New Onion

Just so we’re clear. If you’re a hedge fund manager and you lie to people about the prospects of your funds then you get prosecuted. Link

Cioffi, 52, and Tannin, 46, were charged by federal prosecutors with misleading investors about two hedge funds whose collapse last year helped ignite the subprime-mortgage crisis. A companion Securities and Exchange Commission civil suit accuses Cioffi of redeeming $2 million from the funds while Tannin mocked as “silly” at least one investor who wanted to get out.

“No one should be surprised that people on Wall Street talk out of both sides of their mouths,” Peter Henning, a former U.S. Justice Department prosecutor who teaches at Wayne State University Law School in Detroit, said in an interview. “Wall Street is in sales, and no one trusts everything a salesman says.”

In the Bear Stearns case, federal prosecutors allege that Tannin, in an April 2007 e-mail to Cioffi, wrote that the “subprime market looks pretty damn ugly” and could be “toast.” The SEC said they gave monthly reports that “consistently understated” the funds’ exposure to subprime mortgages.

If the accusations are true, “it shows a callousness toward their own investors,” said Theodore Sonde, a former SEC enforcement attorney now at Patton Boggs LLP in Washington. “You have an obligation to be honest with your investors about what’s going on.”

That’s accountability.

There’s a quote somewhere that management is “Doing the right things well.”

We all know that governments are not good at doing the right things… but it’s always a shock to find out just how badly things can actually be done.

Staff are said to be angry with the increasingly dilapidated state of the building and no longer consider it safe.

The letter is believed to have complained that a proposed multi-million renovation of the 300-pupils school never materialised — and as a result it will shut in June.

Honestly, is this a joke? Or are we going to see a contractor suddenly step up and do the work at the last minute at great expense?

It’s so hard not to get completely cynical.

They may be able to employ the growing number who leave the public school system without the ability to survive in any of Bermuda’s other industries.

Of course, in a perfect world with a competent government capable of managing effective services then we would see high social mobility as students came out of public schools, into Bermuda college, and then onward and upward taking advantage of the many scholarships available… so that the proverbial son of a bricklayer could move up in the world to become a wealthy executive. Of course, since that’s not happening the way it should – and in many respects we have made substantial backward progress in the area of social mobility over the past 10 years, perhaps because the government believes in the talented tenth (and therefore the useless 90%), or is just plain corrupt and incompetent. The reasons are irrelevant. What matters is that the only answer to having failed an entire generation in public education is to create more low-paying, low-skill jobs, and hotels are the answer because we can’t put all the non-graduates to work in construction, drug distribution, and odd jobs forever as the industries are cyclical and risky – and next time there is a recession or competent management of Bermuda’s long-term growth then Bermuda will face massive structural unemployment… well, more than we already do anyway.

Remember that with on the order of 70% of males (by Larry Burchall’s reckoning) not graduating from public high school that means that there is essentially a generation of a segment of society who do not and will never have the skills necessary to make a living in any industry that requires the ability to read and do math. Even the most entry level of international business or service jobs require the ability to read, write reasonably well, and do basic maths, and most more senior positions require the ability to deal well with fractions, percentages, and use “there/their” correctly, never mind a fancy degree. Without these skills a person’s options are seriously limited and these hotels will provide jobs for those products of the failed public education system.

If we take government incompetence as a given then those of us in the reality based community have no choice but to support the building of new hotels.

Recently there have been a number of people in letters to the editor and on blogs saying that the current government can “run on their record”… their web page of their accomplishments is here.

I asked the posters on the Bermudasucks.com forum (yes, I deeply dislike the name and always will) for some help in creating a government scandal list for the past few years… Here’s what they came up with:

BHC – The big kahuna.
Premier sues the media to keep them quiet.
Limo Importation – Law changed to allow government insider to start a Limo business.
Hummer H3 commercial vehicle
Cedarbrige Mould
Education Statistics
Firing of Hotel Chef
Work Permit of Curtis Mcleod (construction boss v. George Scott)
Southlands Tunnel
Southlands planning approval
Hospital location
Discrimination against non-Bermudian spouses
Equality act
Col. Burch “House ****” comment
Long-line fishing
Berkley over-budget
“we had to deceive you”
Robert Jensen
RC’s profane e-mail
Mount Saint Monica (dump fire)
Calling squatters “criminals”
Faith Based Tourism
Tracking Chips for Vehicles
Emission Testing.. Buildings
Emission Testing… Contract
“settlement” with Pro-Active Construction
Club Med 1
Club Med 2
Club Med 3
Rebecca Middleton handling
Indigent Clinic and firing of Doctor for writing a letter to the press.
Kurron
Stem Cell Clinic
Cedar Beams
SDO’s
Removal of Stuart Hayward and Bermuda’s #1 Eco Farmer from the round table.
Voting from the bathroom (applies to both parties’ MPs). (Gay Rights Issue)
Independence (most notably the BIC report)
After closing the Clinic, the Brown one, signed up as an “approved Dr” then refused to take any patients.
Forcing GPS upon the taxis
Brown’s Relationship with Tina Poitevien , Mark Lay and MDL Investments.
Free Bus & Ferry Transportation (that never was!)
The $11 million spent on cricket
The amount spent on football
The police contracts never being settled
No cruise ships for Hamilton
Building a pier over an historic wreck
The “deal” they cut with the US government re the cost of cleaning up the Baselands [$11 mill towards the bridge when the estimated cleanup costs were $65 mill]
The apparent about face re moving the Southlands project to Morgans Point (and the bill that will stick the taxpayer with)
Pay to Pray
Pay to Play
US Passport
$ 1 million per month spent on PLP travel junkets abroad.
$25,000 to $30,000 to fly entertainers to Bermuda on a private jet for Brown’s love fest
$1 million to set up Govt TV channel
Abdallah Ahad
Racist dog attack on Gibbons
non-Charity (THE)
Alex Scott’s email to Tony Brannon
$82,000 spent on security for Brown’s private residence.
$1,500,000+ for renovations at Clifton, and then overcharging for rent so it remains unoccupied.
“Political eunuch”
China tourist office
Plantation questions
Refusing to answer cost questions
Donation to a US congressman even though EB shouldn’t be an American anymore.
Gay cruise saga
Reducing funding for the Salvation Army.
Firing developers who were ready to go on Club Med.
Health Minister’s notes on need to obfuscate “embarrassing” report.
Bermuda Cement
BHC 2.0

Readers – please help me remove the inaccurate ones and add any others – I have done some of this on my own.

If I had more time I’d like to go through and add up the cost of these various mistakes to the taxpayer – it would probably run into the thousands of dollars per person in Bermuda.

…to see things from the government’s point of view…

…unethical but not illegal is ok…
…the banks will call mortgages of people who speak out against the UBP… BMA be damned!
…the UBP are all white or controlled by whites…
…the BHC leakers were white UBP supporters…
…tourism is in great shape…
…government is being efficiently run…
…the BHC allegations were properly and fully investigated…
…all responsible for the 8 million write-down have been appropriately punished…
…Dame Louis Brown Evans thought Ewart Brown was a good guy…
…the Premier needs heavy personal protection (but celebrities and billionaires only need a nanny or a Labrador)…
…hiding the truth at taxpayer expense is good for the voting public…
…the best way to destroy racism is to hate white people…
…libel suits are not enough to protect the innocent…
…housing price increases are the product of good affordable housing policy…
…the best way to prevent over-development is to build more…
…helping working Bermudians means importing labour from the third world…
…Bermudians are capable of doing jobs requiring 30 years experience after only 6 years…
…that we should reserve Bermuda for Bermudians married to Bermudians, unless it’s related to a hotel development…
…it’s the tennant’s fault when they move out…

What else?

Quick link… because I’m super-busy.

I disagree somewhat with The Limey when he says

Even when there are no immediate job losses in Bermuda as a result of these moves (as was the case with Butterfield Bank), there’s still an opportunity cost: any new positions that these companies create will be in the new location, not here. That’s no problem for Bermudians willing to relocate, but it doesn’t help those who want to stay here.

The departure has already started. That’s not scaremongering. That’s a fact. Even if the reasons are sometimes economic rather than political, the effect on Bermuda is the same.

He’s mostly right – I’m Bermudian and have been approached about working in a foreign office of a firm that is moving their operations overseas. There is some brain drain happening, but in general outsourcing to low-cost jurisdictions is not in and of itself a bad thing – indeed, London and New York seem to do quite well even though the bulk of many of their firm’s employees are in other lower-cost locations. In addition, for us in Bermuda it’s very much in the interests of the quality of life in the future to limit population growth on this island.

However, the important key are the reasons for population stability – in the end it will come down to cost. Companies will not come here when it’s more expensive to do business in Bermuda than in other places. It’s certainly in our best interests to maximise costs – indeed, at the moment Bermuda is a huge bargain compared to the United Kingdom.

What we need to do is make sure that Bermuda is expensive for the right reasons:
- People are very highly paid.
- Prime office space is very expensive. (good if it’s owned by Bermudians)
- It’s necessary to attract locals from other local companies in order to grow.
- It’s only possible to import people at very high salaries.
- There is a fantastic education & social system.

It’s vitally important that Bermuda isn’t expensive for the wrong reasons:
- Government is arbitrary.
- Government is inefficient.
- Legislation is not competitive.
- Foreign staff are not welcome.
- Compliance with quotas is burdensome.
- Immigration is slow and arbitrary.
- Top calibre people don’t want to work in Bermuda.
- Government is corrupt.

So… Dr. Brown is friends with one of the men behind BET and has included him in his group of economic advisers.

Here’s what I think is the most appropriate response I’ve ever seen to BET culture and what it has done to traditional Bermudian values.

NOT SAFE FOR WORK!!!! (but turn your speakers up)

The elephant in the room about the whole education question, and the achievement gap between blacks and whites is culture.

I was quite fortunate (?) to experience a little bit of both the public and private education systems For most of my early school life I attended private schools here in Bermuda. At age 11 I went to the then public Warwick Academy. What I found there was – shall we say – a shock. At the time Warwick Academy was the government school for “smart kids” with an entrance exam and a chip on the shoulder. The culture at Warwick Academy was that it was bad to be smart and students seemed to actively avoid doing well in school to avoid peer ridicule…

Readers, how do you think students are supposed to succeed in life (which demands that we enjoy our work enough to become very very good at it) when our education system was (and probably still is) teaching people the habits of mediocrity?

One of my friends is a world-class athlete any had this to say about a training partner: “It’s not that he likes kicking your ass. It’s that he likes doing what it takes to kick your ass.” So much of our success in life is not what we learn in school, or least not what we learn in class, but rather the long-term habits that a truly excellent upbringing can provide.

On Thursday I joined a number of other youngish Bermudians in a lecture hall at Bermuda College to see Stedman Graham speak… the gazette reporter got better quotes than I did (since I’m sure her short hand is better than mine).

Here are my notes, apologies in advance for not putting this behind a cut… and apologies also for any grammatical or other errors, my secretary was busy not existing so I had to transcribe for myself.

Sweep streets like Michaelangelo painted pictures

Here lived a great sweet sweeper – if you can’t be a pine on the top of the hill then be a scrub in the valley then be the best scrub you can be.

Can’t be a highway, just be a trail.

Be the best of whatever you are. So the question of today is how to become the best of what you area

You first have to be free – what is freedom. We talk about it all the time, but how much? Sweet land of liberty and the pilgrims. Let freedom ring
People talk about it, but the question is how we are free?

regular week – wake up, go to work, come home, watch tv, wash, rinse, repeat, each day. Work, etc.
If you do the same thing yesterday as you do today and what you will do tomorrow then you will have done nothing. Doing it for 30 years with the same schedule. I have no more in the end than I had in the beginning
The missing piece is that most people forget to think.
You’re young, you don’t know who you are – they education system teaches you to remember, regurgitate, get a grade. The question is how can we grow if we don’t think? We may get older but we may not grow mentally because we never get a chance to engage the brain.

So the world defines you buy your house, your care, your family, your money, your job, your religion, your race.

You are put into a box ad are defined by a box. Whoever defines you will always define you as less than them. You can never turn anyone else the potential to define your potential as a human being

How do you take your power back?
How do you own your own self – your own mind
If you don’t own your mind then you are still a slave
A slave follows everyone else, and is waiting for everyone else to tell them what to do .
Followers are looking for leaders, and leaders are not looking for followers – they are looking for other leaders.
Can you be authentic in yourself – can you keep it real? If you can’t engage the world with your mind then you are going through the motions every day doing nothing

Who are you? If you don’t get this then you will be average
There is a process, it’s not a product of wanting to be successful, or to be someone, or because you wen to Wharton or Harvard, or because someone special because your parents have a lot of money, it happens because someone teaches you how. If you don’t get it then you’ll do fine, but you will always be average. You’ll get 2 weeks vacation, but you will still be a slave to the world.

How do you get out of that box? How do you break the cycle? How do you get the program? Break what you have learned in the house.

What do your parent s have to do with you? Nothing.

If you don’t know that the world has unlimited wealth and resources, but we always move in our own small circles because of our fears. The challenge is to change the way we feel and thing about ourselves every single day. Can I be better today than I was yesterday? How do I grow beyond my current circumstances.

If I get stuck in myself then I am going to be the same. The idea of moving beyond yourself and beyond your history and moving into your imagination and moving into the 21st century.

Put your clothes on, an act like you are somebody and don’t have a clue of your possibilities as a human being. When you understand this freedom stuff then that’s where the power is. It’s being the same person when you’re talking to a homeless person or the president of the United States. You know who you are and can be the same personal the time. You never have to apologize for who you are because you just exist. And you are good enough just like you are. Nobody else controls your mind and who you are. You can control your own life and your own destiny.

Knowledge is power.

Worked in the prison system for 5 years, but would have been a prisoner himself if he hadn’t been a basketball player.

All of us have defining moments. His was when he was 13 or 14. there was one store in his town and they used to play pinball and shoot pool and one Saturday he was there an d his buddies. Mr. TA owned the store and he went up to him and told the owner that he was going to college. Mr. TA said, you’re not going to college – your family is too stupid and you’re too dumb. Get hurt and you get mad. So he got mad an d then showed Mr. TA and went to college and got his degree to show Mr. TA that he is somebody. Had to show him that he was somebody. Got his degree, not sure if he learned anything. Then said “I’m not finished with Mr. TA so he went back and got this master’s degree and moved to Chicago and met a woman. Named Oprah, who has a talk show. Who reaches 20 million every day. Very hard thing to be in a relationship with a woman who is very powerful . Needs to prove his value outside that box of that relationship

Freedom is on the inside. People are looking for the freedom in the outside. They are being defined by external things. Watching TV that says “this is who you are”. realized that this i show it works – drew diagram, of him in the centre. We need to say world, we stop working for you….
make the world work for us.

All you have to do is Build the foundation and work on that every single day and only think that you are on the outside. All the inside will come if you work on the foundation of who you are and build it every day. To a 14 year old: You have 80 years to work on yourself every day. Continuous quality improvement.

Bill gates started at age 7 and has been working on improving the process his whole life. He rows to improve every day . If you don’t grow then you will stay the same so you need to change your thinking . This is what makes us all equal. Everyone has 24 hours in a day to do everything. Same 24 hours that bill gates has.. The question is what do you do with your 24 hours? What do people do with their 24 hours.. Some people watch TV.

Things do not happen, things are made to happen – JFK

Control your own destiny. Success means different thinks to different people. Money is a tool.

You can make lots of money easily. Progressive with your vision in what you are doing always trying support parents to be the best that they can be.
What will bring you joy? What makes you feel good about yourself. Check your feelings, how do you feel about the world and your work. When you are able to develop the strength to enhance your feelings so you feel good every single day. Have a good day, 7 days, good week 4 weeks, good month 12 good months, then you have had a good year, 70 good years and you have had a good life. What are your habits and to they make you feel good about yourself.. They are long-term success, they work toward the back end and then work on the back end to get the things on the front end. He has worked all these years to be able to come to Bermuda and play golf all day and have a nice dinner buffet. He gets a chance to stay at Cambridge Beaches. Want it on the back end, work toward something.. Get to be 70 or 80 and you don’t want to have to go back to work and start all over because you didn’t understand front and back end. Success is living a fully engaged life in which all of your gifts and talents are developed and put to their highest uses.
101 is just out of the woods, will cuss, will steal, will lie, will cheat, want everything right now. 102 103 104 – they are like understanding how it works. 105s are running the world. What is possible for you?

Stages of life.

If you cannot read, then you will fail. If you don’t graduate from high school then you will make minimum wage. I f you don’t have those stages then your life is bad. If you miss anyone then you are in a tough place.

Staying school so you can create value so you can take care of yourself
The nine step success, process is a systematic approach to organizing and achieving life goals and ambitions. It’s the how.

Nobody taught me how to think.

Break down a step by step process for how things work. See a lot of people with dead eyes. They are not in the game. See a lot of people who have no goals and no aspirations. They are walking around and they think that they are tough. They can swing to the music. People dance to the music, but when do they stop dancing. There’s more to life than dancing.

Nine steps if implemented consistently then I will build personal and career effectiveness, Help build internal capacity, people respond to value. Create value. Can you add value? If you can then you can create value. How much value can you create. The value you give yourself is directly related to the value that other people give you. Note to self: Not backed up by research. At all. People see you as you see yourself. Have to move our eyes from walking looking down to walking like you’re looking up.

You are a brand and you are the one that creates that value by how you build value for yourself. The world picks you out and says you are not like everyone else. 88 percent are looking for thinkers and leaders. Looking for smart talented people who you don’t have to supervise every single day because you are losing money if you are supervising. Are you hungry, do you want it. We get comfortable and don’t get happy. Then we do nothing and lose huger because we are fat dumb and happy. Never get comfortable. We want the whole world, not just Bermuda.

You teach people how to treat you, much of it is from style or class.

In Bermuda we are taught class. The world relates to the law of the jungle and only the strong survive. How do you create strength in your life. Men and boys programs who have los t their strength . When you are a lion and you lose your strength then you can’t survive in the jungle and as soon as people see your weakness they exploit it. They leave the strong alone,

1. Know yourself. Check your ID

Love is the most powerful. Opposite is hate, and you have o power when negative because that is weakness.

Stay on the positive side and do what is right. Then powerful layers and accumulation of things that are good. If you do not get the first step then you will be a follower and you will never be above average.

What are your strengths?
What are your weaknesses? MJ going to basketball.
What are your patterns of behaviour?
- What are your passions?
- What do you love to do?
- How do I connect the dots if you are not altering your patterns.
Many people are stuck doing the same thing.

Past, present, and future – sometimes the biggest obstacles to success are those that we unconsciously put in our own paths.
- Past hurts and negative attitudes hold you back
- Bring the good things from your past forward
- Learn from the bad things and let them go.
The future is clear and is what we are clear. Our present is what we have right now. If every time then we can taint the present and future if we bring our past forward.
The key is to disconnect yourself from your history. Your past can hold you captive, abuse, bad family situation, your friends, etc. Sometimes you need to disconnect from your friends and your circumstances who are trying to pull you down and put you in that box. When you try and be a leader people will pull you down. Who will try and take you out first. What space can you get in that is going to help you crate opportunity, Create fertile ground in which you can grow. If you are in an environment where you can’t grow then you need to get out.

I can be my possibilities, I don’t have to be my parents. I had to disconnect myself from my parent’s thinking. They did the best they could. He had to remove himself from that thinking and it’s how you think that will determine your thinking and your social standard.

Step 2 create your vision. Your life’s destination. Your outlook on life. Where you are going and what you want to get. Vision is your dreams and your hope.

Most people are in the present and the past and not vision in the future. Create opportunities based on what you see that is possible and build backward. Figuring what is possible from e and organizing the things that he can do every day. What do you care about, who do you I want to become, what’s my vision for myself. What is going to give me value. He plays golf. Golf is his culture around golf and he organized how he would actualize his passion. – Golf instructor, – Information around golf – equipment – relationships – travel with golf
– look on the internet. real estate around golf. Golf is one thing that allows him to perfect, build, and enjoy. Grow your game if you did this with everything you love then 24 hours to work it. His day. How can he take that day and make it work for him. when he goes to bed the day is over. Vision is moving beyond your bills. Why are you struggling with money?… because you have no vision of what is possible. Builds hundreds of relationships and can pick u the phone. Best way to predict your future is to create it.

Goals
Realistic, meaningful, well-defined.
personal business plan. Need to research and become clear how ou are going to do it.

Step 3 – develop your travel plan.

Planning saves time. Plan – look at the plan. Get input when it’s on paper, creates focus.

Personal branding.
Build your own life brand. – book by Stedman.

Note to self; create pie chart of how to spend your day.

Branding is the image created in the minds of people when they see or hear a particular name, product, or logo.

Strong brands offer long term promises and performance. They demonstrate a strong commitment to quality and value.