Take the Money and Run

Do you know this guy? Is he working in your best interest?

I use to work for a guy like this – a guy, who consciously thought only about himself 24/7. If you look in the dictionary under the word narcissism, I’m sure you’d find his name. Turning a small, west Texas savings and loan into a $1.4 billion financial institution, he gave himself authorization to treat it as though it were his own personal piggy bank. Of course this type of thing doesn’t go on for long because every selfish, crafted scheme eventually comes apart at the seams.  He couldn’t have cared less about the people who worked for him, those in Vernon or Dallas; he played with and put at stake the lives and careers of them all. Did he have help? Sure, but some knew and some didn’t know they were being used in a smoke and mirror charade ultimately resulting in seven top executives being sued for $350,000,000 by the Federal Savings and Loan insurance Corporation.  Oh, and don’t forget the criminal charges.

Did you play pin the tail on the donkey at birthday parties when you were a kid? You could probably do the same with the piggy in the picture, pinning the piggy on people or companies that you read about in the newspapers or hear about in the evening news every day.  When does this end? When does this go away? Sad to say ….. probably never.  Why?  Because greed is endemic, not just in our society or the other societies that blanket the world as we know it, and more than likely traceable to the beginning of mankind.  But we would need an anthropologist for that. Wait! While we have one, we could use the help in digging out of our daily lives the ever present headlines and newscasts about theft, fraud etc. that leave us with a perpetual stain on our existence.

Whatever happened to having a conscience? Where have all the values gone, long time passing? Where did “doing the right thing” drift off to, like an unread message in a bottle bobbing along the waves? Even though we shake our heads in disgust and turn away from problems that hopefully, don’t affect us directly, we still have a responsibility to teach those who have a lack of understanding about what makes living life so important. It is completely possible to have an entire generation coming along that do not see the relevance in all of this. We think that because we have led by example, by good examples, that those growing up, having the opportunity to view our good deeds haven’t quite defined for themselves what is right and what is wrong.

John Gordon Smith Ethics Speaker