Archives July 2012

Kudos to the London Organizing Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games.

What better way to celebrate true British culture and identity (and yes, humor) than to have James Bond (actor Daniel Craig) escorting the Queen to the opening ceremony of the London Olympics in true 007 fashion?

A brilliant idea, but I have three immediate wishes.

I wish other English spy characters like Austin Powers and Johnny English had also featured in this truly comedic, quintessentially British moment.

I also wish all the past screen Bond actors were on hand to usher Her Majesty to her seat.

And I wish, ahem, US presidential hopeful Mitt Romney would play the role of party pooper and jump out of nowhere to spoil the event in his very own disconcerting way.

Well, no worries, all the real Bonds and security staff would jump forward to salvage the moment.

Fat chance.

The real Bonds are clearly stirred, shaken and not at all prepared to take extra risks, given their low morale and jaw-dropping poor compensation package. And the general public would probably not count on the outsourced security and protection industry as well (Read the entire column here and there).

No fingerprints in rigging the Libor rate?

Let me start with a familiar scene. Suppose the boss says “I don’t like his face.” His sidekicks exchange quick looks and leave the room without a word. They clearly understand what their boss means and promptly kill the guy in cool mafia fashion.
You probably relate this scene to classic Hollywood mafia movies, in which the sidekicks usually flee the scene right after the murder. When the police show up to find whodunit, nobody including the boss remembers what happened.Unconventional corporate governance combined with plausible deniability.
That is exactly what seems to have happened at the British banking giant Barclays
(Read the entire column here).