9.30.2013

Another non-environmental wonder

Cinnabon, the American - where else? - company that manufactures the ultimate processed dessert clocking in at over 800 calories per unit, just doesn't get it. As proof here's CEO Kat Cole, who unbelievably calls herself a "connected-creative-conscious-capitalist", on why Cinnabon has done literally nothing to address the ridiculous implications of its product (via Businessweek)

"If we say the Classic Cinnamon roll is a smidge smaller, they are going to be like, 'That’s still hundreds and hundreds of calories, and it’s still huge, and it’s still dripping with margarine and frosting.'"


9.24.2013

Another non-environmental wonder

John Lanchester shines a light on the incredible extent to which banks have failed in the UK - not only as institutions, perhaps banking's higher purpose, but even as companies. His key points on why the push for cultural change - made the talk of the town by Antony Jenkins at Barclays - won't work:

  • "Our banks are so big and so complicated that it isn’t clear their cultures are amenable to change in the way we need. Joris Luyendijk, a Dutch journalist who has been running a two-year project interviewing bank staff, reached the same conclusion. His experience was that banks are fragmented and atomised places, and that in many parts of them employees regarded themselves as working not so much for the bank as against it."
  • "Let’s for a moment propose a counterfactual, in which one of the big banks was headed not by a banker but...a professional ethicist, greatly admired by his peers, who writes books about the need for banking to be a moral enterprise...The bank was HSBC, and the person in charge as CEO and then as chairman of the board was Stephen Green, who is an ordained minister in the Church of England...As for how that worked out, well, it was on his watch that Mexican drug-dealers made special boxes to deliver drug cartel money over the deposit counter."
  • "There’s no reason to think that an emphasis on ethical banking, from the head of the company down to the troops, is likely to have any effect. These banks are huge and hugely complex institutions, whose separate components are fragilely and fleetingly linked. That is the reality of ‘universal banking’"

9.23.2013

Gem of the day

Tesco's new CR strategy, designed as a rather-late-than-never response to its many detractors, names health as one of three big focus areas.

So the chain's choice of photo to illustrate this commitment in its latest report is ironic, if appropriate:


9.18.2013

Gem of the day

In the increasingly public melee over corruption in BP's claims process for Gulf of Mexico recovery funds, here's the one question that shouldn't be asked:

"Is this fair to BP?"

Even worse is the answer provided by the author, who is also Executive Director of the Texas Civil Justice League:

"BP's good faith effort to make whole the individuals and businesses harmed by the spill has morphed into a travesty of justice that threatens not only the financial future of a major U.S. employer and energy producer, but the integrity of the judicial process itself."

Then again, that wondrously distorted point of view is no surprise coming from the TCJL, which counts Koch Industries and the Texas Oil & Gas Association among its board members.


9.10.2013

Something that's actually good

Energy expert Kurt Cobb sums up the bottom line on fossil fuels:

"Advancements in technology designed to extract more oil, natural gas, coal and uranium from the ground are in a race with geological constraints."

9.09.2013

Gem of the day

Finally: Walmart is making a concerted effort to address some of the major social and economic criticisms the company has faced for decades.

Except this is not about making long overdue commitments - it's The Real Walmart campaign. Featuring a PR firewall of Q&A and supportive quotes from "real customers". Little else could sum up the reality of rampant inequality and declining mobility in the US that Walmart represents better than this customer quote:

"On two deployments in Iraq I served with a lot of guys who didn't know if they had a job waiting for them. Walmart held my job for me."