Generational Dynamics Forum - New Site

Higgenbotham wrote: Thu Oct 08, 2026 10:11 am According to google search, I am the only person in the world who has used this phrase.

Higgenbotham wrote: Fri Oct 30, 2026 10:25 pm These quotes remind me of an interview with Nomi Prins a couple decades ago. She was asked what the concerns of her Goldman colleagues were with regard to the ethics of what they were doing during subprime and were they concerned with any fallout that would have resulted from that. She said the only thing on their minds was closing the next deal.

Nomi Prins worked in the upper echelons of the financial world as a managing director at Goldman Sachs and a senior managing director at Bear Stearns as well as a strategist at Lehman Brothers and an analyst at the Chase Manhattan Bank. During her time on Wall Street, she grew increasingly aware of and discouraged by the unethical practices that permeated the banking industry. In 2002, she left and has since become a journalist and writer and leading authority on financial and monetary systems. She is author of ‘Collusion: How Central Bankers Rigged the World’ as well as “All the Presidents’ Bankers: The Hidden Alliances that Drive American Power and ‘It Takes a Pillage: Behind the Bonuses, Bailouts, and Backroom Deals from Washington to Wall Street’.

From your experience within some leading international banks, what did you learn about the nature of the corporation?

The general theme is that all major multinational companies are driven by the bottom line. This means maximising profits and minimising costs. This might seem obvious but it permeates everything they do, the taxes they avoid, risks they take, and what they do in communities. I worked in four major international banks, and from the inside, upper management simply doesn’t care about how their activities impact the outside world.

For example, working at Bear Stearns in London in the 1990s, I was involved in a product that involved a major expansion of debt in emerging and corporate markets, looking at new ways to repackage and sell off or trade that debt, so that the bank could profit multiple times from a single bond. At the same time, activists with the Jubilee 2000 initiative, were campaigning on the streets, pointing to the dangers of these debts for needed investments in health, education and so on and looking to reduce the debt burden. But none of that mattered on a day to day basis within the banks anymore than current citizen demonstrations do, except in that they might move markets on any given day.

Corporations are also very much driven by short-term profit gain and how to translate favourable quarterly and annual results into higher share prices. In the banking sector, and most corporations, the higher up people are in the firm, the more likely they will receive part of their compensation in the form of shares, stocks, or options on an annual basis, so everyone cares most of all about what was made that year at the firm and how it impacted share prices. There may be internal meetings on five year-plans or products, but the whole of corporate culture is geared to those annual profits.

This shapes corporate culture, by increasing competition between departments and within departments with everyone wanting to get the most credit for what they are doing, so as to have it reflected in their year-end bonuses. I experienced this personally at Goldman Sachs in New York, where I was running a department expanding the credit derivatives market that would ultimately play a role in the financial crisis. I had worked on a successful deal with several internal groups made up of many pieces worth millions of dollars to the firm, and when I took the stairs to the next floor to let the head of the division, Lloyd Blankfein, know about my group’s role in the deal, I found a colleague from another department already there inside the office pretending it was their deal, so as to take credit for it. He ultimately rose to a very high level there.

Higgenbotham wrote: Thu Oct 22, 2026 5:06 pm I've talked pretty extensively here about what I call The 97th Percentile. In a high school class of 300, The 97th Percentile could ideally be characterized as those who ranked from roughly Position 4 through Position 15. They are those who do the work without question and strive to do the best job they can. You could spend somewhere between 4 and 12 years around these people and get a pretty good feel for who fits in at that level. If a teacher is an entitled goldbrick who teaches two classes while wasting oodles of taxpayer money, The 97th Percentile will fear, aid and abet him without question.

I'll get back to that in a minute.

That bring us to the point of the quote above from Charles Hugh Smith, "devote every waking hour to enriching the most avaricious few for their share of the loot."

This might sound a little harsh to some. It does to me. I mean, I know some of them are good people. At best, they probably didn't intend for their actions to produce that result. But that is what has happened, and at best they were too myopic to see the result. But that is in fact, in the big picture, the result that was produced.

Higgenbotham wrote: Sun Oct 25, 2026 11:47 am While the sentiment of Charles Hugh Smith is admirable, generational change is not about people willfully and proactively adopting a new set of values. For the vast majority, it's about being shocked to the core by generational panic first. The change comes after that.

Higgenbotham wrote: Thu Oct 29, 2026 6:18 pm People are occupied with current concerns. They have many and it doesn't seem the coming global food crisis is on the radar.

aedens wrote: Wed Aug 06, 2014 7:03 pm Time will enact a common price as they are consumed by todays wisdom. Same as it ever was.

aedens wrote: Thu Oct 29, 2026 6:27 pm Well we only got a head start from 2019 and they will learn its not different this time.

aedens wrote: Wed Aug 06, 2014 7:03 pm Time will enact a common price as they are consumed by todays wisdom. Same as it ever was.

Higgenbotham wrote: Thu Oct 22, 2026 5:06 pm When I talk to someone like the good professor...I sometimes probe around the edges a bit to see where their minds are at...

...I also discussed things people can do in retirement with an emphasis on the fact that anything anyone can do in retirement as far as income goes outside of their area of expertise strictly falls into the category of being a hobby unless the world changes radically from what it is at present. I said, for example, someone can garden as a hobby, but that will never be anything more than that unless supply chains radically change from what they are. I said it's not like gardening in present conditions is going to result in an income of $20 per hour or higher. Maybe you get more nutritious food, but that's about it. He enthusiastically agreed with all of that but had no comments.