Although I am not Catholic, fish on Friday is not a bad thing to serve. In the South, all of the “meat and three” places serve fried fish as one of their main entrees. Of course, we like to fry every thing here, as it makes our sweet tea taste better.
Without any particular order, here are a few odds and ends to digest with your fish and chips.
John Stumpf, the CEO of Wells Fargo was forced to resign yesterday, effective immediately, after it was revealed their cross-selling culture led to employees setting up bogus bank accounts to meet extremely high sales goals. This fraud abuse was reported by more than a few employees over many years, but their complaints were ignored. These are not process improvement suggestions, these are “we are doing fraudulent things” red flags. By ignoring these complaints, Stumpf earned the right to be fired. A company takes on the personality of its leader. Apparently, his personality was to get me numbers irrespective of how.
I don’t know if Americans are paying attention to the Brexit train wreck that is occurring in the UK. The UK wants to negotiate a soft settlement, but the EU wants them to get the hell out. In an unheard of move, Japan released an open letter, asking for the Brits to move gingerly or not at all, as Japanese companies employ about 146,000 people in Great Britain and will move their EU headquarters from there to the main continent, if needed. The Brexit move was sold on false information, but one thing that was not discussed enough is all the business done in the UK because of the EU. As many smarter than me said a few months ago, if the UK leaves, it will be harming its economic growth for years and may result in Scotland and Northern Ireland electing to leave the UK and remain in the EU. It is not ironic that Ireland is seeing an uptick in Brits who are seeking citizenship and passports there, as reported by The Guardian.
Americans are making that same mistake as we talk about trade, as we have a significant number of major foreign employers who employ many Americans. Trade agreements are generally good for the global economies, but as they are evaluated, we must evaluate all aspects, including jobs created here because of them. The biggest culprit of manufacturing jobs declining is technology and it will only get worse. Training for new jobs is paramount, but job loss due to technology will become so significant, at some point, companies needs to evaluate whether it is better to have humans employed rather than robots. At the end of the day, people need money to buy things, so are you lessening your own market, if no one can afford your products?
Samsung is in deep do-do. Just before the Christmas and holiday seasons start, they released a product that catches fire when plugged in. And, when they realized their predicament, traded phones with their customers and those caught fire as well. Apparently, the smaller version of the new Samsung Galaxy 7 does not catch fire, but many will choose not to take that risk and buy an Apple I-phone or another product. It is bad enough that pilots are telling passengers to not turn on those Samsung phones when taxiing. Between the lawsuits and sales impact, this will be the gift that keeps on giving for several years.
Well, that is enough non-election news for now. Have a great weekend.
musingsofanoldfart 