HOW TO BECOME A TOTAL FAILURE

My full-time occupation is print broker. I serve my customers printing needs by shopping the best values, arranging for and assisting the proofing process, attending press checks, following up on deliveries, and if needed, interfacing with the mailing house. When I’m busy I barely have time to breathe. Lately I haven’t been so busy–in fact the whole printing industry is in a slump. I’ve heard that nationally printers are down by 40%. Yes, 40%! That’s huge. I speak of printing because it is the industry I know best. I write a blog about it Talking Through My Hat–A Print Broker’s Ruminations. From watching the news I realize that my industry isn’t the only one taking it on the chin.

How did this happen? How did a relatively few SOB’s manage to steer the whole pickin’ economy into the ditch? I won’t be answering that question here because it will take decades for experts to unravel it.  I’m sure it will be the subject of many future Master Thesis’ and Dissertations. There will be books, historical novels, and fiction. Then will come the movies, and mini-series dramas. We will hear more about the crash of 2009 than we ever wanted to know, but will we ever get to the bottom of it? I don’t think so. We won’t understand it any more than we understand what happened on Black Tuesday.

Don’t misunderstand, I’m not saying we won’t have the facts. There will be facts enough to fill what used to be the World Trade Towers, but facts are often used to obscure the truth rather than reveal it. What’s the saying, oh yeah, “If you can’t overwhelm them with brilliance, dazzel them with B.S.” You can trust me on this, if you turn your nose into the wind, you can already smell the B.S. 

No one will accept responsibility. No one will step forward and say, “I made a mistake.” The ones with the fattest wallets will hide behind the best army of lawyers that money can buy, and they will become invisible. If anyone pays for this attack on the American economy and the American people you can bet it won’t be the ones who are really responsible. And if by some fluke one of them has the bad luck to be hung out as a scapegoat, the real truth will still not come out. A stack of bibles and an angel with a flaming sword couldn’t get them to spill the truth. And maybe they couldn’t because no one person or circumstance made it happen.

If I get honest with myself and I think about how many grass roots people were trying to live the American dream by buying homes that they had to know were more than they could afford, or how many were trying to get rich by flipping houses, or how many were buying real estate mutual funds? I can see that there is blame enough to go around. There was a real estate feeding frenzy going on.

Can we keep this kind of thing from happening again? George Santanya said, “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”  If we continue in practicing the failure rules something much worse could happen. The rules are:

1. Resist learning anything new that could lead to more responsibility–
2. Don’t share what you know with others–
3. Be a jerk!–
4. Always look out for Number One–
5. It’s all about the money–
6. Promise things you have no intention of doing–
7. It’s always someone else’s fault–
8. Truth is in the mind of the beholder–
9. Do the least that’s necessary for success–
10. The customer is someone you have to put up with–

Get the book “How To Become A Total Failure” and learn more about the above list of failure rules.

Written by Bill Ruesch blog author of Talking Through My Hat, A Print Broker’s Ruminations www.billprintbroker.com

You can often guage the mood of the public by what the commedians are saying. John Stewart of the Daily Show doesn’t pull punches when it comes to politics, in fact he goes so far over the top at times, that even his faithful audience fans are surprised. Remember that Mr. Stewart leans so far to the left that I’m amazed he can sit in a chair without toppling, or keep from walking in ever leftward circles. Nonetheless I catch his show because he is funny. Funny trumps accuracy when it comes to entertainment.

Recently he aired a side-by-side clip of President Barak now saying almost word-for-word the same things President Bush was saying about the Iraq war. Now that Obama is in the White House the tune he’s whistling sounds eerily similar to the past administration’s. I was sure this was going to happen. I was hoping I was wrong. I wanted the new President to fundementally change things, but he won’t, or he can’t (Rule #6). 

Will it be business as usual in Washington until it all crumbles like the Soviet Union? Too negative? Maybe you are right, maybe I’m overreacting, or letting my anxieties run away with me. But did you ever stop to consider what would happen to this country, this economy, if others stopped loaning us money and insisted on payback? Where do you think the money is coming from to finance the bailouts, the social programs, the military? The national debt as of today is over $11.3 Trillion dollars (Rule #5) and is climbing at a rate of nearly $4 Billion dollars per day. The total amount of taxes collected by the Feds in 2007 was $2.406 Trillion dollars, or over $6 Billion daily. Now I’m not a mathemetician but even I can see that it would take over five years to pay off the debt if every single penny was applied to it, and if we didn’t borrow any more, and there wasn’t any interest. Since the debt is climbing $4 Billion dollars a day, and we are raising $6 Billion the good news is we could conceivably have a couple of billion a day to play with. If we applied that two billion difference exclusively to the debt, excluding interest, it would take some 15 1/2 years. Since interest is being paid at varying rates it would take a computer much bigger than mine to project the interest burden. Would added interest add another five, ten or twenty years to the payoff? Suffice it to say, we can’t, and won’t be able to pay off the debt in the foreseeable future.

Ex-President Clinton bragged about having a surplus. I wonder what his definition of surplus really was? Mine would be having more money in the bank than you need to payoff all that you owe. Is that the kind of surplus he was talking about–I don’t think so.

Back to my original question who really runs the country? To find that out you have to know who owns it. Since time began the owners are in charge. Who owns the United States of America? Maybe that’s all part of the breifings of a new president. They get to find out who calls the shots, but you can bet that they wont tell us (Rule #8).

Written by Bill Ruesch blog author of Talking Through My Hat, A Print Broker’s Ruminations www.billprintbroker.com

A local news story aired the other day. It seems a woman was killed in a traffic accident. There were other people injured, but she was the only one who didn’t survive.

The EMT’s arrived at the scene and did what they do best, they did a triage, and seeing that the woman was no longer among the living, concentrated their efforts on the injured. All were transported to the hospital, where once again the emergency room doctors worked on those they could help and sent the dead woman’s body to the morgue. Now the State of Utah, as I understand it, is the only one of the fifty states that does not require the medical examiner be informed in every such death. In other states the EMT’s would have called the M.E. while in route to the hospital. You can imagine what a multi-injury accident can do to an emergency room. Everyone was busy with overwhelming demand. Since the woman had not passed away in the hospital, but at the scene of the accident, the hospital did not make out a death certificate.

The family of the victim called their mortuary and the woman’s body was picked up. A funeral was scheduled and everything seemed be be in order, except there wasn’t a death certificate. No one had declared her dead. Without being declared dead it is against the law to bury someone.

So there they were, all the woman’s family gathered together at her funeral when the news broke that she couldn’t be buried because of a technicality. What? No problem, just get someone to sign the death certificate. Simple, right? No way. The hospital said they couldn’t sign it because she didn’t die there. The M.E. said he couldn’t sign because he hadn’t seen the body. And the EMT’s apparently don’t have the authority to sign so, there we are.

What are you going to do with a body that can’t be buried–lay it out on the grass? Thank goodness the family turned to the news media. Television reporters were sent out to get to the bottom of this bizarre story, to find out why everyone seemed to be passing the buck (Rule #7). Finally, an emergency room doctor said that he did see the body and he would sign the death certificate. All’s well that ends well, right? Maybe. What about the family that was put through this shocking turn of events? Wasn’t their natural grief enough to bear without the added stress?

This would be a funny story if it wasn’t so tragic. Don’t you agree?

Written by Bill Ruesch blog author of Talking Through My Hat, A Print Broker’s Ruminations www.billprintbroker.com

This morning I learned the results of Prudential Financial’s stockholder meeting. The stockholders did not accept the board’s recommendation to let the executives decide their own compensation without stockholder supervision. The Say on Pay resolution passed with 61.5% of the vote. Much of the praise belongs to Executive Wealth an organization that is working diligently to give stockholders a voice, and slam the lid on executive raiding of company coffers. The very executives responsible for making Prudential profitable took lavish rewards while at the same time losing $1.1 Billion dollars last year!How can that be justified (Rules #3, #4 & #5)?  Are we so stupid that we would let this continue? God, I hope not. The term Robber Barron’s is just too polite.

Say on Pay resolutions call for a nonbinding advisory vote for shareholders to express their approval or disapproval of how a company pays its top executives.  Non-binding as it is, I can’t help but believe that there will be increased transparency (don’t you love the new use of this word?) with stockholders getting more involved. Responsible Wealth a project of United for a Fair Economy, is a national network of businesspeople, investors and affluent Americans who are concerned about deepening economic inequality and using their influence to advocate for widespread prosperity. Please go to their website UFE to learn about their mission it is a cause we all should get behind if we want to restore the American economy.

They’ve submitted over one-hundred Say on Pay resolutions to corporations around the country. I’m not sure what they have to gain from this, but bless their pro-active hearts. Their next battles are with Target, Yahoo!, and FedEx. United for a Fair Economy is working very hard to correct this situation and I think all of us who have been affected by the recession caused by bad management, bad loans, and wasted compensations should join with them and do what we can to turn it around, don’t you?

Written by Bill Ruesch blog author of Talking Through My Hat, A Print Broker’s Ruminations www.billprintbroker.com

First let me say that I haven’t had a real problem with Vanguard. The funds have done better than many others. In downturns they haven’t lost as much and in the upswings they do better than the average. Vanguard seems to be one of the good guys, however, you knew this was coming didn’t you? However, Vanguard is not a publicly owned company and by law doesn’t not have to reveal their executive compensations, so they don’t.  I don’t know about you, but for me in this climate of demand for transparency, this policy raises a red flag. If there is nothing to hide, why hide it? (Rule #2)

As a itsy-bitsy owner of a minuscule amount of Vanguard shares, I nonetheless, received a proxy packet to vote for trustees. The description for trustee compensation sounds reasonable, I can’t see any quarrell with that. When I look through the Proxy News booklet they sent out, under What are the board’s committees? I see that there is a Compensation Committee established to oversee “compensation programs for Vanguard employees, officers, and trustees.” A compensation committe sounds like a very good idea. They meet four times a year and make decisions.  Here’s the real question that is unanswered by the friendly Poxy News booklet–who sits on the compensation committee? Is it a rubber stamp, pat-on-the-back, group of corporate yes men, or is it populated with others, like me, who are outsiders and don’t have anything to gain by doing the will of the executives? I’m betting on the former rather than the later, aren’t you?

I don’t know about you, but aren’t we tired of the corporate games? For example, Prudential Financial paid it’s Cheif Executive, John Strangfeld, between $14 million to $16.5 million dollars in compensation (depending on which Internet report you read) last year. (Rule #5) How much did Prudential earn? Ha–this is really funny–Prudential lost, lost, lost over a Billion dollars! John Strangfeld can laugh all the way to the bank, and those of use who own shares of the company, as small as they are, have no recourse but to bend over and smile. When questioned about his compensation John Strangfeld replied that people in his posistion are expected to live lavish lifesyles (Rule #4). Doesn’t it make you sick to your stomach?

I am not a financial master of the universe nor am I an economist, so I have to reduce concepts to manageable bite sized pieces, otherwise, my brain would explode. What is the stock market? Isn’t it a collection of companies who have offered little ownership pieces for sell? By buying a stock you are betting that the company will be profitable and grow. If profitable, they could declare dividends, and pay all of the stockholders according to their portion of ownership. If they grow, the stock itself could become more valuable. Stockholders who want to sell their stock at a higher amount could do so and reap a profit. Is it too simplistic? Sure, but stick with me a little longer. When all the stockholders pool their shares and the total is more than 51% of the company, who owns the company? That’s right, the shareholders own it. Not the executives, not the compensation committee, not the employees, and certainly not the customers.

So, if the stockholders own many of the companies why can’t they take care of problems like transparency in executive compensation? It’s logistics. If ten shares of stock are offered it would be pretty easy to get stockholders together. In the real world, it would be easier to get all of the ants in a 3 ft. tall ant hill to line up than getting a majority to challenge the board. The reality is that millions of shares are tucked away in 401K’s and mutual funds. Because ownership is so fragmented and indirect, I’d hazarrd to say that most stockholders don’t even know that they own anything.  Company executives can rest assured that the stockholders aren’t a real threat, and could never be a threat. Without real stockholder intervention we will always suffer losses in our stock values and decreases in our rightful dividends.

Corporate management carves out lavish lifestyles for themselves (Rule #3), at our expense, and in the process often weakens company infrastructure to the point of collapse.  Where is their collapse–those who take the money and run? Except for a very few, they get away with it scott free. You won’t hear any complaints from Swiss or off-shore banks. They love this system.
  
In all seriousness, aren’t the actions of these corporate pirates (by pirate I mean those executives who pillage and plunder) contrary to the best interests of all citizens? How many of us have been hurt by the collapse of AIG, Bear Sterns, JP Morgan, and the like? I maintain that lavish these executive compensations are a menace to the entire society, not just to their stockholders,  and since the corporate world is either unwilling or unable to control greed (Rule #6), it is up to the public, and by public, I mean the voters to correct it. I call on congress to initiate sweeping legislation for our protection. They passed laws to curb monopolies. why not make rules against legalized theft? Executive compensation should now be viewed as a public matter because the actions of the few can destroy the economy. We are experiencing the living proof of that right now. No one should be allowed that power. No one.

Written by Bill Ruesch blog author of Talking Through My Hat, A Print Broker’s Ruminations www.billprintbroker.com

Yellowstone National Park has been an environmental proving ground. Park rangers told us that the forestry pendulum initially swung wide toward micro-management of public lands and animals. Wolves were considered to be a menace and bounties were offered to eliminate them. Without the wolves the elk herds flourished. The elks ate all edible vegetation in sight until they began to starve for lack of food. One thing impacts another and no one really knows where, when, and how to tweak it for maximum results. Heck, no one even knows what the maximum results should be.

Currently the pendulum has swung back to a hands-off approach to management of public lands. Now if lightening causes a forest fire park rangers let it burn. There is a belief that a periodic cleansing burn is good for the environment. What is the truth? Is large scale fire good or bad?

Human beings seem to be pretty inept when it comes to managing almost anything. The larger the scale the more inept we seem to be. How does that old seventies Johnathan Edwards song go, “…you can’t even run your own life, I’ll be damned if you’ll run mine”?

I was just reading the latest news about the World Bank and the countries of the world gathering together to manipulate the economy to end the recession.

“WASHINGTON — The global financial crisis could become ‘a human and development calamity’ for many poor countries, the World Bank said, urging donor nations to speed delivery of money they have pledged and consider giving more.

Developing countries, its main constituency, face ‘especially serious consequences with the crisis driving more than 50 million people into extreme poverty, particularly women and children,’ the bank said Sunday.” –Copyright 2009 The Associated Press, Associated Press Writer Deb Riechmann contributed to this report.

Do you notice anything about the language? According to the World Bank they are doing it for the poor women and children. Have you ever seen a financial organization that truly exists for the purpose of helping the poor women and children? That’s their story and they are sticking too it. I spoke with a man recently that used to work in travel. He told me that in his experience World Bank executives were the most demanding customers. Everything had to be first class. They wouldn’t go economy, no way. So with the World Bank is it really about the poor, the women, and the children or is it about cushy lifestyles for their executives? Helping the downtrodden is a good way to live.

So world’s top bankers gather wearing their socially concerned masks and all the while whispering that the poor are partially responsible for the financial collapse. If the government hadn ‘t pressured banks to into taking risky loans so that the poor could have housing, we wouldn’t have so many defaults. The poor people, according to the humble bankers, pressed congress and tied their hands. The poor must be at fault.

Do you see where this is going? How does the old joke go, “How do you know if a politician is lying? His lips move.” There are red flags. Whenever I’m told that something is for the children, or to help the poor or homeless, you can bet that someone is going to make a lot of money and a chunk of it will circulate magically back into big fat lobbying accounts that flow into campaign contributions. There it is Washington’s real circle of life.

Why are we so vulnerable to these ruses pulled on us by our leaders? People, including the Joe-average person on the street, really care. We do care about children. We do care about the environment. We care about the needy and the oppressed. We believe in the essential goodness of mankind. And, believe it or not, we trust our leaders.

Nearly thirty years ago there was a strong movement to implement term limitations for members of congress. Some states adopted them, most did not. Why? It turned out that the people were for term limitations on congressmen from other states, but not their own. They believed that their guys were the good guys it was just the others that were bad and needed restraint.

Is there anyone left in this country still believing that the unholy alliances between Government, Banking, Oil, Health Care and Industry are all about the people? If you believe that, then ask yourselves why has the American Middle Class gone nowhere over the last forty years? Why is the gap between the rich and the poor even greater than ever?  Why is the country’s wealth concentrated on the top 20%? Why is the USA ranked 38th in the world in health care for its citizens? Why do American soldiers have to apply for food stamps? Why is there enough money for cruise missiles and not enough for body armor? Why, why, why….

Written by Bill Ruesch blog author of Talking Through My Hat, A Print Broker’s Ruminations www.billprintbroker.com

I spent the weekend in Scottsdale, AZ attending a restaurateur’s convention. That’s an odd place for a printing professional to go, isn’t it? What does printing ink have to do with sauce? Or presses with ovens? So why was I there? I went at the invitation of Kevin Hall whom I’ve written about before (see link). Kevin was there to introduce his brand new book, Aspire. You can get a preview of Aspire by following this link, (the Power of Words).

Heaven and Earth was moved to make sure he received finished copies of the book for the convention. And to make it happen we had to toss out these five failure rules: 1) Always look out for Number One (Rule #4); 2) Do the least that’s necessary for success (Rule #9); 3)Don’t share what you know (Rule #2); 4) Promise things you have no intention of doing (Rule #6); and 5) The customer is someone you have to put up with (Rule #10), and turn them inside-out to make them the five rules for success.

Before I was called in, the book had already missed several deadlines. Kevin was adamant that Aspire be as perfect as he could make it before printing. Many people cooperated to bring it to fulfillment from editing, art, and design. There were revisions, upon revisions, upon revisions.  When we finally got it to press there was a last minute correction to be made on the dust jacket. We, and I’m speaking of me and Brad Airmet, with FC Printing (formerly Franklin Covey Printing), reached the point where we had to pull the trigger or miss the deadline. The remaining steps for book completion could no longer be pushed–so we told Kevin that if there was a hiccup in any of the last stages there wouldn’t be enough time to fix it. Anyone involved with manufacturing of any product knows full well to expect the unexpected. Things go wrong. Even those things that have been right a million times before, will head south. I don’t know why, I just know that it is true. We tempted fate with a no room for failure.

The books were finished barely on-time and were ready to load into the car of a driver taking them overnight some 660 miles away, just a mere 10 1/2 hour drive. This is where the last challenge bared its sharpened fangs. The appointed driver’s car went kaput, and believe it or not, the backup driver’s car was having trouble as well. It looked like all of the effort put into pulling off this miracle was going for naught. Luckily Kevin had an acquaintance Todd England of England Trucking fame. Kevin asked if they had a truck going to the conference destination. “Yes,” he was told, “But, the company wouldn’t allow loose boxes in the trailer.” It took some quick outside-of-the-box thinking and the books were put in the cab instead.

Would this have happened without the team efforts of many people working for a common goal? No way. When you buy and read the book How To Become A Total Failure (link) you will see that there is one guiding principle behind the ten rules. Failures marginalize themselves and by so doing alienate the very people they need to help them become a success. The successful printing of Kevin’s Aspire happened through cooperation. Through cooperation it will become, I’m sure, the next best seller. No one could have pulled this off by themselves–not in a million years.

Written by Bill Ruesch blog author of Talking Through My Hat, A Print Broker’s Ruminations www.billprintbroker.com

John Wilkes, literary writer for Examiner.com here in Salt Lake City, UT is currently reviewing our book, How To Become A Total Failure: The Ten Rules of Highly Unsuccessful People. When the review is out, we’ll put a link here, but John also posted a message about the book on his personal blog at the Mister Write Blog. Take a look.

My little blog last time about Prudential Financial showed up in Google’s top four. That’s good news and that’s bad. The good news is that the corporate executive cancer of greed gets a better chance of being exposed, but the bad news is that not enough people are writing about it. If my teeny-tiny voice is the only one denouncing them, nothing will change.

I did, as a Prudential stockholder, vote my proxy ballot. They thoughtfully allowed me to vote over the Internet. That’s very cool. I wish our elections for public office were that easy. Again, the gnat-sized weight of my vote won’t sway anything, but it made me feel good to vote no on every single one of the board candidates. Why did I do that? Well, I think that if the board is recommending that the shareholders reject the oversight of their compensation then none of the SOB’s should be in charge. They don’t want anybody telling them how much they can steal from the company! (Rule No.4 http://www.tenwaystofail.com/blog/?p=3#more-3 ) All pirates are not on the high seas. There are plenty of pirates in boardrooms. They turned in their eye patches and peg-legs for designer suits and $500.00 ties, but they be pirates none-the-less!

Oh, you think I’m going overboard, do you? Let’s look at the facts. For the year 2008, Chief Executive John Strangfeld took between $14 million and $16 million dollars in salary and other compensation. Now what did John Strangfeld accomplish to be worthy of such a grand bounty? Under Mr. Strangfeld’s $14 million dollar leadership, Prudential Financial Inc. posted a net loss of $1.1 billion dollars. That’s right. His management may not have been totally to blame for the loss, but where does the buck stop?

In the real world where the rest of us live could we even in our wildest dreams imagine a scenario where we could lose a large sum of money for our employer and be rewarded like this? Can you say fired?

Maybe we should put corporate executives, anyone with a VP behind their names, C anything, or any board member, on commission. After all, they are an insurance company, and they employ agents to sell their products who have to live on commission. Why not them? Maybe if all executive compensation was just commission, they would try harder to make sure their companies were successful. If that happened we wouldn’t have to walk the economic plank again. We already know that we can’t depend on their honor, but we can depend on their greed. Tie their earnings to the earnings of the company, and then let’s see how they do. The company thrives they thrive, if the company sinks, they sink. It needs to go both ways.

I’m not saying that they should be paid nothing, what’s wrong will a reasonable salary? What’s reasonable? I don’t know maybe a quarter million a year. I think if you offered  that sum to most Americans, they would be very happy indeed.  But don’t forget under John Stangfeld’s watch the company l…o…s….t a staggering $1.1 billion dollars. What would happen to Joe average American citizen who lost his company a tenth of that? They certainly wouldn’t get a bonus.  In John Stangfel’s case maybe two-hundred-fifty-thousand is too excessive–what do you think?

While we are at it, why not do the same with Washington bureaucrats? If you head a department of government that costs too much to operate, your salary gets cut. Serve the people’s needs profitably, and you get rewarded. Fail to produce and your income gets docked. Tit for tat. What’s wrong with that?

Perhaps this system should also apply to all government workers, not just the bureaucrats. I was talking to a fellow employee at a printing company a few years ago who came there after a stint working for the Salt Lake County Tax Commission, in Utah. She was a self-starter who took pride in her accomplishments. Everyday she received a pile of work to do. Everyday she was finished in two hours–max. Was she amazing? Not according to her. She was merely efficient. The other public “servants” became extremely annoyed with her because she was making them look bad (Rule 9, http://www.tenwaystofail.com/blog/?p=3#more-3). “Why couldn’t she make her work stretch the whole eight hours like they did,” they wondered.  She filled the rest of her time with reading. She was finished, why not? Oh no, that wouldn’t do. The powers that be would notice, and give her additional work. That sounded like a good idea to my friend. Nothing is more mind numbing than watching the clock tick, tick, tick, for six boring hours a day.

“But,” they said, “if they think we could do more, they might decide we don’t need this many people. Our jobs could be in jeopardy.”

In the end her fellow public servants made it psychologically impossible for her to continue working there. She was forced to quit and they probably went out and found two or three more people to take her place–all at taxpayer expense. Dosen’t it just make you proud to know that 50% or more of everything you earn goes to supporting this wasteful system? Our money isn’t just wasted it is sacrificed. They might as well build a Burning Man effigy in the desert out of our tax dollars for as much good as we get from them.

Written by Bill Ruesch blog author of Talking Through My Hat, A Print Broker’s Ruminations www.billprintbroker.com

Wells Fargo announced a profit and Wall Street showed signs of life. It didn’t matter that the $3 Billion profit was much less than the $25 Billion they received from the public. By my reckoning that still puts them $22 Billion in the hole, even if they gave the entire $3 Billion back to the US Treasury.  How much they owe, and how they are planning to repay us isn’t the point. The point is, they made a profit.

It’s like those songs from the Depression Era said, “Gray skies are going to clear up. Put on a happy face.”Are we now out of the recession/depression? No, of course not, but any good news is welcome. Any bright spot on the horizon is worth praise. Don’t you agree? Wall Street does. Wall Street is such an anomaly. We see it as the the domain of charts, graphs, and ledgers. The button down financial rulers with their two-thousand dollar suits, and thousand dollar shoes, control the fate of the world from their high perches. You’d think that they, the cold-eyed, profit focused mega-wealthy, would not be swayed by emotion. Oh no, not them. But you would be wrong. They too saw this glimmer of hope cast by Wells Fargo Bank, and the stock market went up in response to the news.

I’m not understating the facts when I say we have a long way to go, but a glimmer is a glimmer. I’ll take it.

Will the underlying corporate cancer that created this mess go away? You’d hope so, but again you would be wrong. Two days ago I received a shareholder meeting notice and admission ticket.  I have a Prudential life insurance policy and when the company went public I went from a participating policy holder to a shareholder, so now I hold a gnat sized share of the behemoth. You’d think that Prudential, if you watch the commercials, is so wise and so prudent that they can manage the Rock of Gibraltar and guide it safely through stormy seas. That’s what you would think, but again, you’d be wrong. Has the corporate “me first” mentality changed? Not one whit (Rule #1, Resist Learning Anything New That Could Lead to More Responsibility). How do I know this? I know this because of the recommendations of the board for shareholders to vote against the following proposals:

1. Shareholder proposal regarding a shareholder advisory vote on executive compensation.
2. Shareholder proposal on separating the office of Chairman and Chief Executive Officer.
   

Both of those proposals would go a long way to keeping the company honest. The bonuses AIG executives received at the public expense was a  spit in the face. They are the masters of the universe. How dare we question their due? I questioned it and so did most Americans. We were appalled at the callus disregard, weren’t we?

Now here comes Prudential asking the shareholders to look the other way when it comes to executive compensation (Rule #4, Always Look After Number One and Rule #5, It’s All About the Money). “Just trust us” they are implying (Rule #6 Promise Things You Have No Intention of Doing). Like we trusted Bear Sterns, Stanley Morgan, AIG, and all the others? NO WAY!

Also, they, the board, is shying away from internal checks and balances. They want all the power of a Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer to be combined. One person at the top who makes all the decisions, is that a good idea? If I had my way I’d fire all of the executives who had anything to do with these board recommendations and replace them with people who placed the interests of the company, shareholders, and policy holder ahead of their own greed. My gnat sized share wouldn’t sway anyone, but if all the gnats got together…who knows?

Written by Bill Ruesch blog author of Talking Through My Hat, A Print Broker’s Ruminations www.billprintbroker.com