Lie More, as a Business Model

I used to buy into the MBA mentality.<p>Now I really think MBA / todays managerial wisdom is slowly destroying the world. The business climate in most corporations is plain awful and most people don't even realize because they don't know what a healthy business environment looks like.<p>It seems that these days that as long as your numbers on your spreadsheet match up, it doesn't matter how you got them to match just as long as they match up somehow. Lying is just one of the many unethical techniques that are now common tools to deliver shareholders "value".

Don't worry, in the "long run" the laissez-faire approach to corporate regulation will "end up" minimizing malfeasance and maximizing freedom. Liberty just needs more time. Like, say, another year. Two, max.

The title of the linked piece is "Lie More, as a Business Model", and serves just fine as a headline for Hacker News. Not sure why the headline was turned into a linkbait question instead.

NPR's Planet Money has devoted a 20min episode to explain the LIBOR manipulation - worth a listen if you want to brush up on your interbank financial knowledge. <a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/07/03/156222428/episode-384-the-little-lie-that-rocked-the-banks" rel="nofollow">http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/07/03/156222428/episode-...</a>

What is probably unsurprising, but should have been expected, is that banks and major business interests got seriously upset when they found that they were <i>lying to each other</i>.<p>Clearly the earlier financial upsets, which were caused by them lying to the public, were not <i>really</i> their fault.

Hasn't it always been a fairly well established business model? If anything the success of this model means we're seeing it more and more in ever more gigantic failures. Whereas before it seemed confined to snake oil salesmen and politics...

Google "municipal bond price fixing" for another big ripoff the banks have been running...

<i>"... Today’s banks represent the incarnation of profit-seeking behavior taken to its logical limits, in which the only question asked by senior staff is not what is their duty or their responsibility, but what can they get away with. ..."</i> Martin Wolf, FT.<p>No, as long as the money kept rolling in, a blind eye was turned to the kind of behaviour described. Hard times has changed what is acceptable practice.

Lying is a business model for too many businesses; I'm reminded of Go Daddy's wholly-owned subsidiary, Standard Tactics, and how the latter would register expired domains, while Go Daddy would volunteer to "negotiate" with itself (see the whole account here: <a href="http://domainnamewire.com/2008/12/03/standard-tactics-llc-how-godaddy-profits-from-expired-domains/" rel="nofollow">http://domainnamewire.com/2008/12/03/standard-tactics-llc-ho...</a> ).<p>It's very hard to fight this sort of thing, as an individual, much like it's hard to avoid Barclay's (or its larger competitors, like Bank of America or Chase).

The press is the watchdog of things like this.<p>Unfortunately the press has been gutted and all the old white men with years and years of experience have left being replaced by people like Catherine Rampell (attractive, young, and only 5 years out of Princeton).<p>This is not a rant against woman (I've seen this pattern with both young men and young woman) and it's not a rant against young people (there are some areas where you want a young person personally I don't feel that economics (while not brain surgery) is one of them).<p><a href="http://www.linkedin.com/in/catherinerampell" rel="nofollow">http://www.linkedin.com/in/catherinerampell</a><p><a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/r/catherine_rampell/index.html" rel="nofollow">http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/r...</a><p>Here is Catherine on TV:<p><a href="http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/300818-6" rel="nofollow">http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/300818-6</a><p>Most interesting is that she actually founded the economics blog 1 year out of Princeton.<p>Edit: Not to mention the money to keep an eye (and hire experienced people) is also not there anymore, not supported by legacy advertising monopoly.

I've been searching for a business co-founder for a while, and this is one of the things that turn me off about some business people. They seem to believe that a business is built with Hype and not a real product. Sure, that is how you might get some funding, but its not how you build a sustainable business.

This is not new. Fabrication was one of the factors leading to famine during the great leap forward. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution#Great_Leap_Forward" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution#Great_Leap...</a>

hasn't lying has always been a business model?

There's a better euphonic marketing jargon for "lying". It's called "marketing" :)

"This way to the Egress =&#62; "

BECOMING a business model?<p>The liars tend to win, because they make the superior claims. And for whatever reason, the customers can't give up on the idea that maybe this ONE outrageous promise, this ONE time, is actually for real.<p>It's like playing the lottery: Statistically you're better off running outside and screaming "THROW MONEY AT ME". But people still play.

You mean officially ?

For large banks, it has been for a while. #justsayin

Obviously the author of this article is a socialist... The financial industry is driving innovation by applying the principles of capitalism.<p>The only reason the bankers are lying is that government meddling is making their capitalistic process illegal. Of you want bankers to be 100% truthful, don't tie their hands behind their backs with quaint concepts like usury, proper underwriting of loans, etc.