Already Too Big to Fail
Three seemingly unrelated media stories convince me that each of us under these clear skies is too big to fail to act ethically. Let me tie these stories together.
Netflix mailed us Frozen River, a gripping low-budget film that earned two academy award nominations. We watched two poverty-pressured women, one white American and one Mohawk Canadian, become untrusting partners desperate for money for their children. They drive across the frozen St Lawrence River into New York with illegal immigrants, including a Pakistani couple, hidden in their trunk. They fail their children, although they appear to be headed toward ethically reconnecting with them after enduring punishment.
Meanwhile I’m reading, The Way of the World by Ron Suskind. He writes about the radical Islamic terrorist cells expanding inside the Mohawk reservations in Canada alongside that border. Terrorists bleed across the porous boundary on a trail established by Russian spies during the Cold War.
Simultaneously Congress is wrestling with regulation for financial firms deemed too big to fail financially, despite having failed ethically. The House Financial Services committee, frustrated by understaffed or timid regulators, voted to give regulators the power to bust them up. Who knows if they’ll allocate extra funds? Even if they do, firms too big to fail avoid regulation by acting unethically.
One example is Canada’s MDS Nordion, the world’s leading isotope supplier for medical imaging. It purchases highly enriched uranium (HEU) from the U.S. to provide nuclear imaging capability. But HEU has been converted into nuclear weapons, so in 1992 Congress prohibited HEU shipments for medical isotopes because lowly enriched uranium (LEU) works as well.
Nordion pledged to comply, but afterward built a HEU facility. According to NTI (nti.org), a non-governmental advocacy group whose mission is to reduce the risk of nuclear weapons by reducing the spread of nuclear materials, Nordion precipitated a confrontation in 2003. It claimed withholding HEU would destroy its business, and hired lobbyists to exempt Canadian firms from the law. It initiated letter writing and email campaigns to suppliers, medical facilities, and patient groups. Lobbyists teamed with other countries until Congress exempted both Canada and Europe in the 2005 energy bill. The author of the original law, Rep Schumer from New York, said, “It’s unbelievable we would pass this legislation in a post-911 era.”
It’s not unbelievable for me. Interestingly, I received one of the emails generated by Nordion’s campaign. I deleted it, never realizing I needed to alert people to the deception.
We must urge legislators to stop believing we can regulate firms that are too big to fail financially. A better strategy is opposing acquisitions that allow colossal firms to form. Enforcing regulation on smaller firms is easier, just as we enforce small violations from our children and citizens.
Finally, when I, or any of us, or any company, get tempted to violate ethical standards, we need to resist them because each failure inevitably diminishes everybody else’s well-being. In effect, I already am too big to fail ethically. We all are.
Netflix mailed us Frozen River, a gripping low-budget film that earned two academy award nominations. We watched two poverty-pressured women, one white American and one Mohawk Canadian, become untrusting partners desperate for money for their children. They drive across the frozen St Lawrence River into New York with illegal immigrants, including a Pakistani couple, hidden in their trunk. They fail their children, although they appear to be headed toward ethically reconnecting with them after enduring punishment.
Meanwhile I’m reading, The Way of the World by Ron Suskind. He writes about the radical Islamic terrorist cells expanding inside the Mohawk reservations in Canada alongside that border. Terrorists bleed across the porous boundary on a trail established by Russian spies during the Cold War.
Simultaneously Congress is wrestling with regulation for financial firms deemed too big to fail financially, despite having failed ethically. The House Financial Services committee, frustrated by understaffed or timid regulators, voted to give regulators the power to bust them up. Who knows if they’ll allocate extra funds? Even if they do, firms too big to fail avoid regulation by acting unethically.
One example is Canada’s MDS Nordion, the world’s leading isotope supplier for medical imaging. It purchases highly enriched uranium (HEU) from the U.S. to provide nuclear imaging capability. But HEU has been converted into nuclear weapons, so in 1992 Congress prohibited HEU shipments for medical isotopes because lowly enriched uranium (LEU) works as well.
Nordion pledged to comply, but afterward built a HEU facility. According to NTI (nti.org), a non-governmental advocacy group whose mission is to reduce the risk of nuclear weapons by reducing the spread of nuclear materials, Nordion precipitated a confrontation in 2003. It claimed withholding HEU would destroy its business, and hired lobbyists to exempt Canadian firms from the law. It initiated letter writing and email campaigns to suppliers, medical facilities, and patient groups. Lobbyists teamed with other countries until Congress exempted both Canada and Europe in the 2005 energy bill. The author of the original law, Rep Schumer from New York, said, “It’s unbelievable we would pass this legislation in a post-911 era.”
It’s not unbelievable for me. Interestingly, I received one of the emails generated by Nordion’s campaign. I deleted it, never realizing I needed to alert people to the deception.
We must urge legislators to stop believing we can regulate firms that are too big to fail financially. A better strategy is opposing acquisitions that allow colossal firms to form. Enforcing regulation on smaller firms is easier, just as we enforce small violations from our children and citizens.
Finally, when I, or any of us, or any company, get tempted to violate ethical standards, we need to resist them because each failure inevitably diminishes everybody else’s well-being. In effect, I already am too big to fail ethically. We all are.
Posted by JSR at 11/25/2009 1:00 AM 
Categories: Build Better Communities,Politics,Common Sense,Justice
Tags: Frozen River Ron Suskind nuclear weapons MDS Nordion NTI Schumer Amendment The Way of the World
Categories: Build Better Communities,Politics,Common Sense,Justice
Tags: Frozen River Ron Suskind nuclear weapons MDS Nordion NTI Schumer Amendment The Way of the World
Compared to the debt per capita after WWII, we are still fairly fiscally better off. But like you, I would be thankful is we could turn the current rate of increasing debt around soon. I gave my vote for Obama a lot of thought before casting it and I feel the President is doing the best he can with inherited situations and problems. Due to the current political polarization
every task he approaches is a mountain.
I am also grateful for the few politicians we have left who are able to put their party politics and self interests aside and do what is best for our country, but I see these individuals as an almost endangered species as corporations play so much of a large part in their ability to be funded and elected to their offices. Somehow, common sense should be telling us this, but I rarely hear it spoken of any more yet it dominates all other possibilities for our future and determines which direction we will go.
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