Generation-X culture vs Boomer culture

[Higgenbotham]

Dear Higgie,

> Let's use the brokerage/trading house model as a hypothetical
> example. A Boomer from a politically connected brokerage/trading
> house may call a Boomer at the CFTC and tell him to figure out a
> way to legally justify the improper use of customer funds. A
> Boomer manager would then approach an Xer who is perceived to be
> technically sharp and tell him to do a study of the legalities of
> the use of customer funds with the implied goal of "customer
> service" (where the financial industry is the customer, not the
> actual brokerage customer). The typically honest Xer will then
> produce a report that says there is no legal justification for the
> use of customer funds by the trading house unit of the
> brokerage. The Boomers will then form a gang and begin to
> threaten, intimidate and harass the lone Xer, telling him to
> rewrite the report. If the Xer doesn't yield, the Boomers will gin
> up various false accusations, threats and other forms of
> abuse. For example, a top "right hand man" Boomer political hack
> may call the Xer and ask him whether he went to anybody with his
> complaint. He may be asked whether he is married and has a family
> (I know of a case where this happened).

I'm sorry Higgie, but this doesn't correspond to anything I've seen.

I saw this in the regulatory agency I worked in for 8 years. Exactly this, except I didn't work in a financial regulatory agency.

Think back to the you own experiences, (same for Tom), and I believe
that you'll find a clique of Xers who drove the process that screwed
you. They will be a clique that act like mean teenage girls who prove
that they can get away with anything. And that would mean convincing
the Boomers to target you and do whatever it takes to get rid of you.

That's not what happened, although the Boomers did hire and promote into management some "Boomer-aged" foreigners to do a lot of the dirty work. When I left, they were just beginning to promote some of the Xers they had co-opted.

[John]

I saw this in the regulatory agency I worked in for 8 years. Exactly this, except I didn't work in a financial regulatory agency.

What was their motivation?

[Guest]

I saw this in the regulatory agency I worked in for 8 years. Exactly this, except I didn't work in a financial regulatory agency.

What was their motivation?

To get accolades from the business tycoons and bigwig politicians. In other words, a good regulatory agency head or department head is "customer friendly" and will be rewarded for this behavior in a deregulatory type environment where private business is the "customer" and allowed to run roughshod. They can be photographed rubbing shoulders with important people and their friends and acquaintances can see they are also important people who keep the engine of the world running.

[John]

To get accolades from the business tycoons and bigwig politicians. In other words, a good regulatory agency head or department head is "customer friendly" and will be rewarded for this behavior in a deregulatory type environment where private business is the "customer" and allowed to run roughshod. They can be photographed rubbing shoulders with important people and their friends and acquaintances can see they are also important people who keep the engine of the world running.

But what was their motivation for screwing you?

[Higgenbotham]

To get accolades from the business tycoons and bigwig politicians. In other words, a good regulatory agency head or department head is "customer friendly" and will be rewarded for this behavior in a deregulatory type environment where private business is the "customer" and allowed to run roughshod. They can be photographed rubbing shoulders with important people and their friends and acquaintances can see they are also important people who keep the engine of the world running.

But what was their motivation for screwing you?

Pretty much what I described. If a business tycoon and bigwig politician want something and the regulator blocks it, then the business tycoon and bigwig politician want that regulator disposed of. Anyone in management involved in disposing of the regulator gets accolades. You also need to know that coworkers are not privy to management discussions in regulatory agencies. These discussions are secret, so coworkers have no idea who managements are targeting for disposal, unless managements ask them for dirt. In the story I related previously, my 2 Xer coworkers were shocked and scared, and both came to me separately to try to find out what the hell was going on.

[John]

Dear Higgie,

> Pretty much what I described. If a business tycoon and bigwig
> politician want something and the regulator blocks it, then the
> business tycoon and bigwig politician want that regulator disposed
> of. Anyone in management involved in disposing of the regulator
> gets accolades. You also need to know that coworkers are not privy
> to management discussions in regulatory agencies. These
> discussions are secret, so coworkers have no idea who managements
> are targeting for disposal, unless managements ask them for
> dirt. In the story I related previously, my 2 Xer coworkers were
> shocked and scared, and both came to me to try to find out what
> the hell was going on.

Well, OK, but the facts you've given don't support your original
conclusion. Your conclusion was that these Boomers did illegal
actions of their own accord, because they're Boomers screwing Xers.

My position is that Boomer managers are highly idealistic, lousy
managers, and easily duped. In this case, the Boomers were doing the
bidding of the business tycoons and bigwig politicians, who
undoubtedly convinced the Boomers that the acts they were performing
were for the good of the community, the state and the nation.

So the next step in this analysis would be to find out the motivations
of the business tycoons and bigwig politicians who were driving the
process.

John

[Higgenbotham]

Well, OK, but the facts you've given don't support your original
conclusion. Your conclusion was that these Boomers did illegal
actions of their own accord, because they're Boomers screwing Xers.

It wasn't required that the bureaucracy go along with the business tycoons and bigwig politicians - they have multiple "customers", namely, the public. The bureaucracy at all levels is supposed to follow the laws that are on the books. The Boomer managers chose not to follow the laws and to go after the regulators who wouldn't bend. As to whether they believed that was the right thing to do, it's possible; I don't know.

Here's a hypothetical situation where they might. Let's say a company is formed by some Boomers to recycle PCBs from old transformers, etc. The Boomers are incompetent, of course, and pretty soon there's a PCB contamination problem in the vicinity of the plant that is growing worse by the day. The Xer regulator notifies the plant that they are in violation and will need to correct the violation or shut down. The Boomer owner hires a Boomer lawyer who calls the Boomer regulatory agency manager and informs him that, overall, the recycler is doing a great service to the environment because otherwise the PCBs would end up in a landfill and eventually leach out decades hence. The Boomers all agree with that concept. The Heros and the Silents, on the other hand, would have fixed the leakage and the Xer can't figure out why the Boomers won't just go ahead and bring the plant into compliance.

This hypothetical situation reminds me of subprime; subprime is contained and derivatives minimize risk and all that idealistic nonsense.

[John]

Dear Higgie,

> Here's a hypothetical situation where they might. Let's say a
> company is formed by some Boomers to recycle PCBs from old
> transformers, etc. The Boomers are incompetent, of course, and
> pretty soon there's a PCB contamination problem in the vicinity of
> the plant that is growing worse by the day. The Xer regulator
> notifies the plant that they are in violation and will need to
> correct the violation or shut down. The Boomer owner hires a
> Boomer lawyer who calls the Boomer regulatory agency manager and
> informs him that, overall, the recycler is doing a great service
> to the environment because otherwise the PCBs would end up in a
> landfill and eventually leach out decades hence. The Boomers all
> agree with that concept. The Heros and the Silents, on the other
> hand, would have fixed the leakage and the Xer can't figure out
> why the Boomers won't just go ahead and bring the plant into
> compliance.

Once again, this scenario is discordant with the evidence I've seen.
The sentence "The Xer regulator notifies the plant that they are in
violation and will need to correct the violation or shut down" is
particularly jarring, because this is not what Xers do.

The obvious real situation that contrasts to your hypothetical is the
SEC and Bernie Madoff, where the Xers were repeatedly warned about
Madoff, but the Xers ignored the warnings. Xers simply don't do what
you say they do.

And once again, I have to repeat: There were thousands of criminal
referrals in the 1980s savings and loan crisis, when Boomers were
the regulators, but there have been no criminal referrals in the
current crisis, which is much bigger. This is a huge difference
in culture.

See the following for the discussion by William K Black, the
the senior regulator investigating the savings and loan
crisis of the 1980s:

** 23-Oct-10 News -- Foreclosure crisis will cost $10 trillion
** http://www.generationaldynamics.com/cgi ... 23#e101023

Incidentally, Black is a Boomer, but even if he were a Silent,
this enormous difference could not be explained by one man at the
top. This cultural difference is explained by the refusal of
Xers to blame other Xers for anything, which means that neither
Xers NOR Boomers get blamed.

John

[John]

Dear Tom,

> I agree w/ everything except that its a "self-selection
> process". And this is the subtle but extremely important point;
> the Boomers grossly neglected their duty as gatekeepers and
> selected the dishonest Xers. The Boomers thereby shaped the
> institutions they inherited from Silents and GIs into houses of
> fraud.

What you and I are saying is not very different. As I've said,
Boomers are incompetent managers and easily duped, but highly
idealistic. By "self-selection process," I mean that the
honest Xers didn't get hired because they didn't lie, while the
dishonest Xers lied and duped the Boomers, appealing to some
idealistic nonsense. The Boomers were incompetent managers and
incompetent gatekeepers, leading to the fraudulent institutions.

John

[Higgenbotham]

Dear Higgie,

> Here's a hypothetical situation where they might. Let's say a
> company is formed by some Boomers to recycle PCBs from old
> transformers, etc. The Boomers are incompetent, of course, and
> pretty soon there's a PCB contamination problem in the vicinity of
> the plant that is growing worse by the day. The Xer regulator
> notifies the plant that they are in violation and will need to
> correct the violation or shut down. The Boomer owner hires a
> Boomer lawyer who calls the Boomer regulatory agency manager and
> informs him that, overall, the recycler is doing a great service
> to the environment because otherwise the PCBs would end up in a
> landfill and eventually leach out decades hence. The Boomers all
> agree with that concept. The Heros and the Silents, on the other
> hand, would have fixed the leakage and the Xer can't figure out
> why the Boomers won't just go ahead and bring the plant into
> compliance.

Once again, this scenario is discordant with the evidence I've seen.
The sentence "The Xer regulator notifies the plant that they are in
violation and will need to correct the violation or shut down" is
particularly jarring, because this is not what Xers do.

Once the Boomer managers are notified that there is a problem and have the type of discussion I referred to, the Xer is typically overturned and severely punished, the case will sit in limbo and no action will be taken unless the media gets a hold of the story and there is an uproar. I've personally seen this happen a few times and have read about dozens of such cases, if not hundreds.

Here's a typical case I read about recently:

A RICO lawsuit by tax whistleblower Mike DeGuelle alleges that since 1997, S.C. Johnson & Son has taken advantage of audit errors, and filed fraudulent tax returns, underpaying its taxes by millions of dollars.[6] H. Fisk Johnson ordered an inquiry into the allegations, and told Tax.com that he learned "other details of the decisions they (the tax department) made that I didn't like. I didn't like what I heard." The lawsuit is currently pending at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, Case No. 10-2172, which on November 24, 2010, appointed counsel for DeGuelle and ordered rebriefing of the case.

Mike DeGuelle is 43. SC Johnson is the largest company in Wisconsin and its Boomer owners/heirs occupy 4 positions in the Forbes 400 list of the richest people in the world.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S._C._Johnson_%26_Son

One of those Boomer owners/heirs was recently arrested for "repeated sexual assault" of an underage girl.

RACINE, Wis. — A billionaire executive whose family has run SC Johnson for five generations was charged Thursday with having sexual contact with a now 15-year-old girl over the course of several years.

Samuel Curtis Johnson III, who goes by Curt, faces a count of repeated sexual assault of a child. The charge carries a maximum penalty of 40 years in prison and a $100,000 fine.

Johnson, 55, is the former chairman of Sturtevant-based Diversey Inc., a cleaning-products company that was spun off from SC Johnson in the late 1990s. Privately held SC Johnson makes household products including Pledge, Glade, Windex and Ziploc.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42259390/ns ... x-assault/

Good story here.

http://www.scfl.org/files/WhoDoesNotPay2.pdf

Another example:

The Wackenhut Corporation provided armed security services for many nuclear power plants. In September 2007, former employee Kerry Beal and Paul A. Kennedy videotaped fellow security guards at the Peach Bottom Nuclear Generating Station sleeping while on duty. Beal had previously tried to notify supervisors at Wackenhut and the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Wackenhut was fired from its role guarding Peach Bottom and nine other nuclear plants.[12]

Kerry Beal is 41. Note Beal is a former employee. If I remember this case correctly, it is a particularly sordid tale of Boomer management abuse.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wackenhut

Yet another Wackenhut case:

When eight current and former employees, supervisors and executives for Wackenhut Security, now called G4S, were arrested recently and charged with racketeering, one man felt justice.

"I felt vindicated, vindicated," said Marty Bair.

Bair was a senior supervisor for Wackenhut when he told top executives there that the company was dramatically overbilling Miami-Dade County for empty guard posts on transit systems.

They fired him.

"They did everything they could to try to destroy me, and prevent me from telling the truth," said Bair.

Marty Bair is 45.

http://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/Fire ... 34674.html

Wackenhut management are Boomers. Bair says he informed them.

http://investing.businessweek.com/resea ... pId=312981

Another:

Edmonds gained public attention following her firing from her position as a language specialist at the FBI's Washington Field Office in March, 2002, after she accused a colleague of covering up illicit activity involving foreign nationals, alleging serious acts of security breaches, cover-ups, and intentional blocking of intelligence which, she contended, presented a danger to the United States' security. Her later claims have gained her awards and fame as a whistleblower.[3]

Sibel Edmonds is 41. Another horrific tale of Boomer management abuse.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sibel_Edmonds

Most cases like these never see the light of day.

The reason these Xers have to go to such lengths (such as videotaping sleeping security guards in nuclear power plants) is because their Boomer managers, when presented with such information, refuse to do anything about it until they are forced to. When the Silents were in charge, they would fix the problems, order prosecutions, or do whatever was necessary to set things right.

See the following for the discussion by William K Black, the
the senior regulator investigating the savings and loan
crisis of the 1980s:

** 23-Oct-10 News -- Foreclosure crisis will cost $10 trillion
** http://www.generationaldynamics.com/cgi ... 23#e101023

Black also gives some amazing statistics about criminal convictions:

"And the problem is we have zero criminal referrals out of most of the regulatory agencies. In comparison in the savings and loan debacle again - maybe 1/40th of the size -- we had thousands of criminal referrals , we got over a thousand priority felony convictions of the elites - these are not the little tellers, the vice presidents -- these are the top people at the savings and loans.

The reason there are zero criminal referrals is because, while the honest Xers who haven't been driven out of the financial regulatory agencies will do the investigations and write them up, the Boomers will refuse to sign them. In my personal experience, there was ostensibly never quite enough information in a referral to satisy a Boomer decision maker.