Monday, November 07, 2022
Sunday, November 06, 2022
Jesuits in the boardroom
As corporations struggle to survive in a more uncertain world, they should look to the success of the Society of Jesus
by Paolo Quattrone + BIO
Would you give your money to someone who will seek to maximise their returns rather than yours?
The answer is likely ‘No!’ However, as Voltaire warned us, in the corporate world common sense is not very common. Workers, suppliers and lenders provide the corporation with their resources but these are used in the interest of shareholders first. We take the primacy of shareholder value so much for granted that we forget that other and more democratic forms of governance are possible and have, even in our relatively recent history, governed organisations, economies and societies with historic success.
The life of corporations is complex, made of contradictions, power struggles, tensions between different stakeholders, conflicting priorities, and emerging and unforeseen needs and demands. Corporations face Rumsfeldian unknown unknowns, wars, pandemics and black swans. Anyone who has had even minimal exposure to how corporations work knows that, like families, they are political arenas. So, it is very important to consider if shareholders’ value is still a good governing principle.
Recent history is full of commendable attempts to replace shareholders’ value as the organising purpose. One day, the customer is king; another, the stakeholders are, with their defined interests. Lately, other ideas, from the environment to the good of society, have become pressing necessities, as testified by the proliferation of objectives and metrics that corporations have to pursue and disclose: eg, the United Nation’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The likely outcome of these commendable attempts is an impossible accountability, as addressing the grand challenges of the SDGs and making corporate conduct more attentive to environmental and social issues will bring even greater contradictions, tensions and wicked problems. One forgets that safeguarding the environment is intrinsically in contrast with any form of value production and distribution. We cannot enjoy new cars, clothes, roads, infrastructures if not by consuming natural resources and polluting the environment. It is of course a matter of trade-offs and how we want to tip the scale: there is no magic wand. As the British sociologist John Law said in After Method (2004): ‘if the world is complex and messy, then … we’re going have to give up on simplicities’. Nowhere could benefit more from considering Law’s insight than the world of corporate governance.
Saturday, November 05, 2022
At COP27, flood-battered Pakistan leads push to make polluting countries pay
By Sarah Kaplan and Susannah George
November 5, 2022 at 9:00 a.m. EDT
DADU, Pakistan — Before the floods, Mazhar Hussain Birhamni dreamed of becoming a scholar. The 22-year-old wanted to pursue a master’s degree in English literature, to comprehend the world beyond the rural village in Pakistan where he lived with his parents.
But his books were washed away this summer amid historic flooding that scientists say was supercharged by climate change. After weeks of relentless rainfall, a nearby levee was breached in August, sending a waist-deep torrent rushing into his house. Birhamni’s family had just a few hours to escape with what little they could carry: pots and pans, small bags of food, a woven bed frame. With one-third of his country underwater and no help in sight, the college graduate’s dreams seemed lost to the deluge.
Low-income nations have long warned that rising temperatures would hit their citizens the hardest, punishing the people who contributed the least to planet-warming emissions and have the fewest resources to cope. Now, as the floods in Pakistan and other recent disasters make the consequences of climate change impossible to ignore, the world is gearing up for a showdown over who should pay the costs.
At this month’s U.N. climate negotiations in Egypt, Pakistan will lead a bloc of more than 100 developing nations insisting on compensation for the irreversible harms of climate change — a class of impacts collectively known as “loss and damage.” The bloc has called for the creation of a dedicated loss-and-damage fund, which hard-hit countries can rely on for immediate assistance after a disaster, rather than waiting for humanitarian aid or loans that will drive them into debt.
Wealthy countries have historically resisted such calls, fearing liability for the billions of dollars in damage that could be linked to their emissions. But the dramatic escalation in extreme weather, coupled with deep frustration over unfulfilled climate funding promises from the industrialized world, have put pressure on nations like the United States — which has resisted providing compensation — to shift their stance.
There are signs that attitudes may be changing. U.N. Secretary General António Guterres said Thursday there is “no more time to postpone” the issue. Egypt will make loss and damage a priority agenda item at the upcoming talks. In September, Denmark announced a $13 million fund to assist vulnerable countries — the first U.N. member state to do so.
“With the Pakistan disaster the poster child of climate impacts, there is a change in the political mood, I think,” said Munir Akram, the country’s chief climate negotiator and permanent representative to the United Nations.
Friday, November 04, 2022
Thursday, November 03, 2022
Wednesday, November 02, 2022
Warnings
Volume 41 Issue Eleven November 2022
Last Trumpet Ministries · PO Box 806 · Beaver Dam, WI 53916
Phone: 920-887-2626 Internet: http://www.lasttrumpetministries.org
“For if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle?” I Cor. 14:8
Warnings
“If I shut up heaven that there be no rain, or if I command the locusts to devour the land, or if I send pestilence among my people; If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.”
II Chronicles 7:13-14
“Not that I speak in respect of want: for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content. I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound: every where and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.”
Philippians 4:11-13
Philippians 4:11-13
As we enter the month of November, many Americans are making preparations for an upcoming holiday. Observed annually on the fourth Thursday in November, Thanksgiving Day is known as a celebration of prosperity and a time to be thankful for the abundance of blessings to which we are accustomed. The traditional feast usually includes turkey with all of the trimmings and a wide assortment of side dishes and desserts. However, in 2022 the American people approach this holiday against the backdrop of great uncertainty. Stubbornly high inflation has pushed prices at the supermarket higher and higher, while interest rate hikes implemented by the Federal Reserve have sent the cost of borrowing money soaring to astronomical levels. As such, the housing market is cratering, and the American stock market has taken a brutal pounding. On September 30, 2022, Business Insider reported that global markets lost an astonishing 46.1 trillion dollars in market value since November 2021. (1) Marketwatch further reported that this year saw the worst September stock market performance since 2002. (2) Needless to say, Thanksgiving Day is going to be different for many families this year.
As it turns out, it’s not just humanity that has been ravaged by disease in these perilous times. In 2022 flocks of birds throughout the country have been tormented by a tenacious strain of bird flu. Although bird flu is nothing new, outbreaks of the virus typically subside during the summer months. The current strain of bird flu continued throughout the summer and has affected 47.6 million birds in forty-two states just this year alone. (3) This number includes more than 3.5 million turkeys in the state of Minnesota and more than 13.3 million turkeys in Iowa. Consequently, the price of turkey has increased by a whopping 73 percent since this time last year. (4)
With food prices soaring, it is not surprising that the American people are planning to alter their behavior. A recent survey conducted by Personal Capital found that one in four Americans are not planning to celebrate Thanksgiving this year. About one-third of respondents said they would have a smaller celebration because of the higher cost, while 88 percent of respondents said they would cut at least one dish from their meal. (5)
As many Americans choose to forgo Thanksgiving, we must ask ourselves, is the United States of America still a thriving and blessed nation? Are we still a prosperous country? Consider these startling statistics: According to the United States Department of Agriculture, thirty-three million people in the United States are “food insecure,” or in other words, struggling to put food on the table. (6) This is about 10 percent of the entire American population! Furthermore, about 1.2 million people living in and around our nation’s capital, Washington, D.C., struggled to procure enough food in 2021. (7) According to a report from CNBC, an estimated 60 percent of Americans are living from paycheck to paycheck. (8)
As it turns out, it’s not just humanity that has been ravaged by disease in these perilous times. In 2022 flocks of birds throughout the country have been tormented by a tenacious strain of bird flu. Although bird flu is nothing new, outbreaks of the virus typically subside during the summer months. The current strain of bird flu continued throughout the summer and has affected 47.6 million birds in forty-two states just this year alone. (3) This number includes more than 3.5 million turkeys in the state of Minnesota and more than 13.3 million turkeys in Iowa. Consequently, the price of turkey has increased by a whopping 73 percent since this time last year. (4)
With food prices soaring, it is not surprising that the American people are planning to alter their behavior. A recent survey conducted by Personal Capital found that one in four Americans are not planning to celebrate Thanksgiving this year. About one-third of respondents said they would have a smaller celebration because of the higher cost, while 88 percent of respondents said they would cut at least one dish from their meal. (5)
As many Americans choose to forgo Thanksgiving, we must ask ourselves, is the United States of America still a thriving and blessed nation? Are we still a prosperous country? Consider these startling statistics: According to the United States Department of Agriculture, thirty-three million people in the United States are “food insecure,” or in other words, struggling to put food on the table. (6) This is about 10 percent of the entire American population! Furthermore, about 1.2 million people living in and around our nation’s capital, Washington, D.C., struggled to procure enough food in 2021. (7) According to a report from CNBC, an estimated 60 percent of Americans are living from paycheck to paycheck. (8)
There is no question that people are struggling already, but what will happen if inflation continues to rise well into next year? Here let it be noted that chief executive officer of KraftHeinz Miguel Patricio stated in October 2022 that he expects inflation to remain high for the foreseeable future and warned that more price hikes are coming at the grocery store. “We’ve already increased the prices that we were expecting this year, but I’m predicting that next year, inflation will continue, and as a consequence, [we] will have other rounds of price increases,” Patricio said. Patricio attributes some of the inflation to an unpredictable supply chain that has recently been disrupted by poor crop yields. “Every day, there’s a shortage of something. It doesn’t help [that] with the global warming that the crops have not been good. So there’s a lack of tomatoes in the world, there’s a lack of potatoes in the world, there’s a lack of beans in the world,” the frustrated CEO lamented. (9)
There are multiple reasons for the rising costs we see today, especially when it comes to groceries and staples. The cost of poultry and eggs has risen because of bird flu, both drought and flooding have hindered crops, the war in Ukraine has hampered the production of fertilizer in Europe, and the conflict has also hampered the export of wheat to countries that need it most. All of these problems are in addition to supply chain woes which began during the pandemic and were never fully corrected. To make matters worse, Bloomberg News reported on October 19, 2022, that the United States’ supply of diesel fuel is at the lowest level ever recorded with only a twenty-five-day supply remaining. The rush is on to replenish the supply before it runs out even as demand for the fuel, which is used by the American trucking industry and agricultural sector, skyrockets. The supply crunch threatens to push inflation even higher. (10) Meanwhile, The Energy Information Administration, or EIA, has projected that the cost of natural gas, which is used by many families to heat their homes, will increase by 28 percent this winter. (11)
Tuesday, November 01, 2022
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