GoHuman Blog

In past blogs I’ve compared Corporations to Dinosaurs.

One reason is the “Reptilian Brain Stem” – where we get our fundamental survival instinct – the so-called “Fight Flight” response.

The DNA of even the best intentioned corporations, such as Apple and Google, determines it’s nature.  The purpose of corporate structure is to remove the personal risk to the creators and investors by creating a new entity, under the control of the creators, which acts to secure profits.   Even with the most noble of intentions, once this new entity reaches maturity, and the intentions of noble founders recede into the background, it uses its gargantuan power to dominate and control any market it can, for the profit purpose for which it was created.  Frankenstein style.

Most people don’t see Apple and Google that way.  Apple is cool, hip, stylish, trendy.  It’s customers identify with it, and are willing to pay premium prices.  At the opposite end we have Google.  So nerdy it’s cool, lavishing free stuff on all as it slowly worms it’s way into a position of absolute dominance relative to all information on the planet.  And information is power.

They’ve also had a cozy inbred relationship, even sharing Board seats – until recently.  Here’s an article that shows the Reptilian Nature inherent in their previously symbiotic relationship beginning to emerge.

GoHuman.com’s DNA is different.  I hope you’ll dig deeper to learn why!  We hope you’ll join us in deploying a better evolutionary model.  We hope you’ll use us to change the way your world works.

Why GoHuman.com?  Reason #12 is that we’re more Human!

Reason #1; Reason #2; Reason #3; Reason #4; Reason #5; Reason #6; Reason #7; Reason #8; Reason #9; Reason #10; Reason #11;

Goldman Sachs operated behind the scenes, defrauding millions of little guys & gals.  Our government failed us then, and continues to fail us. Check out this link to see how the government we elected has let Citigroup have its way with us, even after we became owners.

It’s our fault.

Americans, and everyone else on the planet, must own up, grow up, and participate more fully in ownership and governance. This nation was founded on these principles, but mass markets want to play vs. pay. Paying is acting responsibly; shouldering the burden of change.

But my daughter’s expression of frustration with her bank’s behavior, in tossing it over the gate by the stairs, was the real inspiration for this blog.

There are better ways to solve an economic crisis. Geithner’s failure to protect our interest, and Zoe’s latest antic, both highlight that responsible adults must be owners. It takes maturity to build something lasting. Spread the word and help us build it.

Reason #4 Why GoHuman.com is: We must own the global problem and work to change our own community!

Zoe solves the credit crisis her way

Reason #1; Reason #2; Reason #3; Reason #4; 

Next #5: The high cost of free; Reason #6; Reason #7; Reason #8; Reason #9; Reason #10; Reason #11; Reason #12

I’ve written about Goldman Sachs and Piggies before, but my daughter inspired me today, feeding change to her pig.

Goldman’s is a story of greed, power and collusion. They fueled an enormous Real Estate bubble by creating  toxic assets from doomed mortgages.  They called them safe and sold them to trusting people.  Mountains of money from whitewashing risk wasn’t enough, it gets much worse.

Using AIG, they bet against their own products, cashing in on their customer’s misfortune.  Outraged yet?

Next, former Goldman CEO Henry Paulson fed them the Fed bailout.  After defrauding a billion people with the free market lie, they use our taxes to post record profits of $3.44 billion, while 10% (or 17%) are unemployed.

Read Matt Taibbi’s article to learn more.

When my 18 month-old saw daddy empty the bank from the bottom, she tried, but couldn’t.  She quickly got fed up feeding an unfair pig. Game over!

We can feed a different kind of change to rich pigs.  Stop giving them your allowance. Don’t let them enslave us with their free market.

Reason #3 Why GoHuman.com? A marketplace with change for everyone.

Teaching Zoe that Pigs eat your money!

Reason #1; Reason #2;

Reason #4; Reason #5; Reason #6; Reason #7; Reason #8; Reason #9; Reason #10; Reason #11; Reason #12

I recently blogged about how the top 20 Global Companies dramatically highlight the unbelievably unsustainable nature of the current global economy.  I’m following up with an online article about #43 on the list.

End of the world predictions are usually the domain of fanatics and fringers, but this global powerhouse is advising its clients how to prepare for global collapse.

Be afraid.  Be very afraid.

#2 of 19 random reasons Why GoHuman.com? is that a strong, connected, local community is an essential insurance policy if the worst of doomsday predictions were to come true. And investing in a local economy is by its nature more sustainable, not to mention the marketplace we are creating.

We hope you’ll catch the vision and spread the word. We can make a difference. We can change the way the world works.

Reason #1;

Reason #3; Reason #4; Reason #5; Reason #6; Reason #7; Reason #8; Reason #9; Reason #10; Reason #11; Reason #12

I’ve quoted from Money and Markets before, but a recent issue has the perfect followup to my last blog on Goldman Sachs, edited here for brevity:

“The AIG rescue was the biggest taxpayer rip-off of all time, initiating a whole series of Wall Street taxpayer rip-offs…:

1. The U.S. Treasury bails out AIG, protecting AIG’s counterparties from direct losses they’d suffer if AIG failed.

2. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York pays off AIG’s creditors in full. As U.S. investors lose fortunes in financially viable companies, 16 major banks lose nothing in a company otherwise bankrupt, like…

3. Goldman Sachs, with Wall Street’s most extravagant executive bonuses in 2006 and 2007, and the most lavish payer of employee bonuses in 2009.

The money flow is clear:
* From taxpayers to AIG…
* From AIG to big Wall Street investment banks like Goldman Sachs…
* From Goldman Sachs to its employees in the form of lavish bonuses.”

The true cost to our institutions is erosion of trust.  Trust cannot be bought, it is built painstakingly, over time, through the delivery of promises and expectations.

Our economy may recover, in the short term, but the bankruptcy of trust will be much harder to undo.

GoHuman.com targets the underlying problems.  Change the way your world works, locally, at the level of basic human interaction.

Trust is rebuilt one handshake at a time!

Decades ago Bob Dylan sang that the times were changing. There are again welcome indications of serious change underfoot. They are the real green shoots cropping up. One of the most recent ones I saw was the $500M apology from Goldman Sachs.

If anyone doubts that this is change, consider this. Goldman Sachs first blustered in defense of it’s profiteering coming out of the near global economic meltdown. They were obviously very happy to reap the spoils in a game of global chicken, in which the last one standing can make out like a bandit, if of course the horrifying crash is avoided.

They also took the standard arrogant stance that they deserved the out-sized bonuses they pay themselves for sucking enormous amounts of value out of the system, at the expense of those at the bottom, who’s blood they are harvesting as they squeeze the proverbial turnips.

But now they are apologizing. And in delivering the $500M to small businesses who have suffered from their exploitation of the so-called free markets and the resulting global economic serfdom.

So this is indeed a welcome start. It’s an indication that, ultimately, the world is programmed towards a new level of maturity. One in which the actual worth of each individual voice is equal, independent of their net worth.

Couldn’t help but share this article by James Altucher of Formula Capital who made minor headlines with his recommendation to legalize insider trading.

This comes in the wake of the demise of Galleon Group, a hedge fund whose head billionaire Raj Rajaratnam, was caught with a big hand in the insider trading cookie jar. This welcome clampdown on some of the real perpetrators, as opposed to the symbolic arrest and incarceration of Martha Stewart a few years back, is met with someone who should know better calling it a victimless crime.

I guess if the crime is not personal, meaning it’s committed against any and everyone indiscriminately, then those who are leveraging their positions of relative power and influence feel no one is really victimized.

Here at GoHuman.com we take a bit more of a holistic view of things. Our marketplace of local services is designed to be transparent, built from the bottom up, with shared ownership. We seek to make it extremely difficult, if not impossible, for insider information to even exist, much less be exploited by a privileged few at the top.

We hope you’ll catch the vision, spread the word, and help make this marketplace the wave of the future.

As we watch the fallout of Capitalism gone wild, and what it does to those who indulge their greed and lust for power, it’s important to remember that the little choices we make along the way are determinate of big choices we would make if we were in those positions.

In this light I read an interesting article in the May, 2009 Ode (the magazine for intelligent optimists). You have to love the tag-line, as the editors are aware that they are at risk of being called naive. You can check out the article “Getting to the Heart of Money” online.

Two choice examples used are an Israeli day care that implemented late fees and found parents were more motivated by common courtesy and perception than money, and volunteers collecting more for charities than those paid to canvas. Bruno Frey, economist at the University of Zurich maintains “People are much more altruistic than standard economics claims,” and lays down the following gauntlet: “The challenge is for economists to nurture this intrinsic motivation instead of crowding it out.”

At GoHuman.com we’re working to attract people to the vision of a better marketplace, that not only helps small businesses reduce marketing costs, improve branding, and grow their customer base, but ensures those who care about making things better are also rewarded for their contributions and the value they create.

We thank those of you who are already on board, and hope to continue this dialogue as a reality check on how we’re doing in maintaining this delicate balance. We view our members, customers, supporters and co-owners as mirrors that keep the operators honest, to ensure that the small choices we make today are in line with the philosophy of creating a transparent market that rewards all contributors in an equitable fashion, no matter when they joined or what positions they hold.

Let us know how we’re doing!

Yesterday’s blog covered WFB firing Cheronda Guyton, and my hope that those running the show would be next in line. Today I’m celebrating. Five Bank of America Board Members have been subpoenaed.

The CEO’s boss is the Board of Directors. Their “fiduciary responsibility” is to “increase shareholder value” – which in plain English means “be successfully greedy”. In good times they are, and in bad times they muddle through the fallout of a greed-driven system.

The questions posed to these five people will be related to their acquisition of “troubled investment bank Merrill Lynch & Co.” Many players were involved, including our government. Will we find out what really happened?

Consider! The invisible gray suits pull the strings from behind closed doors, and they write their own minutes.

This much we know. “Merrill, with the knowledge of Bank of America executives” paid “$3.6 billion in bonuses shortly before the deal closed at the beginning of this year.”

I hope the investigation digs deeper. On Independence Day I blogged about my days at Countrywide, and its CEO, Angelo Mozilo, labeled #1 person to blame for the financial system’s meltdown by Time Magazine. I compared Countrywide Culture to the Mafia in a paper for my MBA.

What happened to Countrywide?

Acquired by Bank of America, of course.

Is anyone out there paying attention? How long will we let this game go on?

These gray suits essentially make the rules and print the money. They are among those who convinced America a “Free Market” was good for the economy. Translation? “We’ll make the rules, you’ll believe they’re fair”.

We don’t need free markets, we need transparent markets. You can’t get there from here. We need to change the way our world works.

Have you read that one of our nations largest banks has sacked a Senior Vice President for hosting parties in a house the bank was holding in foreclosure?

The Malibu Beach-front property had reportedly been bought for $12 Million by owners investing with historie’s biggest scam artist, Bernie Maddoff. The Senior VP who was fired is reportedly Cheronda Guyton.

I looked Cheronda up on LinkedIn, but her profile sports only 3 connections. Perhaps if she were more connected online she may have had better sense than to party in a house on which her Bank had foreclosed.

While I feel for her personal loss of a 17 year career, not to mention becoming a pariah, her firing was certainly appropriate. But is she just another Martha Stewart, who was singled out and sent to jail while Bernie Maddoff continued to run rampant all over Wall Street and the country?

According to the LA times Wells Fargo Bank has stated “a single team member was responsible for violating our company policies. As a result, employment of this individual has been terminated.” “We deeply regret the activities that have taken place as they do not reflect the conduct we expect of our team members,” the statement added.

It’s probably true of the specific event. I’ve experienced a variety of Corporate Cultures as a consultant and employee/executive, including Wells Fargo Bank’s. I can’t say I saw evidence of a culture at WFB that would encourage that specific act. Quite the opposite, actually.

My experience in Financial Services companies, however, WFB included, is that they have many layers of management, who pay strict attention to making sure that when things proverbially “hit the fan” they are wearing protective garb. I call it Teflon Management. An SVP, like Cheronda, is not particularly high up in the WFB hierarchy. Those at higher levels are most likely certain that their perks are not of the kind that would have them end up like Cheronda.

So I hope we will continue to see an increase in transparency and accountability for those in positions of power and influence in our large corporations and financial institutions. At levels higher than Cheronda’s.

GoHuman.com seeks to create a culture that has transparent reputation built into its DNA. We’re not launching a classic “top down” capital driven company, which seeks to invest to own and control. We’ve specifically chosen a business model and growth plan that leverages the concept of shared ownership. Get involved, learn what makes us different, and help us spread the word.

And in the meantime, I’d love to hear your opinion on how WFB has handled this situation.