Just as a side note, many American companies, including government contractors working on military and other security projects, now have very recent immigrants here in the US in key hiring positions. Now finance and tech are well known for doing this, but also be aware that government contractors also engage in this practice. As an American, you will have to go through ridiculous background screening processes that examine everything you've done, where you worked, relatives' backgrounds, etc. As an American, for true masochism, apply for jobs through USAJobs and see how long it takes to be rejected/ignored despite an impeccable background. Do the same with govt. contractors that will keep you hanging on for an imaginary task order that will take 4+ years to materialize. If you are currently working, kiss your current job goodbye as result of these checks - you're current employer will know you are looking for another gig and you're cooked. And periods of unemployment work against Americans too - so you'll get fired and you'll be grilled by future potential employers.
But wait, there's more. The same people helping to make hiring decisions and with access to your Social Security Number and other ID and financial information may possibly very recent immigrants. So, you are a vet or someone that has served in public service, a US citizen since birth, all relatives in the US, but lo' and behold, you will get rejected by recent immigrants with families overseas that have all their schooling and work experience overseas because apparently they work much cheaper than US citizens - and they now have all your personal info. to boot. Check Linkedin - it confirms this is all true. Look at who works in HR and who is making key decisions regarding our Nation and livelihoods - "best and brightest" indeed! Linkedin, it serves a purpose, but not the one the founders (ardent supporters of labor arbitrage and more replacement labor for Americans) intended.
I know what you're talking about. Resume fiction is rampant and I believe somewhere there was an astounding percentage of fake degrees coming out of India. Online test answers passed around, coding answers passed around and this is what happens, not just to be "cheap labor" but also the mentality in the U.S., the never ending peddling of "foreigners as superior" to the U.S. engineers is pure propaganda. Look at the education requirements alone, yet that bogus MSc is being accredited as a US MS? The game is rigged, right out of the starting gate, school. Lobbyists/propagandists even manipulate IP statistics, put out bogus studies which are false or manipulated.
This article was just to tie in the latest disasters to offshore outsourcing. I should write up the laundry list of bloated contract failures usually in the millions, sometimes billions.
Anyway, we know you're right, anyone in tech who has been around has seen this 1000 times and incompetence is protected by their "buddies", meanwhile the American who has the skills and experience gets canned, thrown away like a sack of potatoes.
Bottom line, the Knight Group debacle is very obviously clueless software development. How insane is that to release a clearly untested software implementation of an algorithm, PLUS take 45 minutes to remove the package and revert to the old version in real time?
Clearly beyond pathetic, no one who knows the product software development cycle would do such a thing, especially considering what this implementation is working with.
Can you imagine these people being involved in Nuclear safety/failsafe software? I think they are, that's the most scary thing.
Microsoft loves H-1B and as we all know, it's only a matter of time before the Dinosaur is obsolete. I'm sure we'll all cheer, go Linux.
There was actually a guy, who ran for Congress plus had a website "outsource Congress" about 8 years ago.
BTW: Registered users can help control what is on the front page. See that arrow over to the top left of the post? Only people registered and logged in can see it. If you vote "up" on that arrow, posts are moved to the front page. I'm not keen on everything being on the front page, after all the economic monthly statistic overviews I do daily, but maybe this one deserves an up vote on the arrow. ;)
I'm all for outsourcing Congress + other feds, state politicians, and law enforcement. It would be cheaper and more reliable. If they don't give us what we want, we just move to another locale and then the next one. If these American politicians and officials won't serve the American public despite their employment contracts (and the Constitution) I'm sure we could find people overseas who would for pennies on the dollar. More loyal and cheaper = winning proposition for average American. Plus we don't have all those pesky pay to play bribes that total 100s of 1,000,000s of dollars for our current traitors (sorry, politicians and regulators). Can we also outsource MSM - no thinking is required and rumor has it foreign English skills are getting better than "fair and balanced" and "leaning forward." The US govt. and MSM, brought to you from Manila! I like the sound of it. I volunteer to supervise operations.
As someone who works with off-shored engineering "talent" all the time, I can detail a number of issues with that approach. The major issue is that our extremely skilled management cannot measure the real cost or cost-savings of the maneuver. It really takes about two highly trained U.S. engineers to clean up after one of the off-shore "talents" that we hire so cheaply. One member of my team, claiming to have two master's degrees in software engineering and math actually was one of five people listed on the four-page master's thesis for software engineering. He could not even operate the keyboard interface (non-graphical) attached to the operating system we use to build our product (and he claimed extensive experience), in spite of the well-polished resume and "degrees". He was hired without any input from our team, based (one would ASSuME) solely on the cost of his labor.
Aside from the brevity and group activity nature of his "thesis", the technical content was pure crap. Can you say, "diploma mill"? I knew you could. Quality has been thrown out the window in favor of "cheap". You will laugh at this: he claimed that we could, through design of experiments (DOE), find the primary variables affecting our final product performance -- without running any actual tests. It took my U.S. trained friend and I about two weeks, and constant argument/research, to disabuse management of this "savings". As it was, our schedule had already been cut and locked in place. Nice.
So it frequently boils down to intangibles. If it cannot be put into a spreadsheet cell and moved around as a single number, it isn't tracked, measured, or managed. Unfortunately, customer loyalty and product quality are intangibles. Salary is tangible, and apparently fungible. Specific performance against specifications and organizational standards, however, are supposedly tangible -- one must conclude that at least our managers are either not capable or not willing to face the truth or enforce the tangibility.
Meanwhile, our benefits and jobs are eroding daily and "massive layoffs" rule the day. I won't comment on the product quality.
I also, by the way ran into a very interesting local comment. Seems one of the local fast-food restaurant chains, already not satisfied with the low wages it was paying had a brilliant idea. On the heels of failed attempts to allow food ordering via kiosk, they were, according to their manager, investigating outsourcing the drive-through window to Guatemala. Needless to say, one misplaced backhoe trench would put that chain out of commission. Manual backup system? Ha.
Oh, one final comment. Did you realize that many of the large banks are also off-shoring the processing of mortgage paperwork? How might our privacy laws protect us when our information has been disclosed to some unknown person in another country?
We used to perform potential problem analysis on our ideas and then eliminate or minimize detrimental effects. That, however, takes local experience with the real problem and the will to act on tangible negatives (no implication of honesty/dishonesty here). I have a precise way of stating this: "Ignorance simplifies any problem". The Dunning-Kruger effect is alive and well here in the U.S. and we are outsourcing it.
This is the difference between the arrogant rulers, banksters, CEOs+HR, and their shills. We all followed the rules and regulations, we all believed that hard work and following the rules and treating each other well was the key to success (and we were rewarded for believing that for many years). And then we got screwed over, BIG TIME. And the screwing over goes on and on and on with no respite and no one with the legal power to change things cares - they are set for life. No one in power cares that millions of us are suffering.
And we read these articles and postings here and elsewhere on ZH every day, Naked Capitalism, etc. And we see the rule breakers and selfish dolts are doing really well, I mean .1% megawealthy well for breaking laws, helping weaken America, helping our "enemies," and treating everyone else like dirt without any sense of morality or any gift of greater wisdom or work ethic - everything we believed was wrong and would be punished. But the laws literally don't apply to them. And those who swear oaths and get paid to follow the Constitution couldn't give less of a sh*t about us while we suffer and hopefully, in their eyes, disappear. So how should we see this twisted moral end? I guess the 1% and their puppets hope to God we don't start acting like they do, because Lord knows we have the numbers. They'll keep playing us for suckers while they whistle away on their yachts and chomp on their cigars while setting up a charity named after themselves while bitching and moaning about how lazy and stupid we all are.
As is doing anything about the Drug cartels. I don't know about the rest but one thing is clear, any semblance of business ethics is long gone, a distant footnote in history.
Apparently the Feds are pissed that someone somewhere at some point in time actually called a terrorism-financing, money laundering bank to task after years of ignoring it, even if every other bank and TBTF/FDIC-backed/"best and brightest"/"doing God's work" bank is allowed to continue sans RICO threats or losing a banking charter and are still making the required contributions to the right people.
So, dear American taxpayers, ignore the complicity our federal govt. in this threat. Ignore the fact that people are earning $100,000+ as government employees at GS-13, GS-14, GS-15, and Senior Executive Service levels and $500,000-$1 million post-govt. to take part in this mockery. Ignore the fact that 27 million Americans that wouldn't tolerate this are unemployed. Vets, ignore the fact that our govt. is apparently okay with banks helping Iran, and through, Iran, Iranian-armed insurgents. Mexican citizens and folks in the Southwest, ignore the fact that our govt. is okay with banks laundering money for drug cartels. Next time you fear for your life or are scared to walk with your children outside, look no farther than the Treasury Dept. for someone to blame. On the one hand the govt. says Iran, drug cartels, and other groups and nations are real threats and we should always "see something, say something," but then we should be okay with our govt. allowing this to happen? Me confused, me too stupid to understand government logic.
Should we call DHS and the police to alert them to the feds allowing this criminal activity or should we not "see something, say something"? Should bankster Bloomberg be informed? Bloomberg's JP Morgan police/NYPD?
"Hello, DHS, NYPD, LAPD, DC Metro, I see the Treasury and DOJ and Congress are okay with financing Iranian terrorists and drug cartels. Now what?"
Well, I think it varies. Supposedly Congressional Republicans have been defunding regulators and there are some fighting and basically losing to do anything. Notice how not even Dodd-Frank has been implemented yet, so, I'm not willing to label "all" corrupt, except for Congress and this administration.
I'll say willfully blind. Federal regulators must have been alerted to massive money laundering at least every 30 days after every single suspicious activity (so that totals hundreds of thousands of forms filed). So that implicates Treasury, and FinCEN specifically. Justice Money Laundering Unit apparently gets their money for nothing because they've been busy with . . . nothing. How many Assistant AGs and GS-14s and GS-15s does it take to ignore crime? But they are hiring for their unit, go check DOJ Careers, apparently more people needed to do nothing at taxpayer expense so that Iran can help build more IEDs with bankster help. And we're supposed to accept this? Federal and state regulators . . . salaries for nothing.
Now, if some low-level drug dealer is breaking the law in front of the cops every day and he continues unabated, at some point the law-abiding citizenry should begin to question how corrupt the cops are for not stepping in. At all, any AUSA would be using the same argument, right? A single criminal gets set up in a sting and the FBI busts him for TRYING TO AID terrorists, he goes to prison for 30-life. The Feds ignore rampant aid to terrorists and drug cartels (that kill and destroy far more lives and property than a single low-level criminal) by banksters that they are being alerted to regularly and quickly because of federal and state laws, well, I think law-abiding citizens must demand of banksters, their puppet politicians, their paid-for media, and law enforcement and regulators why exactly aren't they being punished for being willfully blind to the aid given to terrorists? Are they criminally negligent? Complicit? Flat out corrupt and criminal? Or so completely and utterly inept that they should come out and join America's unemployed so that they can be replaced by people who might actually feel bad about earning money while allowing banksters to earn billions while aiding Iran, Mexican drug cartels, and others.
Congressional hearings? Any more hearings on anything related to banksterism? Seriously? Complete waste of time and our money for PR and useless words and photo ops by bankster puppets. We don't have hearings in towns and cities and counties when the educated populace sees criminal activity laid out for us and it being completely ignored - what's going on is obvious to anyone with any semblance of integrity (i.e., those not in politics or banksterism). Indeed, didn't the latest Iran-laundering bankster specifically say "You fucking Americans. Who are you to tell us, the rest of the world, that we're not going to deal with Iranians." Now to a five-year old, even that is a clear cut admission of dealing with Iran or the willingness to do so. And this in the latest of bankster gems, like "doing God's work"? But hearings are necessary? Idiocy. Maybe corrupt regulators and politicians can accept this for the sake of more bribes, but any honest American really can't take any more of this. Hold your hearings and scripted scoldings Versailles, we're out on the farms waiting for the rule of law and real justice and integrity to return.
What happened to the Republic? It's a damn shame it's this corrupt.
Considering banks have to use AML software as part of normal operations 24/7 and software is extremely reliable and sophisticated, red flags would have shot up daily left and right globally. AML and OFAC officers, tellers, managers, people everywhere in the global operation had to be on notice. Compliance officers train them on these things, old and new employees all the time. People earn six to seven figures to notice these things, deal with them, and deal with them very quickly. SARs and CTRs have to be filed very quickly as well with Treasury's FinCEN - everyone that has any exposure to law enforcement, banking, or finance knows this. So Treasury FinCEN and its six-figure salaried employees had to be aware - this is their job. Treasury has OFAC personnel and units that would deal with Iran, so they had to be aware. DOJ has a Money Laundering Unit and top level officials in charge - they had to be aware. District Attorneys in bankster heavy jurisdictions (NYC? Mayor Bloomberg? How are things in Bankster Capital USA?) should have been aware considering they fancy themselves "cutting edge" terrorism fighters - guess not.
So, that's a whole lot of organizations, groups, individuals, and politicians who apparently get paid for something, but not sure what (I guess going against banksters or higher-ups would compromise their future careers defending the banks, working in banks, or something with more money). Too bad those people who do care and do know are purposely not brought in - they could save a whole lot of wasted manpower, wasted money, and actually do their jobs.
Shocking news, who could have predicted, except anyone with a clue and many right here and on other sites - Standard Chartered was also engaged in making huge deals with Iran and hiding them! And completely predictable. And Deloitte is also involved? Gosh, consulting firms too? Still waiting for RICO and FCPA prosecutions and real prison time + forfeitures for CEOs and key personnel, any second now . . .
After Enron fiasco, I thought for sure accounting and consulting firms were really going to be good this time - guess not. Next you'll tell me most international banks and many other MNCs have been conducting international crimes like money laundering and bribery if only anyone in power or law enforcement cared to read blogs and web postings or cared for going on years now. I wonder, and I think we all should wonder, will politicians and MSM that criticize individual criminals or Americans that exercise their 1st Amen. rights or are concerned with drink portions EVER CRITICIZE bankers that help finance terrorism, drug cartels, etc. that literally kill people, destroy societies, build IEDs that kill our troops? Or is that not allowed because politicians that love banksters or are banksters themselves know where their bread is buttered - fellow bankster criminals and not the average law-abiding citizen? Are banksters like Standard and HSBC somehow better than those that protest them, Mayor and other politicians?
OUTSOURCING PLAYS ITS PART
It also turns out Standard Chartered was outsourcing key duties that could have ended these crimes to India. Again, are you telling me outsourcing key jobs overseas to other countries has real consequences? Shocking! Like outsourcing legal review of privileged docs has consequences and every law firm that does it plays with fire and exposes client secrets and law firms and the ABA should bear the consequences of such actions? Like outsourcing medical doc reviews and personal banking info. exposes patients and customers to invasions of privacy, ID theft, actual theft, etc. and banksters and others should bear the consequences of those actions? Again, completely predictable, but we were shut up and shot down every time we talk about it. Those who speak the truth don't find jobs in today's America. Like selling technology and outsourcing to Vietnam and China might endanger our lives and defense technology but Mayors and others said, "What's the harm, outsource everything, bring in more foreigners!" But we were wrong?
So what's the end game - Standard Chartered will probably have a monitor and a fine telling them to be good. Or if politicians want to appear to be tough, maybe they take away the one bank's charter. But not the Americans' TBTF charters ever. RICO or FCPA prosecutions for TBTF? NEVER. Maybe a former US Attorney or bankster law firm will make millions for the job of watching them to make sure they really, really try to be good. You know, like if you support terrorists or break a terrorism law, you could also avoid jail, prison, pay a fine, and maybe a friend could get paid to make sure you try to be good for a few years (only if you are incorporate yourself as a bank or MNC first, though). And when anyone cares to look, every single bank that deals with every corrupt foreign leader will be found to launder massive amounts of loot, but that's for another day and another AG or US Attorney that wants to appear to do something before running for another office.
By the way, all those who would have and could have stopped this inside companies and the govt. are deemed "overqualified" and are purposely not hired and never get past screening software - but hey, they must be lazy and uneducated, right DC and media hacks? MSM can instead focus on tit-for-tat name calling between D & R politicians or who won ping pong in London. After all, why else would criminal organizations not hire people who care and have the skills when they could outsource everything and/or hire people who will just go along with criminal activities.
Double standards, hypocrisy, crony capitalism, the disappearance of the rule of law, outsourcing literally destroying our middle class but enriching our enemies and the politicians ignoring everyone who can see our destruction happen every single day - but who do I vote for, heads or tails, heads or tails? "No one" or "none of the above," or perhaps a good old write-in "They are all worthless."
I've seen a lot of unpaid or minimum wage paid internships where the task list and skills are a full bore senior responsibility position. This shouldn't be allowed. What we need are a slew of internships, but they have to pay them enough to make rent in the area! Internships and co-cops are awesome generally but this is exploitative.
Internships are the epitome of all that's wrong with exploitation of labor in these times (and now pause for business talking points that no one is forced to take these and it's a free market - yawn). I could buy a computer program that reads talking points in a TV or radio studio fed directly from the Chamber of Commerce for free and replace these bloated clowns. So they should really start worrying about how special and unique they are and why exactly they think they deserve to earn tens of millions of dollars, certainly an H-1B worker with mediocre English skills could do their jobs, and better.
Typical example of internship. A think tank in DC posted one (one of possibly 1,000,000/year I read that probably count towards "employment") that requires full-time hours from someone who already has a PhD (and the PhD debt) in hand, acting as a main researcher on projects the think tank is running, living in DC (one of the most expensive cities in the US), with no pay. How exactly does one do work the think tank gets credit/publicity for, work full-time hours, not get paid, and still pay for rent + food? You have to be rich and have the right family connections, have some savings and expect to burn through them to work for free, or be poor and expect to be homeless very soon to work for free. All in the Nation's capital with no promise of employment from anyone after!
Of course this is one of many, from media to local/state/fed. agencies to international businesses and law firms. Imagine, working for free, trying to survive, debt impossible to pay off, and the head of the organization or the dept. is making phone calls while getting paid $100,000 - $1 million while asking for more money for his bank account or making phone calls soliciting millions of dollars so that the organization can spend it elsewhere (e.g., NGOs and philanthropies) while purposely ignoring the unpaid interns. And complete silence from the govt. on this issue because it engages in the same madness and loves free labor.
Again, if millions of people work for free, there is no incentive to pay them. Just look at what happened with London security fiasco where they forced the unemployed to work for free, forced them to sleep outside in the rain, etc. all by a private contractor that the UK govt. hired. How's that for exploitation? Security risk?
That's why I amplify these particular graphs. While people nit-pit over the monthly reports, all of these graphs looking like "dragon monsters" rising to eat our livelihoods and economy.
The shift to part-time workers that can be used and tossed aside quickly with no benefits and at much lower salaries is the most troubling. If someone is lucky enough to work in the US, they can only count on part-time? The burden of benefits merely shifts to the worker and other taxpayers. Notice how the #s for part-time workers skyrocketed after 9/11 and the 2008 collapse. Triple the number of part-time since 2001? And how many of those are "part-time" despite working less than 20 or 10 hours/week?
That's in no way a good thing. This proves this has nothing to do with the talking points about "uncertainty" (about taxes, health care, which bribes to pay to which politicians, where to buy a third vacation home, Fiji or Tahiti, or about life in general that teleprompter readers and their guests like to spout). This spans 11 years, if a business "leader" or politician wants certainty for anything beyond the next 12 hours, I would expect them to retire immediately and take up shuffleboard, the stress and uncertaintly is much lower (along with the salary + taxpayer + shareholder provided perks they've enjoyed). Profits were recently at all-time highs, part-time employment is at all time highs, and business is good for American businesses' top echelons. They have no reason to change and have been getting away with this under both parties no matter who is in the Presidency, House, or Senate - they will not change.
The problem is that unlike Europe the US sends every child into a college prep curriculum out side of a very small number that have vocational schooling available to them.
College is not the end all be all option that it is sold as.
College costs like medical costs grow disproportionately to the economy because of Federal subsidies. Making it available to all has that side effect since as with Medicaid a false bottom is created.
Just sign here and the world is your oyster = the big lie.
Just as a side note, many American companies, including government contractors working on military and other security projects, now have very recent immigrants here in the US in key hiring positions. Now finance and tech are well known for doing this, but also be aware that government contractors also engage in this practice. As an American, you will have to go through ridiculous background screening processes that examine everything you've done, where you worked, relatives' backgrounds, etc. As an American, for true masochism, apply for jobs through USAJobs and see how long it takes to be rejected/ignored despite an impeccable background. Do the same with govt. contractors that will keep you hanging on for an imaginary task order that will take 4+ years to materialize. If you are currently working, kiss your current job goodbye as result of these checks - you're current employer will know you are looking for another gig and you're cooked. And periods of unemployment work against Americans too - so you'll get fired and you'll be grilled by future potential employers.
But wait, there's more. The same people helping to make hiring decisions and with access to your Social Security Number and other ID and financial information may possibly very recent immigrants. So, you are a vet or someone that has served in public service, a US citizen since birth, all relatives in the US, but lo' and behold, you will get rejected by recent immigrants with families overseas that have all their schooling and work experience overseas because apparently they work much cheaper than US citizens - and they now have all your personal info. to boot. Check Linkedin - it confirms this is all true. Look at who works in HR and who is making key decisions regarding our Nation and livelihoods - "best and brightest" indeed! Linkedin, it serves a purpose, but not the one the founders (ardent supporters of labor arbitrage and more replacement labor for Americans) intended.
I know what you're talking about. Resume fiction is rampant and I believe somewhere there was an astounding percentage of fake degrees coming out of India. Online test answers passed around, coding answers passed around and this is what happens, not just to be "cheap labor" but also the mentality in the U.S., the never ending peddling of "foreigners as superior" to the U.S. engineers is pure propaganda. Look at the education requirements alone, yet that bogus MSc is being accredited as a US MS? The game is rigged, right out of the starting gate, school. Lobbyists/propagandists even manipulate IP statistics, put out bogus studies which are false or manipulated.
This article was just to tie in the latest disasters to offshore outsourcing. I should write up the laundry list of bloated contract failures usually in the millions, sometimes billions.
Anyway, we know you're right, anyone in tech who has been around has seen this 1000 times and incompetence is protected by their "buddies", meanwhile the American who has the skills and experience gets canned, thrown away like a sack of potatoes.
Bottom line, the Knight Group debacle is very obviously clueless software development. How insane is that to release a clearly untested software implementation of an algorithm, PLUS take 45 minutes to remove the package and revert to the old version in real time?
Clearly beyond pathetic, no one who knows the product software development cycle would do such a thing, especially considering what this implementation is working with.
Can you imagine these people being involved in Nuclear safety/failsafe software? I think they are, that's the most scary thing.
Microsoft loves H-1B and as we all know, it's only a matter of time before the Dinosaur is obsolete. I'm sure we'll all cheer, go Linux.
There was actually a guy, who ran for Congress plus had a website "outsource Congress" about 8 years ago.
BTW: Registered users can help control what is on the front page. See that arrow over to the top left of the post? Only people registered and logged in can see it. If you vote "up" on that arrow, posts are moved to the front page. I'm not keen on everything being on the front page, after all the economic monthly statistic overviews I do daily, but maybe this one deserves an up vote on the arrow. ;)
I'm all for outsourcing Congress + other feds, state politicians, and law enforcement. It would be cheaper and more reliable. If they don't give us what we want, we just move to another locale and then the next one. If these American politicians and officials won't serve the American public despite their employment contracts (and the Constitution) I'm sure we could find people overseas who would for pennies on the dollar. More loyal and cheaper = winning proposition for average American. Plus we don't have all those pesky pay to play bribes that total 100s of 1,000,000s of dollars for our current traitors (sorry, politicians and regulators). Can we also outsource MSM - no thinking is required and rumor has it foreign English skills are getting better than "fair and balanced" and "leaning forward." The US govt. and MSM, brought to you from Manila! I like the sound of it. I volunteer to supervise operations.
As someone who works with off-shored engineering "talent" all the time, I can detail a number of issues with that approach. The major issue is that our extremely skilled management cannot measure the real cost or cost-savings of the maneuver. It really takes about two highly trained U.S. engineers to clean up after one of the off-shore "talents" that we hire so cheaply. One member of my team, claiming to have two master's degrees in software engineering and math actually was one of five people listed on the four-page master's thesis for software engineering. He could not even operate the keyboard interface (non-graphical) attached to the operating system we use to build our product (and he claimed extensive experience), in spite of the well-polished resume and "degrees". He was hired without any input from our team, based (one would ASSuME) solely on the cost of his labor.
Aside from the brevity and group activity nature of his "thesis", the technical content was pure crap. Can you say, "diploma mill"? I knew you could. Quality has been thrown out the window in favor of "cheap". You will laugh at this: he claimed that we could, through design of experiments (DOE), find the primary variables affecting our final product performance -- without running any actual tests. It took my U.S. trained friend and I about two weeks, and constant argument/research, to disabuse management of this "savings". As it was, our schedule had already been cut and locked in place. Nice.
So it frequently boils down to intangibles. If it cannot be put into a spreadsheet cell and moved around as a single number, it isn't tracked, measured, or managed. Unfortunately, customer loyalty and product quality are intangibles. Salary is tangible, and apparently fungible. Specific performance against specifications and organizational standards, however, are supposedly tangible -- one must conclude that at least our managers are either not capable or not willing to face the truth or enforce the tangibility.
Meanwhile, our benefits and jobs are eroding daily and "massive layoffs" rule the day. I won't comment on the product quality.
I also, by the way ran into a very interesting local comment. Seems one of the local fast-food restaurant chains, already not satisfied with the low wages it was paying had a brilliant idea. On the heels of failed attempts to allow food ordering via kiosk, they were, according to their manager, investigating outsourcing the drive-through window to Guatemala. Needless to say, one misplaced backhoe trench would put that chain out of commission. Manual backup system? Ha.
Oh, one final comment. Did you realize that many of the large banks are also off-shoring the processing of mortgage paperwork? How might our privacy laws protect us when our information has been disclosed to some unknown person in another country?
We used to perform potential problem analysis on our ideas and then eliminate or minimize detrimental effects. That, however, takes local experience with the real problem and the will to act on tangible negatives (no implication of honesty/dishonesty here). I have a precise way of stating this: "Ignorance simplifies any problem". The Dunning-Kruger effect is alive and well here in the U.S. and we are outsourcing it.
This is the difference between the arrogant rulers, banksters, CEOs+HR, and their shills. We all followed the rules and regulations, we all believed that hard work and following the rules and treating each other well was the key to success (and we were rewarded for believing that for many years). And then we got screwed over, BIG TIME. And the screwing over goes on and on and on with no respite and no one with the legal power to change things cares - they are set for life. No one in power cares that millions of us are suffering.
And we read these articles and postings here and elsewhere on ZH every day, Naked Capitalism, etc. And we see the rule breakers and selfish dolts are doing really well, I mean .1% megawealthy well for breaking laws, helping weaken America, helping our "enemies," and treating everyone else like dirt without any sense of morality or any gift of greater wisdom or work ethic - everything we believed was wrong and would be punished. But the laws literally don't apply to them. And those who swear oaths and get paid to follow the Constitution couldn't give less of a sh*t about us while we suffer and hopefully, in their eyes, disappear. So how should we see this twisted moral end? I guess the 1% and their puppets hope to God we don't start acting like they do, because Lord knows we have the numbers. They'll keep playing us for suckers while they whistle away on their yachts and chomp on their cigars while setting up a charity named after themselves while bitching and moaning about how lazy and stupid we all are.
As is doing anything about the Drug cartels. I don't know about the rest but one thing is clear, any semblance of business ethics is long gone, a distant footnote in history.
Apparently the Feds are pissed that someone somewhere at some point in time actually called a terrorism-financing, money laundering bank to task after years of ignoring it, even if every other bank and TBTF/FDIC-backed/"best and brightest"/"doing God's work" bank is allowed to continue sans RICO threats or losing a banking charter and are still making the required contributions to the right people.
So, dear American taxpayers, ignore the complicity our federal govt. in this threat. Ignore the fact that people are earning $100,000+ as government employees at GS-13, GS-14, GS-15, and Senior Executive Service levels and $500,000-$1 million post-govt. to take part in this mockery. Ignore the fact that 27 million Americans that wouldn't tolerate this are unemployed. Vets, ignore the fact that our govt. is apparently okay with banks helping Iran, and through, Iran, Iranian-armed insurgents. Mexican citizens and folks in the Southwest, ignore the fact that our govt. is okay with banks laundering money for drug cartels. Next time you fear for your life or are scared to walk with your children outside, look no farther than the Treasury Dept. for someone to blame. On the one hand the govt. says Iran, drug cartels, and other groups and nations are real threats and we should always "see something, say something," but then we should be okay with our govt. allowing this to happen? Me confused, me too stupid to understand government logic.
Should we call DHS and the police to alert them to the feds allowing this criminal activity or should we not "see something, say something"? Should bankster Bloomberg be informed? Bloomberg's JP Morgan police/NYPD?
"Hello, DHS, NYPD, LAPD, DC Metro, I see the Treasury and DOJ and Congress are okay with financing Iranian terrorists and drug cartels. Now what?"
Well, I think it varies. Supposedly Congressional Republicans have been defunding regulators and there are some fighting and basically losing to do anything. Notice how not even Dodd-Frank has been implemented yet, so, I'm not willing to label "all" corrupt, except for Congress and this administration.
I'll say willfully blind. Federal regulators must have been alerted to massive money laundering at least every 30 days after every single suspicious activity (so that totals hundreds of thousands of forms filed). So that implicates Treasury, and FinCEN specifically. Justice Money Laundering Unit apparently gets their money for nothing because they've been busy with . . . nothing. How many Assistant AGs and GS-14s and GS-15s does it take to ignore crime? But they are hiring for their unit, go check DOJ Careers, apparently more people needed to do nothing at taxpayer expense so that Iran can help build more IEDs with bankster help. And we're supposed to accept this? Federal and state regulators . . . salaries for nothing.
Now, if some low-level drug dealer is breaking the law in front of the cops every day and he continues unabated, at some point the law-abiding citizenry should begin to question how corrupt the cops are for not stepping in. At all, any AUSA would be using the same argument, right? A single criminal gets set up in a sting and the FBI busts him for TRYING TO AID terrorists, he goes to prison for 30-life. The Feds ignore rampant aid to terrorists and drug cartels (that kill and destroy far more lives and property than a single low-level criminal) by banksters that they are being alerted to regularly and quickly because of federal and state laws, well, I think law-abiding citizens must demand of banksters, their puppet politicians, their paid-for media, and law enforcement and regulators why exactly aren't they being punished for being willfully blind to the aid given to terrorists? Are they criminally negligent? Complicit? Flat out corrupt and criminal? Or so completely and utterly inept that they should come out and join America's unemployed so that they can be replaced by people who might actually feel bad about earning money while allowing banksters to earn billions while aiding Iran, Mexican drug cartels, and others.
Congressional hearings? Any more hearings on anything related to banksterism? Seriously? Complete waste of time and our money for PR and useless words and photo ops by bankster puppets. We don't have hearings in towns and cities and counties when the educated populace sees criminal activity laid out for us and it being completely ignored - what's going on is obvious to anyone with any semblance of integrity (i.e., those not in politics or banksterism). Indeed, didn't the latest Iran-laundering bankster specifically say "You fucking Americans. Who are you to tell us, the rest of the world, that we're not going to deal with Iranians." Now to a five-year old, even that is a clear cut admission of dealing with Iran or the willingness to do so. And this in the latest of bankster gems, like "doing God's work"? But hearings are necessary? Idiocy. Maybe corrupt regulators and politicians can accept this for the sake of more bribes, but any honest American really can't take any more of this. Hold your hearings and scripted scoldings Versailles, we're out on the farms waiting for the rule of law and real justice and integrity to return.
What happened to the Republic? It's a damn shame it's this corrupt.
If you have enough money, nothing happens. That's my point, this is too huge for some regulator someone not knowing.
Considering banks have to use AML software as part of normal operations 24/7 and software is extremely reliable and sophisticated, red flags would have shot up daily left and right globally. AML and OFAC officers, tellers, managers, people everywhere in the global operation had to be on notice. Compliance officers train them on these things, old and new employees all the time. People earn six to seven figures to notice these things, deal with them, and deal with them very quickly. SARs and CTRs have to be filed very quickly as well with Treasury's FinCEN - everyone that has any exposure to law enforcement, banking, or finance knows this. So Treasury FinCEN and its six-figure salaried employees had to be aware - this is their job. Treasury has OFAC personnel and units that would deal with Iran, so they had to be aware. DOJ has a Money Laundering Unit and top level officials in charge - they had to be aware. District Attorneys in bankster heavy jurisdictions (NYC? Mayor Bloomberg? How are things in Bankster Capital USA?) should have been aware considering they fancy themselves "cutting edge" terrorism fighters - guess not.
So, that's a whole lot of organizations, groups, individuals, and politicians who apparently get paid for something, but not sure what (I guess going against banksters or higher-ups would compromise their future careers defending the banks, working in banks, or something with more money). Too bad those people who do care and do know are purposely not brought in - they could save a whole lot of wasted manpower, wasted money, and actually do their jobs.
something like 160000 transactions to Iran, "suspicious" activity.
Shocking news, who could have predicted, except anyone with a clue and many right here and on other sites - Standard Chartered was also engaged in making huge deals with Iran and hiding them! And completely predictable. And Deloitte is also involved? Gosh, consulting firms too? Still waiting for RICO and FCPA prosecutions and real prison time + forfeitures for CEOs and key personnel, any second now . . .
After Enron fiasco, I thought for sure accounting and consulting firms were really going to be good this time - guess not. Next you'll tell me most international banks and many other MNCs have been conducting international crimes like money laundering and bribery if only anyone in power or law enforcement cared to read blogs and web postings or cared for going on years now. I wonder, and I think we all should wonder, will politicians and MSM that criticize individual criminals or Americans that exercise their 1st Amen. rights or are concerned with drink portions EVER CRITICIZE bankers that help finance terrorism, drug cartels, etc. that literally kill people, destroy societies, build IEDs that kill our troops? Or is that not allowed because politicians that love banksters or are banksters themselves know where their bread is buttered - fellow bankster criminals and not the average law-abiding citizen? Are banksters like Standard and HSBC somehow better than those that protest them, Mayor and other politicians?
OUTSOURCING PLAYS ITS PART
It also turns out Standard Chartered was outsourcing key duties that could have ended these crimes to India. Again, are you telling me outsourcing key jobs overseas to other countries has real consequences? Shocking! Like outsourcing legal review of privileged docs has consequences and every law firm that does it plays with fire and exposes client secrets and law firms and the ABA should bear the consequences of such actions? Like outsourcing medical doc reviews and personal banking info. exposes patients and customers to invasions of privacy, ID theft, actual theft, etc. and banksters and others should bear the consequences of those actions? Again, completely predictable, but we were shut up and shot down every time we talk about it. Those who speak the truth don't find jobs in today's America. Like selling technology and outsourcing to Vietnam and China might endanger our lives and defense technology but Mayors and others said, "What's the harm, outsource everything, bring in more foreigners!" But we were wrong?
So what's the end game - Standard Chartered will probably have a monitor and a fine telling them to be good. Or if politicians want to appear to be tough, maybe they take away the one bank's charter. But not the Americans' TBTF charters ever. RICO or FCPA prosecutions for TBTF? NEVER. Maybe a former US Attorney or bankster law firm will make millions for the job of watching them to make sure they really, really try to be good. You know, like if you support terrorists or break a terrorism law, you could also avoid jail, prison, pay a fine, and maybe a friend could get paid to make sure you try to be good for a few years (only if you are incorporate yourself as a bank or MNC first, though). And when anyone cares to look, every single bank that deals with every corrupt foreign leader will be found to launder massive amounts of loot, but that's for another day and another AG or US Attorney that wants to appear to do something before running for another office.
By the way, all those who would have and could have stopped this inside companies and the govt. are deemed "overqualified" and are purposely not hired and never get past screening software - but hey, they must be lazy and uneducated, right DC and media hacks? MSM can instead focus on tit-for-tat name calling between D & R politicians or who won ping pong in London. After all, why else would criminal organizations not hire people who care and have the skills when they could outsource everything and/or hire people who will just go along with criminal activities.
Double standards, hypocrisy, crony capitalism, the disappearance of the rule of law, outsourcing literally destroying our middle class but enriching our enemies and the politicians ignoring everyone who can see our destruction happen every single day - but who do I vote for, heads or tails, heads or tails? "No one" or "none of the above," or perhaps a good old write-in "They are all worthless."
I've seen a lot of unpaid or minimum wage paid internships where the task list and skills are a full bore senior responsibility position. This shouldn't be allowed. What we need are a slew of internships, but they have to pay them enough to make rent in the area! Internships and co-cops are awesome generally but this is exploitative.
Internships are the epitome of all that's wrong with exploitation of labor in these times (and now pause for business talking points that no one is forced to take these and it's a free market - yawn). I could buy a computer program that reads talking points in a TV or radio studio fed directly from the Chamber of Commerce for free and replace these bloated clowns. So they should really start worrying about how special and unique they are and why exactly they think they deserve to earn tens of millions of dollars, certainly an H-1B worker with mediocre English skills could do their jobs, and better.
Typical example of internship. A think tank in DC posted one (one of possibly 1,000,000/year I read that probably count towards "employment") that requires full-time hours from someone who already has a PhD (and the PhD debt) in hand, acting as a main researcher on projects the think tank is running, living in DC (one of the most expensive cities in the US), with no pay. How exactly does one do work the think tank gets credit/publicity for, work full-time hours, not get paid, and still pay for rent + food? You have to be rich and have the right family connections, have some savings and expect to burn through them to work for free, or be poor and expect to be homeless very soon to work for free. All in the Nation's capital with no promise of employment from anyone after!
Of course this is one of many, from media to local/state/fed. agencies to international businesses and law firms. Imagine, working for free, trying to survive, debt impossible to pay off, and the head of the organization or the dept. is making phone calls while getting paid $100,000 - $1 million while asking for more money for his bank account or making phone calls soliciting millions of dollars so that the organization can spend it elsewhere (e.g., NGOs and philanthropies) while purposely ignoring the unpaid interns. And complete silence from the govt. on this issue because it engages in the same madness and loves free labor.
Again, if millions of people work for free, there is no incentive to pay them. Just look at what happened with London security fiasco where they forced the unemployed to work for free, forced them to sleep outside in the rain, etc. all by a private contractor that the UK govt. hired. How's that for exploitation? Security risk?
That's why I amplify these particular graphs. While people nit-pit over the monthly reports, all of these graphs looking like "dragon monsters" rising to eat our livelihoods and economy.
The American Express lady summed up in one quiet sentence why globalization is evil.
"Those guys were telling me that they can support a family, hire a nanny, hire a driver, on the $10,000 that AmEx is paying them."
American workers used to be able to hire nannies and support a family.
But because OUR money is leaking into India instead of CIRCULATING in our country, our workers can't afford anything.
We wouldn't run a water system with half the water escaping into the ground; why do we run an entire economy that way?
The shift to part-time workers that can be used and tossed aside quickly with no benefits and at much lower salaries is the most troubling. If someone is lucky enough to work in the US, they can only count on part-time? The burden of benefits merely shifts to the worker and other taxpayers. Notice how the #s for part-time workers skyrocketed after 9/11 and the 2008 collapse. Triple the number of part-time since 2001? And how many of those are "part-time" despite working less than 20 or 10 hours/week?
That's in no way a good thing. This proves this has nothing to do with the talking points about "uncertainty" (about taxes, health care, which bribes to pay to which politicians, where to buy a third vacation home, Fiji or Tahiti, or about life in general that teleprompter readers and their guests like to spout). This spans 11 years, if a business "leader" or politician wants certainty for anything beyond the next 12 hours, I would expect them to retire immediately and take up shuffleboard, the stress and uncertaintly is much lower (along with the salary + taxpayer + shareholder provided perks they've enjoyed). Profits were recently at all-time highs, part-time employment is at all time highs, and business is good for American businesses' top echelons. They have no reason to change and have been getting away with this under both parties no matter who is in the Presidency, House, or Senate - they will not change.
The problem is that unlike Europe the US sends every child into a college prep curriculum out side of a very small number that have vocational schooling available to them.
College is not the end all be all option that it is sold as.
College costs like medical costs grow disproportionately to the economy because of Federal subsidies. Making it available to all has that side effect since as with Medicaid a false bottom is created.
Just sign here and the world is your oyster = the big lie.
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