Showing posts with label Barack Obama. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Barack Obama. Show all posts

Monday, December 03, 2012

ECONOMIC CRISIS: CEOS

US CEOs face uncertain times, & it's not just their companies that worry them

Tumultuous economic conditions in US and across the globe (including Japan, Italy & Germany) have forced leaders to face tough questions on their companies. More alarmingly, there are questions that also relate to themselves that need answers today. Do they really deserve to be the chieftains of the drivers of world economy? And most importantly, do they deserve humongous compensations for ruining, oops, running their companies?

There is another hammer coming their way after Sarbanes Oxley. The $700 billion federal bailout recently passed by the US Senate put light on executive pays various company heads were receiving. And responding to the protests and angst of investors and tax payers, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson was forced to attach the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act 2008, to the bailout plan, which puts limits on the compensations that company heads have been getting for all this while. And now the top-honchos better watch out, for if they don’t perform, their compensations can definitely fall down. Add to this the backing and support from President-elect Barack Obama on the ‘Say-on-pay’ bill; top American corporate leaders have all the reasons to get jittery.

Let''s take the case of Citigroup. Vikram Pandit recently exploded by announcing a lay-off of 52,000 employees. Did Pandit have no other option in hand while dealing with the issue? Bart Narter, Senior VP, Banking Group, Celent told B&E, “Citi, faced with growing losses and declining confidence in the future of the bank, had few choices: take money from the government, shrink, cut dividends, cut heads, et al; their answer was all of the above.” Narter goes on to add, “(At the back of the economic downturn), compensation will go down at the top level and everywhere else too. It will be more closely tied to performance. Also stock options in a down market have little value.” Pundit, who currently draws a compensation of $250,000 along with other long term compensation of $323,813 (Business Week), is now facing the wrath of stake holders (see related story on Page 36). The question being asked is, "What is the point in getting such a hefty package if you cannot lead a company ably?"

Another perfect example of a leader who brought his company to the docks is Jerry Yang of Yahoo! (ironically also one of the founders). After cruelly crumbling the hopes of the company by failing to seal a deal with both Google and Microsoft, Yang, ''fazed'' by criticism, decided to step down. And during his reign at the online major, he drew a total compensation of $688,242 (Forbes). Such is the condition of Yahoo! that now that the Yang has quit the company, the board at Yahoo! will again go back to Microsoft, who will now lay its own terms and conditions.


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri

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Monday, October 15, 2012

Can Obama ‘barrack’ racism?

Believe it or not, the world will witness the resurgence of a new era of racism than the end of it...

Obama’s win in the US Presidential election and his swearing in as the first African-American President was predicted to be a case study on the beginning of a new era But perhaps history doesn’t want it to happen that way. And thus even before the euphoria over his historic swearing in has settled down, the dark side of the American racism has started raising its dirty head. And for some it was not absolutely unexpected either. And the more unfortunate thing is that even Obama’s charisma and his incredible campaign for nearly one and a half years could not bridge much of the deep divide that run deep between the Whites and the Blacks of the US.

President elect Barack Obama himself was skeptical about it. His confession at a civil rights group’s convention stating – ‘our work is not over, mere electing me President doesn’t mean our work is over, we got more work to do’ to the NAACP bears testimony to it. In fact, the ugly aspect of racism was blatantly evident in the presidential election result itself. The voting pattern between two presidential candidates- John McCain and Barack Obama was biased and discriminatory. A closer scrutiny at the voting pattern reveals that McCain won greater support in white dominated counties of states like Arkansas, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Northern Texas. For example, about 80% of the voters in Arkansas are Whites and 70% of them unanimously voted for McCain. The same was witnessed in case of Obama who equally gained greater support from Blacks and minority groups. Research reveals that 67% of Latinos and 62% of Asian voters voted in favour of Obama. It wasn’t a surprise that 88-95% of Black voters who comprise 13% of total the US population unhesitatingly supported him. Well, even the most die hard optimist who would love to find a silver lining in it would accept rather grudgingly that if this does not exemplify racism then nothing else perhaps does. However, moving further, what was a little more horrifying than this was the fissures among the Democrat leaders. Reports state that when Obama was to take oath, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was busy convincing Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich and other Democract leaders to replace Obama’s vacancy at the Senate by any of the two White women (Veteran Affairs Chief Tammy Duckworth or Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan) and rejecting the three potential Black candidates namely Jesse Jackson, Jr. Danny Davis and Emil Jones.


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.
 
IIPM : The B-School with a Human Face


 
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Tuesday, August 14, 2012

NATURAL DISASTER: IMPACT ON POLITICS

Natural disasters interestingly have created huge political legacies (in some cases, destroyed them); an easy read on why some politicians perhaps desperately wait for a natural disaster to come back to power

His disaster reaction timing made him win the forthcoming polls too, despite his near to worse track record (He was overthrown a year later by military, but his party again won the elections in the post-coup elections). The tsunami also led to the concept of Wave Diplomacy in Indonesia. The tsunami reduced the city of Aceh, in the island of Sumatra, to ruins. Historically, Aceh had been at war with the government for almost 29 years, but thanks to the tsunami, the Indonesian government and the separatist groups cracked an unexpected peace agreement. Separatist rebel groups gave up their demand for independence as they didn’t want any destruction.

Even Peru’s quake came as a silver lining for the President-in-term, Alan Garcia. A devastating 8.0 magnitude earthquake struck Peru’s central coast on August 15, 2007, just a year after Garcia was elected as the president. The president spent four straight nights sleeping by candlelight in Pisco, the most affected region. He moved to an air force base in the vicinity of the quake’s epicentre, and had all his cabinet meetings there itself. This act of his paid him well instantly as his approval ratings skyrocketed like never before. Garcia’s approval ratings, which had dropped from 63% to 35% by the end of his first year in office, post his quake efforts reached a resounding 76%.

However, some – it’s quite evident – don’t learn. Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in August 2005. Katrina almost destroyed the whole of New Orleans. George Bush, who had a golden opportunity to redeem his Iraq misadventures and his administration’s WMD lies, flopped without recourse. Not only was he unable to provide an immediate and effective response to the affected zones, his administration failed in various areas of post disaster work too. In January 2005, while Bush’s approval ratings among Republicans was 91%, it fell to 78% right after Katrina. And overall, across America, Bush’s ratings collapsed to 41% in October 2005 and a worse 38% in November 2005. Bush’s dismal ratings, for information, never recovered throughout his term – that is how long lasting the impact of one mismanaged disaster can be. But a Black man, it seems, is leading the learning curve pretty well.

The recent Haiti earthquake gave the US president Barack Obama a fantastic opportunity to shore up his crashing ratings. Obama had earlier implemented an extremely strict policy of banning immigration from Haiti and had called for deporting back all such immigrants. To start with, he has temporarily cancelled this deportation program (Around 60% of Haiti’s budget depends on foreign aid and thus they need the remittances of those 30,000 people who work in the US). Secondly, Obama has pledged $100 million and many US troops for post quake relief efforts. Obama’s approval ratings have mystically started improving as if on cue, from 46% before the quake to 50% (CBS News Poll).

Evidently, for politicians who understand the correlation coefficients well, natural disasters are boom times to build on popularity, but only through a committed and sincere focus on altruistic development. During such times, words matter, actions most. It’s a miserable irony that politicians have never understand that even poverty is a kind of natural disaster resulting in hunger, illnesses and millions of deaths globally.


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