Pondering

This is what religious freedom looks like

(cross-posted from my other blog, Freedom is Moral.)

Yesterday one-third of the people on the planet celebrated the most holy day of their faith – Easter.

Yesterday was just another Sunday for two-thirds of the people on the planet.

As I understand it, tomorrow marks the last day of Passover, a high point of the Jewish faith.  Passover celebrates the exodus from slavery as Moses led the people of Israel toward the promised land. For those reading this blog who are Jews, I sincerely hope you have a wonderful and blessed time of celebration.

For everyone else, I sincerely hope you had a relaxing weekend, maybe got to sleep in late. I’m quite serious. I hope you had a nice, fun, refreshing weekend.

Here’s what religious freedom looks like:

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Jim Ulvog

Gaining a new perspective hurts

Two new perspectives that hurt my brain and heart….

In the last two years I’ve learned of the occasional harm caused by some of the things we do while trying to help others. See my posts on unintended consequences.

I know this new way of seeing outcomes is sinking deep into my brain by looking at my immediate sadness upon reading two articles at Africa is a Country a few weeks ago. After letting the articles sit for a while, it is time to discuss them. First, swimsuits…

Swimsuits

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Jim Ulvog

Are people too nice in the nonprofit sector?

That’s the question in Caroline Preston’s article at The Chronicle of Philanthropy – Some Nonprofit Leaders Ask: Is Philanthropy Killing Itself with Kindness?

The answer in over 1,500 words: check out Ms. Preston’s article.

The answer in six words: Do you really need to ask?

The answer in one word: Yes

A one paragraph explanation from the article:

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Jim Ulvog

3 posts on implications of technology change

Here are three posts from my other blog, Outrun Change, looking at some implications of the rapid technology change taking place around us.

New technology is very cool, yet we need to ponder the implications:

Jim Ulvog

Unintended consequences: After watching all the damage caused by development aid, Kenyan economist says “please just stop.”

James Shikwati is the Director of Inter Region Economic Network. He is an economist from Kenya.

In 2005, he gave an interview to Spiegel, which was titled “For God’s Sake, Please Stop the Aid!”

A bit of research revealed this long list of articles he has written.  There is far more detail in those articles than in the one interview. I will summarize a few of the ideas in the interview. Over time, I’ll try to read more of the articles he has written and comment on them.

Development aid damages the local economy

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Jim Ulvog

5 warnings on how technology can trap you

There is danger in letting any vendor have too much control over your life. That warning applies doubly so to software and double again for social media.

I have five different ways to tell this story. 

A simple change in rules or pricing can devastate you.

That big ol’ company can dump a software that doesn’t have enough customers for them to bother with but is mission critical to your operations. 

If some of those little things happen, you will suffer.

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Jim Ulvog

HSBC is too big to indict for flagrant money laundering, so they get a heavy speeding ticket

HSBC has agreed to pay a fine of $1.9B (yes, billion) for their systemic violations of U.S. money laundering laws.

Tim Fernholz at Quartz calculates that “HSBC’s record $1.9 billion money-laundering fine is the bank equivalent of a stiff speeding ticket”.

The $1.9B is about 2% of their net income last year. He calculates that for an average New Yorker, that would be about $1,105. In N.Y., that’s the fine if you were going more than 31 mph above the speed limit on a third-time offense with previous points on your record.

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Jim Ulvog

“A bad quarter” versus “I could go to jail” – Is it time to indict a few bankers for money laundering?

Reuters reports “Exclusive: HSBC might pay $1.8 billion money laundering fine – sources”.  That’s up from the $1.5B they previously announced as a reserve.

The article reports of leaks that a settlement could include a deferred prosecution agreement with the huge fine.  It then discusses the difficulty prosecutors are having in deciding whether to pursue the fine, which may or may not change behavior, or to actually prosecute a few individual bankers.

Update:  WSJ reports 12-10-12 an imminent settlement could be for $1.95B, including a deferred prosecution agreement and admission of violating the bank secrecy act.

The pattern in recent years has been to negotiate a fine and impose a deferred prosecution agreement. Yet there seems to be repeat behavior. 

As an aside, DealBook has sources that say Standard Chartered to Pay $330 Million to Settle Iran Money Transfer Claims.  That would be to the feds and is in addition to the $340M they already agreed to pay New York State. If correct, that would be $670M for laundering $250B of Iranian money.

Is there an option other than indicting the bank, which would likely be a death sentence?

Is it time for individual prosecutions?

After the explosions of big financial scandals at the turn-of-the-century, I very clearly noticed the change in how such cases are prosecuted.

Previously, the low-level people in a criminal scheme or financial scandal could trade testimony against their bosses in return for walking away without prosecution. Those have been the rules for decades.

Not anymore.

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Jim Ulvog

It’s complicated, Africa version

Our perceptions of what’s taking place in Africa fluctuate between wild optimism and hopeless despair, cycling back and forth depending on this year’s headlines. Things are actually far more complicated, showing lots of reasons for some optimism simultaneous with indications of hard days now and in the future.

That’s what I learned from Walter Russell Mead’s post, Agony in The Congo.

(Why this post on that essay?  We need to understand the complexities of the world around us if we want to actually change the world.)

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Jim Ulvog

Time to un-mis-educate donors about what efficiency looks like

The phrase un-mis-educate is coined by “J” in a post, Rethinking Efficiency, at AidSpeak.

J suggests one of the reasons NPOs (NGOs for my international readers) are under so much pressure on overhead ratios is that NPOs have spent a generation mis-educating donors that organization X is better than Y because 90% or 98% of donations to X go to program services.

I agree.

J says that NPOs need to undo the mis-education, thus the need to un-mis-educate donors.  I think that is a great turn of phrase.

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Jim Ulvog

Always remember that anything you post in social media could one day be revealed to the world

Today’s lesson is that no matter how you set your Facebook settings, someone else could reveal your membership in groups.  Remember every day that anything you post in a social media space could eventually become public.

Say, for example, you are out-of-the-closet at college but your parents don’t know. You join a choir and the choir director announces your membership in a group whose very name announces your sexual orientation.  The public announcement of your membership to all of your Facebook friends is the first thing your parents know of your previous secret.

That’s the very short version of the story in the Wall Street Journal – When the Most Personal Secrets Get Outed on Facebook.

You are not the customer

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Jim Ulvog

6 better questions to ask an NPO than “what’s your overhead?”

Looking at the ‘overhead ratio’ is a lousy way to evaluate the effectiveness of a charity.

Once you understand that concept, you are left wondering what else to look at when considering whether to donate.

Dóchas Network offers six great questions to ask instead of looking at overhead. (more…)

Jim Ulvog