Thursday, October 02, 2008
Sunday, September 21, 2008
New Blog
Hi everyone, I am starting a new blog. The content will be a mixture of my own dabblings as well as interesting pieces that I think will be valuable for people to read. Feel free to check it out: http://communicacion-oral.blogspot.com. Thanks!
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Need a Job? $17,000 an Hour. No Success Required.
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: September 17, 2008
Are you capable of taking a perfectly good 158-year-old company and turning it into dust? If so, then you may not be earning up to your full potential.
You should be raking it in like Richard Fuld, the longtime chief of Lehman Brothers. He took home nearly half-a-billion dollars in total compensation between 1993 and 2007.
Last year, Mr. Fuld earned about $45 million, according to the calculations of Equilar, an executive pay research company. That amounts to roughly $17,000 an hour to obliterate a firm. If you’re willing to drive a company into the ground for less, apply by calling Lehman Brothers at (212) 526-7000.
Oh, nevermind.
I’m delighted to announce that Mr. Fuld (who continues to lead Lehman since it entered bankruptcy proceedings this week) is the winner of my annual Michael Eisner Award for corporate rapacity and poor corporate governance. The award honors the pioneering achievements in this field of Mr. Eisner, the former Walt Disney chief.
This isn’t a plaque that will simply gather dust in a closet. It’s a shower curtain to commemorate the $6,000 one that the former C.E.O. of Tyco purchased and billed to his shareholders.
So, Mr. Fuld, you’ll be pleased to know that I’ve picked out a lovely green vinyl number for you. Only $14.99! Why, I saved you $5,985!
Perhaps it seems frivolous to be handing out shower curtains to chief executives when we’re caught in a deepening economic crisis. Well, it is.
But one of our broad national problems is rising inequality, and it is exacerbated by corporate executives helping themselves to shareholders’ cash. Three decades ago, C.E.O.’s typically earned 30 to 40 times the income of ordinary workers. Last year, C.E.O.’s of large public companies averaged 344 times the average pay of workers.
John McCain seems to think that the problem is that C.E.O.’s are greedy. Well, of course, they are. We’re all greedy. The real failure is one of corporate governance, which provides only the flimsiest oversight to curb the greed of executives like Mr. Fuld.
“Compare the massive destruction of wealth for shareholders to what he gets at the end of the day,” said Lucian Bebchuk, the director of the corporate governance program at Harvard Law School. A central flaw of governance is that boards of directors frequently are ornamental and provide negligible oversight.
As Warren Buffett has said, “in judging whether corporate America is serious about reforming itself, C.E.O. pay remains the acid test.” It’s a test that corporate America is failing.
These Brobdingnagian paychecks are partly the result of taxpayer subsidies. A study released a few weeks ago by the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington found five major elements in the tax code that encourage overpaying executives. These cost taxpayers more than $20 billion a year.
That’s enough money to deworm every child in the world, cut maternal mortality around the globe by two-thirds and also provide iodized salt to prevent tens of millions of children from suffering mild retardation or worse. Alternatively, it could pay for health care for most uninsured children in America.
Do we truly believe that C.E.O.’s like Mr. Fuld are more deserving of tax dollars than sick children?
Perhaps it’s understandable that C.E.O.’s are paid heroically when they succeed, but why pay prodigious sums when they fail? E. Stanley O’Neal, the former chief of Merrill Lynch, retired last year after driving the firm over a cliff, and he walked away with $161 million.
The problem isn’t precisely paychecks that are huge. Baseball stars, investment bankers and hedge fund managers all earn obscene sums, but honestly — through arm’s-length transactions. You and I may gasp, but that’s the free market at work.
In contrast, boards pay C.E.O.’s after negotiations that are often more like pillow talk. Relationships are incestuous, and compensation consultants provide only a thin veer of respectability by finding some “peer group” of companies so moribund that anybody shines in comparison. The result is what critics call the Lake Wobegon effect, which miraculously leaves all C.E.O.’s above average. Indeed, one study of 1,500 companies found that two-thirds claimed to be outperforming their peer groups.
John Kenneth Galbraith, the great economist, once explained: “The salary of the chief executive of a large corporation is not a market award for achievement. It is frequently in the nature of a warm personal gesture by the individual to himself.”
There are widely discussed technical solutions to C.E.O.’s overpaying themselves that we should move toward. We can also learn from Britain and Australia, which offer shareholders more rights than in America, redrawing the balance between shareholders and management and curbing pay in the process.
As for Mr. Fuld, unfortunately, he had no comment for this column. At $17,000 an hour, it probably wasn’t worth his time.
I invite you to visit my blog, www.nytimes.com/ontheground, and join me on Facebook at www.facebook.com/kristof.
Published: September 17, 2008
Are you capable of taking a perfectly good 158-year-old company and turning it into dust? If so, then you may not be earning up to your full potential.
You should be raking it in like Richard Fuld, the longtime chief of Lehman Brothers. He took home nearly half-a-billion dollars in total compensation between 1993 and 2007.
Last year, Mr. Fuld earned about $45 million, according to the calculations of Equilar, an executive pay research company. That amounts to roughly $17,000 an hour to obliterate a firm. If you’re willing to drive a company into the ground for less, apply by calling Lehman Brothers at (212) 526-7000.
Oh, nevermind.
I’m delighted to announce that Mr. Fuld (who continues to lead Lehman since it entered bankruptcy proceedings this week) is the winner of my annual Michael Eisner Award for corporate rapacity and poor corporate governance. The award honors the pioneering achievements in this field of Mr. Eisner, the former Walt Disney chief.
This isn’t a plaque that will simply gather dust in a closet. It’s a shower curtain to commemorate the $6,000 one that the former C.E.O. of Tyco purchased and billed to his shareholders.
So, Mr. Fuld, you’ll be pleased to know that I’ve picked out a lovely green vinyl number for you. Only $14.99! Why, I saved you $5,985!
Perhaps it seems frivolous to be handing out shower curtains to chief executives when we’re caught in a deepening economic crisis. Well, it is.
But one of our broad national problems is rising inequality, and it is exacerbated by corporate executives helping themselves to shareholders’ cash. Three decades ago, C.E.O.’s typically earned 30 to 40 times the income of ordinary workers. Last year, C.E.O.’s of large public companies averaged 344 times the average pay of workers.
John McCain seems to think that the problem is that C.E.O.’s are greedy. Well, of course, they are. We’re all greedy. The real failure is one of corporate governance, which provides only the flimsiest oversight to curb the greed of executives like Mr. Fuld.
“Compare the massive destruction of wealth for shareholders to what he gets at the end of the day,” said Lucian Bebchuk, the director of the corporate governance program at Harvard Law School. A central flaw of governance is that boards of directors frequently are ornamental and provide negligible oversight.
As Warren Buffett has said, “in judging whether corporate America is serious about reforming itself, C.E.O. pay remains the acid test.” It’s a test that corporate America is failing.
These Brobdingnagian paychecks are partly the result of taxpayer subsidies. A study released a few weeks ago by the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington found five major elements in the tax code that encourage overpaying executives. These cost taxpayers more than $20 billion a year.
That’s enough money to deworm every child in the world, cut maternal mortality around the globe by two-thirds and also provide iodized salt to prevent tens of millions of children from suffering mild retardation or worse. Alternatively, it could pay for health care for most uninsured children in America.
Do we truly believe that C.E.O.’s like Mr. Fuld are more deserving of tax dollars than sick children?
Perhaps it’s understandable that C.E.O.’s are paid heroically when they succeed, but why pay prodigious sums when they fail? E. Stanley O’Neal, the former chief of Merrill Lynch, retired last year after driving the firm over a cliff, and he walked away with $161 million.
The problem isn’t precisely paychecks that are huge. Baseball stars, investment bankers and hedge fund managers all earn obscene sums, but honestly — through arm’s-length transactions. You and I may gasp, but that’s the free market at work.
In contrast, boards pay C.E.O.’s after negotiations that are often more like pillow talk. Relationships are incestuous, and compensation consultants provide only a thin veer of respectability by finding some “peer group” of companies so moribund that anybody shines in comparison. The result is what critics call the Lake Wobegon effect, which miraculously leaves all C.E.O.’s above average. Indeed, one study of 1,500 companies found that two-thirds claimed to be outperforming their peer groups.
John Kenneth Galbraith, the great economist, once explained: “The salary of the chief executive of a large corporation is not a market award for achievement. It is frequently in the nature of a warm personal gesture by the individual to himself.”
There are widely discussed technical solutions to C.E.O.’s overpaying themselves that we should move toward. We can also learn from Britain and Australia, which offer shareholders more rights than in America, redrawing the balance between shareholders and management and curbing pay in the process.
As for Mr. Fuld, unfortunately, he had no comment for this column. At $17,000 an hour, it probably wasn’t worth his time.
I invite you to visit my blog, www.nytimes.com/ontheground, and join me on Facebook at www.facebook.com/kristof.
Sunday, August 03, 2008
It's English Time
Our tribute to the Flight of the Conchords' "Business Time," though instead of being all about makin' love, our version is all about the hilarity that is teaching English in Japan. Enjoy!
Lyrics by my friend Ed and me, with a miniscule amount of help from Melissa
--------------------------------------
uhh....Oh yeah.
Kids, today we're gonna speak English. You know how I know? Because it's third period and third period is the time that we usually speak English.
First period is the time that you put your head down on the desk and sleep all the way through your math class,
but third period is the time that we're speakin' English.
When everything is just right, you're not too tired from your mandatory, 3-hour long after-school club activity,
there's no school-wide earthquake safety survival drill, mmm, conditions are perfect for speakin' English.
You turn to me and say somethin' but I don't understand, like "What do you like sports?" I know what you're tryin' to say, you're tryin' to say, oooh yeah, it's English time, it's English time.
Chorus -
It's English, it's English time,
I don't know what you're tryin' to say, but you're tryin' hard to say it, so it's English time, ooooh!
It's English, it's English time,
Oh ohhhhhhh, yeah yeahhhh
Next thing you know we're in the classroom, reviewin' the vocabulary, that's all part of it, that's preparation. Preparation is very important. In English speakin'.
Then you get out your gigantic oversize mirror and pluck your eyebrows. That's not part of the preparation, but it's still very important.
Next thing you know the bell's rung. You're still wearin' your pants around your knees as though you're a gangster but you're really from a small rural mountain town with only 1 traffic light. Ooooh, small rural mountain town in the mountains! (oooh 1 traffic light is all you need)
I take out my flashcards, but then drop them all over the floor 'cuz I laminated them and they're all slippery, but it's okay because I make it into a funny gaijin joke.
Next we turn to page 273 in the school-approved textbook, the lesson heading is "Which subway line do I take?"
How should I know, I always drive.
It's English, it's English time.
I know that the textbook sucks but you all gotta read it so it's your bad luck, ooooh!
It's English, it's English time.
Oh ohhhhhhh, yeah yeahhhh
Speakin' English.
Speaking English for.
Speaking English for two.
Speaking English for two seconds.
When it's with a native speaker, you only need 2 seconds cuz we're so intimidating. 2 seconds of English is better than no seconds of English....mmmmm
You turn to me and say somethin' in Japanese, like "Wakaran." I know what you're tryin' to say, you're tryin' to say "ooohhh yeah, I love English".
Then you tell me that you want some more. Well, er, I'm not surprised, but I have already taught 2 classes today.
It's English time, it's English time.
Second hand ticks over and I'm outta here, baaaaby!"
It's English, it's English time.
Lyrics by my friend Ed and me, with a miniscule amount of help from Melissa
--------------------------------------
uhh....Oh yeah.
Kids, today we're gonna speak English. You know how I know? Because it's third period and third period is the time that we usually speak English.
First period is the time that you put your head down on the desk and sleep all the way through your math class,
but third period is the time that we're speakin' English.
When everything is just right, you're not too tired from your mandatory, 3-hour long after-school club activity,
there's no school-wide earthquake safety survival drill, mmm, conditions are perfect for speakin' English.
You turn to me and say somethin' but I don't understand, like "What do you like sports?" I know what you're tryin' to say, you're tryin' to say, oooh yeah, it's English time, it's English time.
Chorus -
It's English, it's English time,
I don't know what you're tryin' to say, but you're tryin' hard to say it, so it's English time, ooooh!
It's English, it's English time,
Oh ohhhhhhh, yeah yeahhhh
Next thing you know we're in the classroom, reviewin' the vocabulary, that's all part of it, that's preparation. Preparation is very important. In English speakin'.
Then you get out your gigantic oversize mirror and pluck your eyebrows. That's not part of the preparation, but it's still very important.
Next thing you know the bell's rung. You're still wearin' your pants around your knees as though you're a gangster but you're really from a small rural mountain town with only 1 traffic light. Ooooh, small rural mountain town in the mountains! (oooh 1 traffic light is all you need)
I take out my flashcards, but then drop them all over the floor 'cuz I laminated them and they're all slippery, but it's okay because I make it into a funny gaijin joke.
Next we turn to page 273 in the school-approved textbook, the lesson heading is "Which subway line do I take?"
How should I know, I always drive.
It's English, it's English time.
I know that the textbook sucks but you all gotta read it so it's your bad luck, ooooh!
It's English, it's English time.
Oh ohhhhhhh, yeah yeahhhh
Speakin' English.
Speaking English for.
Speaking English for two.
Speaking English for two seconds.
When it's with a native speaker, you only need 2 seconds cuz we're so intimidating. 2 seconds of English is better than no seconds of English....mmmmm
You turn to me and say somethin' in Japanese, like "Wakaran." I know what you're tryin' to say, you're tryin' to say "ooohhh yeah, I love English".
Then you tell me that you want some more. Well, er, I'm not surprised, but I have already taught 2 classes today.
It's English time, it's English time.
Second hand ticks over and I'm outta here, baaaaby!"
It's English, it's English time.
Friday, August 01, 2008
A Farm Boy Reflects
YAMHILL, Ore.
In a world in which animal rights are gaining ground, barbecue season should make me feel guilty. My hunch is that in a century or two, our descendants will look back on our factory farms with uncomprehending revulsion. But in the meantime, I love a good burger.
This comes up because the most important election this November that you’ve never heard of is a referendum on animal rights in California, the vanguard state for social movements. Proposition 2 would ban factory farms from raising chickens, calves or hogs in small pens or cages.
Livestock rights are already enshrined in the law in Florida, Arizona, Colorado and here in Oregon, but California’s referendum would go further and would be a major gain for the animal rights movement. And it’s part of a broader trend. Burger King announced last year that it would give preference to suppliers that treat animals better, and when a hamburger empire expostulates tenderly about the living conditions of cattle, you know public attitudes are changing.
Harvard Law School now offers a course on animal rights. Spain’s Parliament has taken a first step in granting rights to apes, and Austrian activists are campaigning to have a chimpanzee declared a person. Among philosophers, a sophisticated literature of animals rights has emerged.
I’m a farm boy who grew up here in the hills outside Yamhill, Ore., raising sheep for my F.F.A. and 4-H projects. At various times, my family also raised modest numbers of pigs, cattle, goats, chickens and geese, although they were never tightly confined.
Our cattle, sheep, chickens and goats certainly had individual personalities, but not such interesting ones that it bothered me that they might end up in a stew. Pigs were more troubling because of their unforgettable characters and obvious intelligence. To this day, when tucking into a pork chop, I always feel as if it is my intellectual equal.
Then there were the geese, the most admirable creatures I’ve ever met. We raised Chinese white geese, a common breed, and they have distinctive personalities. They mate for life and adhere to family values that would shame most of those who dine on them.
While one of our geese was sitting on her eggs, her gander would go out foraging for food — and if he found some delicacy, he would rush back to give it to his mate. Sometimes I would offer males a dish of corn to fatten them up — but it was impossible, for they would take it all home to their true loves.
Once a month or so, we would slaughter the geese. When I was 10 years old, my job was to lock the geese in the barn and then rush and grab one. Then I would take it out and hold it by its wings on the chopping block while my Dad or someone else swung the ax.
The 150 geese knew that something dreadful was happening and would cower in a far corner of the barn, and run away in terror as I approached. Then I would grab one and carry it away as it screeched and struggled in my arms.
Very often, one goose would bravely step away from the panicked flock and walk tremulously toward me. It would be the mate of the one I had caught, male or female, and it would step right up to me, protesting pitifully. It would be frightened out of its wits, but still determined to stand with and comfort its lover.
We eventually grew so impressed with our geese — they had virtually become family friends — that we gave the remaining ones to a local park. (Unfortunately, some entrepreneurial thief took advantage of their friendliness by kidnapping them all — just before the next Thanksgiving.)
So, yes, I eat meat (even, hesitantly, goose). But I draw the line at animals being raised in cruel conditions. The law punishes teenage boys who tie up and abuse a stray cat. So why allow industrialists to run factory farms that keep pigs almost all their lives in tiny pens that are barely bigger than they are?
Defining what is cruel is, of course, extraordinarily difficult. But penning pigs or veal calves so tightly that they cannot turn around seems to cross that line.
More broadly, the tide of history is moving toward the protection of animal rights, and the brutal conditions in which they are sometimes now raised will eventually be banned. Someday, vegetarianism may even be the norm.
Perhaps it seems like soggy sentimentality as well as hypocrisy to stand up for animal rights, particularly when I enjoy dining on these same animals. But my view was shaped by those days in the barn as a kid, scrambling after geese I gradually came to admire.
So I’ll enjoy the barbecues this summer, but I’ll also know that every hamburger patty has a back story, and that every tin of goose liver pâté could tell its own rich tale of love and loyalty.
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Nicholas Kristof Column
I really admire this guy's work.
The Pain of the G-8’s Big Shrug
The Pain of the G-8’s Big Shrug
As President Bush and the Group of 8 leaders who are meeting in Japan again shun their responsibilities in Darfur, there is a serious argument to be made that genocide is overrated as an international concern. The G-8 leaders implicitly accept that argument, which goes like this:
Genocide is regrettable, but don’t lose perspective. It is simply one of many tragedies in the world today — and a fairly modest one in terms of lives lost.
All the genocides of the last 100 years have cost only 10 million to 12 million lives. In contrast, every year we lose almost 10 million children under the age of 5 from diseases and malnutrition attributable to poverty. Make that the priority, not Darfur.
Civil conflict in Congo has claimed more than 5.4 million lives over the last decade, according to careful mortality surveys by the International Rescue Committee. That’s at least 10 times the toll in Darfur, but because Congo doesn’t count as genocide — just as murderous chaos — no one has paid much attention to it.
Does a mother whose child dies from banditry, malaria or AIDS grieve any less than a mother whose child was killed by the janjaweed?
The world has been trying to pressure Sudan to stop slaughtering Darfuris for nearly five years, yet the situation in some ways is worse than ever. In contrast, we know how to combat malaria, child mortality and maternal mortality. The same resources would save far more lives if they were used for vaccinations and bed nets.
So instead of pushing President Bush to worry about Darfur, where it’s not clear he can make a difference, get him to focus on bed nets or deworming or iodizing salt in poor countries or stopping mother-to-child transmission of the virus that causes AIDS or so many other areas where his attention could have a humanitarian impact.
Genocide is horrific, but that doesn’t make it a priority.
This is a coherent and legitimate argument, and there are moments when I catch myself sympathetic to it.
Yet in truth, genocide has always evoked a transcendent horror, and it has little to do with the numbers of victims. The Holocaust resonates not because six million Jews were killed but because a government picked people on the basis of their religious heritage and tried to exterminate them. What is horrifying about Anne Frank’s diary is not so much the death of a girl as the crime of a state.
There are also practical arguments, for genocide can create cycles of revenge and displacement that make it far more destabilizing than any famine or epidemic. The Darfur genocide may well lead all Sudan to fragment into civil war, interrupting Sudanese oil exports and raising oil prices.
The Armenian genocide still festers after nearly a century; and former President Bill Clinton has said that his greatest foreign-policy mistake was his failure to respond in Rwanda. In the same way, the G-8’s collective shrug today about the Darfur genocide — because the victims are black, impoverished and hidden from television cameras — will be a lingering stain.
After five years of genocide, President Bush still hasn’t taken as simple a step as imposing a no-fly zone or even giving a prime-time speech about it. He gave Beijing a gift, his pledge to attend the opening ceremony of the Olympics, without pushing hard for China to suspend military spare-parts and arms deliveries to Sudan.
The Islamic world has been even more myopic, particularly since the victims in Darfur are all Muslim. Do dead Muslims count only when Israel is the culprit? Can’t the Islamic world muster one-hundredth as much indignation for the genocidal slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Muslims as it can for a few Danish cartoons?
This coming Monday, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court is expected to seek an arrest warrant in connection with Darfur, and his past statements suggest that it may be for the Sudanese president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, for genocide. That would be a historic step requiring follow-through.
A personal note: I have seen children dying of AIDS and hunger; I have had malaria and been chased through the jungle by militias. I want the G-8 to address all the aspects of global poverty, yet nothing affects me as much as what I have seen in Darfur.
I tilt obsessively at the windmills of Darfur because, quite simply, its people haunt me: the young woman who deliberately made a diversion of herself so the janjaweed would gang-rape her and miss her little sister running in the opposite direction; the man whose eyes were gouged out with a bayonet; the group of women beaten with their own babies until the children were dead.
Yes, genocide truly is “that bad.”
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
New Photos!
Hi everyone,
Long time, no see, I know. I have been working on my Flickr page a bit, and I have added many photos from India, as well as from my good friend Joel's wedding that I just attended back home. Enjoy!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/14302243@N00/sets/
Long time, no see, I know. I have been working on my Flickr page a bit, and I have added many photos from India, as well as from my good friend Joel's wedding that I just attended back home. Enjoy!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/14302243@N00/sets/
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