image at a fraction of the price of
the real thing. You might think that would make
them feel rather smug about themselves. But an
intriguing piece of research published in
Psychological Science suggests the opposite:
wearing fake goods makes you feel a fake
yourself, and causes you to be more dishonest in
other matters than you would otherwise be.”
The Economist
June 26, 2010
7
“Religion is not some kind of psychic
exercise that occasionally offers a
transcendent experience. It either shapes
one’s life—all of one’s life—or it vanishes,
leaving behind anxious, empty souls that
no psychotherapy can reach.”
Irving Kristol
The Wall Street Journal
8
“It is a curious fact that as we leave the most primitive
peoples of the world, we find the economic insecurity
of the individual many times multiplied. The solitary
Eskimo, Bushman, Indonesian, or Nigerian peasant,
left to his or her own devices, will survive a
considerable time. Living close to the soil or to his or
her animal prey, such an individual can sustain his
own-more rarely, her own- life. But when we turn to
the New Yorker or the Chicagoan, we are struck by
exactly the opposite situation, by a prevailing ease of
material life coupled with an extreme dependence on
others.”
Robert Heilbroner
9
The Making of Economic Society
“Feeling down, anxious? Your problem may be that
fat bank account. New research says the hell-bent
pursuit of money can be hazardous to your mental
health. It debunks the popular belief that having a
goal, any goal, is psychologically beneficial. People
who value extrinsic goals are more prone to
behavioral problems and physical ailments...The gold
diggers interviewed scored far lower on measures of
vitality and self -actualization...There’s no drawback
in having money. You just need to remember the
things that truly provide meaning in life.”
Forbes
10
“The church’s often-dismissive response to the
layperson’s optimistic desire to integrate faith
and career cannot be justified. In fact, this
attitude may be the largest act of selfmarginalization mainstream churches have
ever engaged in.”
Professor Laura Nash
Harvard University
11
Sweating The Small Stuff…
“Many people think the church
asks too much of its members.
In reality, it asks too little…
Frankly, many churches have
dumbed down church until it
has no meaning at all. We are
afraid to ask men for a great
commitment, so they think
we’re after their wallets, not
their hearts.”
12
“While many Americans are no doubt
‘overspent,’ the possibility of most people
drowning in credit card debt as an explanation
for lack of generous religious and charitable
financial giving lacks empirical support…One
commonly cited statistic in the media is that
the average American owes more than $8,000
in credit card debt. Numbers like that are
inflated by a relatively small number of people
in huge debt. The median balance was $2,200.*
That itself represents only three percent of all
debts held by Americans.”
*Federal Reserve Board’s Survey
of Consumer Finances 2004
13
“The steady drop in donations, volunteering, and
personal involvement is a direct result of a spiritual
crisis -- a crisis caused in large part by the clergy’s
failure to address the vital relationships between faith
and money… the solution is not simply to talk more
about the financial needs of the church -- 30 percent said
they would actually give less money if churches talked
more about finances than they do now. The answer is to
talk about the broader relationships between faith, work,
money, giving, the poor, and economic justice.”
Robert Wuthnow
The Crisis In The Churches:
Spiritual Malaise, Fiscal Woe
14
Part Three:
Atheistic Challenges to Our Well-Being
15
America’s New Secular, Economic Religion
“We will give people a faith--a positive, clear and
consistent system of belief.”
16
17
“Ayn Rand--the heroine of America’s libertarian
right--described her philosophy as ‘the concept of
man as a noble being, with his own happiness as the
moral purpose of his life, with productive
achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his
only absolute.’ The Reagan presidency provided
opportunities for a few objectivists to try their hand
at their most hated institution: government. The
most celebrated Randist even survived the passing of
the Reagan years. Alan Greenspan was an acolyte of
Rand’s in the 1960’s.”
The Economist
January 1994
18
“Rand was blazing a trail distinct from the
broader conservative movement, as indicated by
the title of her second nonfiction book, The
Virtue of Selfishness. Whereas traditional
conservatism emphasized duties, responsibilities,
and social interconnectedness, at the core of the
right-wing ideology that Rand spearheaded was
a rejection of moral obligations to others.”
Jennifer Burns, Ph.D.
Goddess of the Market;
Ayn Rand and the American Right
19
“For her, government was nothing more than
licensed robbery and altruism just an excuse for
power-grabbing.”
The Economist
October 24, 2009
20
“I believe in complete, laissez faire, full,
unregulated capitalism--not mixed
economy.
Ayn Rand
21
Moses/Jesus
Both Personal & Social Responsibility
*
U.S.
Rand
Marx
Socialism
No Personal
Responsibility
Capitalism
No Social
Responsibility
22
“I believe it is simply wrong to maintain that
God and the Bible favor one modern form
of economic organization, such as
capitalism or socialism, over the other. The
Bible clearly teaches concepts that should
move the most conservative and liberal
readers far beyond their comfort zones and
far above worldly approaches.”
Gary Moore
23
“The search for the third way must begin by
rejecting all forms of political ideology.”
Prospect Magazine
24
“Libertarianism is a philosophy of radically
limited government. It is attractive to those welloff professionals who have nothing in common
with the religious right but would just like to be
left alone. The libertarians have also replaced
the Marxists as the world’s leading utopia
builders.”
E. J. Dionne
25
Source: The Economist
26
Household Checking, Savings & Treasury Holdings
$12 Trillion
Source: Forbes, 10/13/08, from Federal Reserve
27
“Within the rich world, where destitution is
rare, countries where incomes are more
evenly distributed have longer-lived
citizens and lower rates of obesity,
delinquency, depression and teenage
pregnancy than richer countries where
wealth is more concentrated.”
The Economist
February 28, 2009
28
“In a sign of increasing inequality in the U.S., the
richest 1% of Americans in 2006 garnered the
highest share of the nation’s adjusted gross
income for two decades, and possibly the
highest since 1929, according to Internal
Revenue Service data…Meanwhile, the average
tax rate of the wealthiest 1% fell to its lowest
level in at least 18 years. The group’s share of the
tax burden has risen, though not as quickly as its
share of income.”
The Wall Street Journal
July 23, 2008
29
Source: Private Sector Development Blog, 3/10/10
30
31
Wall Street Journal, August 7, 2010
32
“The top 5% of Americans by income account for
37% of all consumer outlays. The bottom 80%
account for 39.5%. It is no surprise the rich
spend so much, since they earn a
disproportionate share of income. The top 10%
of earners captured about half of all income as of
2007…The data may be a further sign that the
U.S. is becoming a plutonomy--an economy
dependent on the spending and investing of the
wealthy.”
The Wall Street Journal
August 7, 2010
33
Annual Income
# People
Over $15,000
$1,500 - $15,000
Under $1,500
800 Million
1.5 Billion
4 Billion
Source: Capitalism at the Crossroads
34
35
“If you had $2,161 in 2000, you belonged to the wealthier
half of the human race …Wealth is shared much less
equitably than income; more than half of it is held by
just 2% of the world’s adults. The distribution is
equivalent to a world of ten people, in which one had
$1,000 and the other nine had $1 each…Many people in
poor countries have next-to-nothing; but quite a lot of
people in rich countries have less than that; their
liabilities exceed their assets. The bottom half of
Swedes have a collective net worth of zero. That said,
the Nordic countries seem to thrive without much
personal wealth.”
The Economist
December 9, 2006
36
37
“Selfishness is a Virtue”
February 7, 2009
38
Early Wall Street
39
Later-day Wall Street
40
“My views on charity are very simple. I do not
consider it a major virtue, and, above all, I do
not consider it a moral duty…What I am
fighting is the idea that charity is a moral duty
and a primary virtue.”
Ayn Rand
Playboy Interview
41
“How selfish soever man may be supposed, there
are evidently some principles in his nature,
which interest him in the fortunes of others, and
render their happiness necessary to him, though
he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of
seeing it.”
Adam Smith
Opening sentence of
The Theory of Moral Sentiments
42
“Success is nice and I’ve had some and enjoyed it, but
so what? It isn’t sufficient reason to get up in the
morning. It’s not good enough to live for…This is all
an illusion, a lovely tender illusion. We’re all
running around being busy and doing important
things. But this has nothing to do with anything. Up
there God and the angels are looking down and
laughing, and not unkindly. They just find us
touching and dizzy.”
Peggy Noonan
43
“It is only in emergency situations that one
should volunteer to help strangers, if it’s in
one’s power.”
Ayn Rand
44
“Referring to the disastrous advice given by a [major
Wall Street firm] who sucked nearly $100 million in
commissions from Orange County, Greenspan
declared that both brokers and their customers
should be ‘unburdened by any perceived need to
take into consideration the interest of their
counterparties.’ It sounds dull enough—until you
realize what he’s driving at. Greenspan expressed
that same radical belief more clearly during the
1960’s in a book of essays assembled by his mentor,
the novelist and free-market zealot, Ayn
Rand.”
Worth Magazine
45
“Michael Milken grew up wanting to be rich, he
confesses, and by the time he was in his 30’s he
had more money than he could ever hope to
spend on himself. It was at this point that
Milken faced a crisis of purpose. Most people
derive dignity, depth and purpose by prevailing
in the struggle for existence. What happens
when this struggle ends? Milken faced a
spiritual crisis at a young age that many of his
newly affluent counterparts are encountering
today.”
Forbes
October 11, 1999
46
“Ayn Rand filled in the ideas of Aristotle. It’s a
whopping competitive advantage. I personally
believe objectivism will be the dominant
philosophy in this country in 25 years.”
John A. Allison IV
Chairman of BB&T
Sunday Business
New York Times
August 2, 2009
47
Trust In Business
48