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Dear AIG: I’m Not Going To Be Able To Keep Criticizing “Occupy Wall Street” For Destructive Class Warfare If You Act Like This.

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

Pelican Hill...where wealthy insurance executives can spend taxpayer funds like it was Monopoly money!

American International Group Inc. (AIG), the huge insurer—too big to fail!— that is now majority-owned by the U.S. after a 2008 bailout of $85 billion, has resumed its arrogant, irresponsible habit of living like sultans on the money of taxpayers, many of whom are getting kicked out of their homes and who can’t find jobs.

Back in October 0f 2008, the House Oversight Committee nearly had a collective stroke when it discovered that, just one week after the federal government bailed out AIG because it was too vital a part of the shaky world financial markets to let go belly-up as it richly deserved, company executives went on a wildly-expensive retreat to a luxury resort. The executives “spent nearly $500,000 on manicures, facials, pedicures, and massages,” among other things.  Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) was incredulous, and he wasn’t alone: Continue reading →

The Fireman, the Cheater, and Media Muddling

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Come on, Robert! It's less embarrssing than Joey's gonorrrhea poster!

One of the reasons I launched The Ethics Scoreboard and later Ethics Alarms was that I felt  the media did not recognize ethics stories and failed to cover them. Well, more ethics stories are finding their way into the news, but true to the warning “Be careful what you wish for,” the reports usually botch them, and get the ethics lessons wrong. The saga of Enzo and the “Barefoot Contessa” was a particularly nauseating example, but there have been others recently. For example… Continue reading →

A Missing Dollar, a Jackpot, and Seven Lousy Friends (UPDATED)

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Gordon Gekko was full of it. Greed isn’t good, and the Hacienda Hills Country Club lottery ticket affair proves it. It is also an example of when the legal resolution of a controversy is very complicated, but the ethical verdict is a cinch.

For nine years, 72 year-old Jeanette French was part of the group of retirement community residents and employees at the Villages’ Hacienda Hills Country Club that pooled money each week to buy Florida lottery tickets, each putting in a dollar. She didn’t make it to the Golf Shop where the group met one lottery day, but that French didn’t think that was a problem: the established practice was that another member of the group would put in a dollar for the missing member, who would pay him or her back the next day. The day that Jeannette had other commitments, her group bought what turned out to be the winning ticket, to the tune of $16 million in the Florida lottery.

Yippee! Jeanette’s seven good friends, however, now argue that she has no right to a share of the winnings, because nobody put in that dollar for her. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Ken Griffey, Jr.

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

The reports are that Hall of Fame-bound Seattle outfielder Ken Griffey, Jr. was passed over as a pinch-hitter in a recent Mariners game because he was asleep in the clubhouse. Other Mariner players leaked this embarrassment to the press; Griffey won’t discuss it, except to say that the reports are “not entirely accurate.” Others have noted that the outfielder is a serial napper, and has slept during games in the past. In other words, no big deal.

It is a big deal. Griffey gets paid $2,350,000 in 2010 to play baseball or be available to play baseball for approximately three hours a day for six months. If he’s napping during that three hours, he hasn’t fulfilled his obligation to be fully fit, awake and ready to play.

“But the baseball season is a grind!”

$2,350,000.

“It’s boring just sitting on the bench!”

$2,350,000.

“You don’t know what it’s like playing a professional sport!”

$2,350,000!

When a police officer, a fireman, a lawyer or another professional is unable to do his or her job because he is taking a nap, the response is usually a warning, or even dismissal. Homer Simpson sleeps on the job in his position at the nuclear energy plant, but 1) he’s a cartoon character and 2) he isn’t making $2,350,000.

There is a minimum level of diligence, loyalty and commitment employers are entitled to from those they employ, no matter what their salaries are. Sleeping on the job when one is making millions, however, adds significant theft to the mix. If Griffey wasn’t ill or hadn’t hadn’t had a recent run-in with a tsetse fly, he not only owes the Mariners an apology; he owes them about $14,000.

The A.I.G. Bonus Payments…Again

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Here we go again.

A.I.G. is paying out another 100 million in “retention pay,” also known as eye-popping bonuses, which is certain provoke another round of cursing from the public and posturing by politicians. The question is whether it is unethical to pay these bonuses, and you’re not going to like the answer. I don’t like it much myself.

It is no. Continue reading →

The Ethics of Voluntary Mortgage Default

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

Friend and reader Loren Platzman alerted me to the article, “Walk Away From Your Mortgage!” in the Sunday Times Magazine ( the magazine was, in fact, sitting unopened by my desk at the time. Some days, I just know that reading Randy Cohen’s “The Ethicist” column is going to ruin my weekend.) The thrust of the article, an installment in the “The Way We Live Now” series, is that American cultural tradition has reinforced the belief that there is something unethical and shameful about voluntarily letting the bank foreclose on a property when falling property values have placed the mortgage “under water,” meaning that the home is worth less than the amount still owed on it. Continue reading →