Harvard Business School: "Integrity" missing element of economics today

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Harvard’s Michael Jensen and innovative thinker Werner Erhard team for this paper: Putting integrity into finance: a purely positive approach

Abstract:
The seemingly never-ending scandals in the world of finance, accompanied by their damaging effects on value and human welfare, make a strong case for an addition to the current paradigm of financial economics. We summarize here our new theory of integrity that reveals integrity as a purely positive phenomenon with no normative aspects whatsoever. Adding integrity as a positive phenomenon to the paradigm of financial economics provides actionable access (rather than mere explanation with no access) to the source of the behavior that has resulted in those damaging effects on value and human welfare, thereby significantly reducing that behavior. More generally we argue that this addition to the paradigm of financial economics will create significant increases in economic efficiency, productivity, and aggregate human welfare. Because integrity has generally been treated as a virtue (a normative phenomenon) the actual cause of the damaging effects of out-of-integrity behavior are hidden, resulting in assigning false causes to those effects. This keeps the actual source of these damaging effects invisible to us. As a result, in spite of all the attempts to police the false causes of these damaging effects, the out-of integrity actions that are the source of these effects continue to be repeated. This new model of integrity makes the actual source of the damage available for all to see, and therefore to act on. Integrity as we define it (or the lack thereof) on the part of individuals or organizations has enormous economic implications for value, productivity, and quality of life. Indeed, integrity is a factor of production as important as labor, capital, and technology. Without a clear, concise, and most importantly, an actionable definition of integrity, economics, finance and management are far less powerful than they can be.
This scholarly treatment of being honest is a powerful contribution to those of us seeing the “normalized” economic culture of lying, cheating, and looting. The evidence presented in the paper is accurate for several current and damning financial scandals looting trillions, yet getting “slaps on the wrist” in “penalties” a fraction of the profits parasitized from the criminal dishonest behaviors. This is Emperor’s New Clothes obvious, with my Claremont Colleges academic papers documenting here and here.
Economic solutions documented by leading Americans since Ben Franklin

From my 2017 essay on Labor Day:

As a National Board Certified Teacher of History, Government, and Economics, as well as credentialed in Mathematics, the most helpful context I can suggest:

The US is an ongoing rogue state empire led by looting liars, continuing a .01% psychopathic drive documented in all modern history with curious similarities to tragic-comic Roman imperialism.

A 56-minute discussion focused on the following economic reforms from a four-part video series on the US rogue state empire:

US Department of “Defense” claims they “lost” $6.5 trillion of our taxed income ($65,000 per US household)

With full documentation here, US oligarchs target foreign nations for resources to loot (natural and human), and Americans to use as domestic work animals to parasitize. Excerpt:

Catherine Austin Fitts just published documentation of Department of Defense (DOD) official audit reports from 1998 that acknowledge “losing track” of $6.5 trillion, along with Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) admission of “losing” over $100 billion. This is euphemistically termed “unaccounted,” and literally means that DOD agrees they received these funds, agrees the funds are gone, and then claims to not have records of where the money went.

I wrote last year upon publication of DOD’s report. Of course, such “official” looting never happens with lawful accounting because records always show where the money goes. This would be like your bank agreeing they received a $65,000 deposit from you, agreeing the money was gone, and not refunding your account while claiming no further information of this “unaccountable,” “lost,” and “missing” money.

The most common historical explanation of governments “losing” money is, of course, embezzlement to enrich an oligarchy.

‘We the People’ owe $20 trillion to .01% demonocracy? Demand monetary reform & public banking for $1,000,000 per US household benefits, and .01% arrests for massive fraud to call debt ‘money’ OR kiss your assets goodbye

Demonocracy’s sharp 2 minutes of the tragic-comic mathematical certainty for a society that creates what is used for money as debt; just as certain as adding negative numbers forever causes only and always increasing aggregate debt until a system collapse:

We the People endure endless criminal actions under a .01% rogue state empire, with rhetoric by both political parties’ “leaderships” most accurately defined by bestselling Princeton Professor emeritus Harry Frankfurt as bullshit: the inversion of objective factual reality.

This can also be characterized as corporate media “covering” a “Big Lie” .01% crime with “fake news.” The great news, as usual, is that we have technical solutions to end all real problems. In this case, Benjamin Franklin is one of hundreds of America’s best and brightest who clearly document that monetary reform with public banking allows government to operate without taxes with abundant funding.

Most Americans are unaware that what they’re told is literally Orwellian inversion of the objective data. Given opportunity, here and now, to allow Dr. Franklin to walk you through this breakthrough available to We the People, will you invest close attention to the following professional documentation?

One of ~100 game-changing areas that We the People must recognize is that our .01% wanna-be masters loot us by the trillions every year, with the core of this criminal fraud by creating what we use for money as debt owed to them. The fraud’s core is to lie to us by calling debt/credit they create out of nothing and issue to us as so-called “loans” as money, when debt is the Orwellian opposite of money.

This financial crime is similar to:

Claiming our “retirement funds” pay for benefits to retirees when 95% is paid by taxes. For example, California’s ~$600 billion state retirement fund only provides a net income of $1 billion for the state’s $27 billion cost, while Wall Street “advisors” receive ~$2 billion. The total amount of such funds just in California is data-sampled at ~$8 trillion in surplus taxpayer assets ($650,000 non-disclosed assets per household).
The Clinton Foundation saying they fund “charities” when only 10% of the $2 billion they’ve received goes to charities.
The IMF, World Bank, US political leadership, and corporate media all claiming to “do their best” to end poverty while allowing ~ one million children to gruesomely slowly die from poverty every month.
Obvious solutions other than endure debt slavery and kissing our assets goodbye:

monetary reform
public banking
.01% arrests for crimes annually killing millions, harming billions, and looting trillions
Data, discussion of ~$1,000,000 benefits per average US household with monetary reform, public banking:

The top three benefits each of monetary reform and public banking total ~$1,000,000 for the average American household, and would be received nearly instantly. Fed Chair Janet Yellen publicly acknowledges monetary reform as described below, but continues a history of criminal fraud in her lawful fiduciary responsibility to truthfully provide what you’re about to read. The data below include evidence of a .01% oligarchy criminally looting tens of trillions of our dollars.

Monetary reform is the creation of debt-free money by government for the direct payment of public goods and services. Creating money as a positive number is an obvious move from our existing Robber Baron-era system of only creating debt owed to privately-owned banks (a negative number) as what we use for money. Our Orwellian “non-monetary supply” of adding negative numbers forever causes today’s tragic-comic increasing and unpayable total debt. You learned these mechanics of positive and negative numbers in middle school, and already have the education and life experience to conclude with Emperor’s New Clothes absolute certainty that accelerating total debt is the opposite of having money. As a National Board Certified and Advanced Placement Macroeconomics teacher, I affirm this is also exactly what is taught to all economics students.

The public benefits of reversing this creature of Robber Barons are game-changing and near-instant. We the People must demand these, as .01% oligarchs have no safe way to do so without admission of literal criminal fraud by claiming that debt is its opposite of money.

The top 3 game-changing benefits of monetary reform:

We pay the national debt in proportion to removing private banks’ ability to create what we use for money as debt in order to prevent inflation. We retire national debt forever.
We fully fund infrastructure that returns more economic output than investment cost for triple upgrades: the best infrastructure we can imagine, up to full-employment, and lower overall costs.
We stop the ongoing Robber Barons who McKinsey’s Chief Economist documents having ~$30 TRILLION in tax havens, and the Fed finding the US top seven banks creating shell companies to hide $10 trillion. This amount is about 30 times needed to end all global poverty, which has killed more people since 1995 than all wars and violence in all human history.
Public banking creates at-cost and in-house credit to pay for public goods and services without the expense and for-profit interest of selling debt-securities. North Dakota has a public bank for at-cost credit that results in it being the only state with annual increasing surpluses rather than deficits.

Top 3 game-changing benefits of public banking:

a state-owned bank could abundantly fund all state programs and eliminate all taxes with just a 5% mortgage and credit card.
a state-owned bank could create in-house and at-cost credit to fund infrastructure. This cuts nominal costs in half because, as you know, selling debt securities typically doubles the cost. For example, where I live we’re still dismantling the old Bay Bridge in NoCal from the upgrade that cost $6 billion, but the debt-service costs will add another $6 billion when it’s all paid.
CAFRs (Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports) stash “rainy day” funds no longer required with a credit line from a public bank. In addition, the so-called “retirement funds” currently deliver net returns of just a few percent on good years, and negative returns on bad years (here, here). California’s ~14,000 various government entities’ CAFRs have a sampled-data total estimate of $8 trillion in surplus taxpayer assets ($650,000 non-disclosed assets per household, among California’s ~12.5 million households).
$1,000,000 of benefits per US household:

California’s CAFR data of ~$650,000 of assets per household is evidence of huge cash assets of similar magnitude in every state.
Paying the US national debt of ~$18 trillion saves ~$180,000 per household.
Ending state taxes in California to pay a budget of ~$170 billion saves each household ~$15,000, with similar savings in every state.
~$30,000 per household savings annually: the American public would no longer pay over $400 billion every year for national debt interest payments (because almost 30% of the debt is intra-governmental transfers, this is a savings of ~$300 billion/year). If lending is run at a non-profit rate or at nominal interest returned to the American public (for infrastructure, schools, fire and police protection, etc.) rather than profiting the banks, the savings to the US public is conservatively $2 trillion (1). If the US Federal government increased the money supply by 3% a year to keep up with population increase and economic growth, we could spend an additional $500 billion yearly into public programs, or refund it as a public dividend (2). This savings would allow us to simplify or eliminate the income tax (3). The estimated savings of eliminating the income tax with all its complexity, loopholes, and evasion is $250 billion/year (4). The total benefits for monetary reform are conservatively over three trillion dollars every year to the American public. Three trillion is $3,000,000,000,000. This saves the ~100 million US households an average of $30,000 every year. Another way to calculate the savings is to figure those amounts per $50,000 annual household income (for example, if your household earns $100,000/year, you save ~$60,000 every year with these reforms). This savings represents a 60% raise for every US household’s income.
Related, if the ~$30 trillion hidden in tax havens by the .01% have $10-$15 trillion from Americans, and we count the Federal Reserve report that the US top seven banks have over $10 trillion stored, then the average US household could clawback ~$200,000 to ~$250,000.
Famous Americans already on record for these reforms:

Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and Thomas Jefferson,
President Andrew Jackson, famous inventor Peter Cooper,
New York City Mayor John Hylan, two House of Representatives Banking Committee Chairs,
Benjamin Franklin, William Jennings Bryan,
Charles Lindbergh Sr., 86% of Great Depression economists,
Please understand that I represent likely hundreds of thousands of professionals making factual claims with objective evidence anyone with a high school-level of education can verify.

The Emperor’s New Clothes obvious pathway out of these mechanics of our “debt system” is to start creating debt-free money (a positive number) for the direct payment of public goods and services, and create public credit for at-cost loans (a negative number). I have three academic papers to walk any reader through these facts; an assignment for high school economics students, one for Advanced Placement Macroeconomics students, and a paper for the Claremont Colleges’ recent academic conference:

Teaching critical thinking to high school students: Economics research/presentation

Debt-damned economics: either learn monetary reform, or kiss your assets goodbye

Seizing an alternative: Bankster looting: fundamental fraud that “debt” is “money”

Let’s examine just some of the facts of the current US economy that demonstrates its criminal status:

We’ve already documented how the global so-called “elite” 1% are now wealthier than the 99% while ~30,000 children die daily from preventable poverty in gruesomely-slow agony. Just 62 people on Earth own more than the bottom 50%.
The US .1% own more than the bottom 90%.
The top 20 Americans (.000006%) own more than the bottom 50%.
The top three public benefits of monetary and banking reform would add ~$1,000,000 to every US household. The lies of omission and commission by US “leaders” with legal fiduciary responsibility to communicate full and transparent economic data to never advise Americans of these options is a massive crime causing damages in the trillions of dollars yearly.
Our current system of creating what we use for money as debt has the so-called “developed” and “former” colonial nations $50 trillion in debt, and lying for public austerity rather than admit the option of monetary and banking reforms.
For Americans still zombiefied to “believe” in America, please embrace the reality that 40% of US children live at least one year of their lives in under-measured poverty, while oligarchs most responsible literally laugh in grandiose glee of the poverty they euphemise as “income inequality.” Please absorb this 1-minute reality check:

John Perkins’ 2-minutes of context as an illustration of what the US rogue state executes:

More game-changing economic data that confirm what we receive for economic leadership is literal criminal fraud:

decaying infrastructure getting uglier from “deferred maintenance,”
real unemployment near 25% with most families demanding both parents work longer and longer hours,
real inflation well above official reports,
US poverty of 20% among children, 40% for living at least a year in poverty,
72% of California students in schools with over half the children classified as “socio-economically disadvantaged,”
the annual interest payment of ~$450 billion for the US national debt is over four times the amount needed to invest for ending all forms of global poverty (~$100 billion/year for ~10 years).
a rigged-casino economy designed for “peak inequality,”
“too big to fail” banks demand public subsidies (so-called “bailouts”) while gambling with over $200 TRILLION in derivatives,
these “too big to fail/jail” banks deriving most of their income from subsidies and apparent market manipulations,
Daily and never-ending Orwellian criminal-complicit lies of corporate media.
US college Class of 2015 students average $35,000 in debt, with the total for 2015 graduates nearly $70 billion: more than ten times the amount from just 20 years ago. The average time to pay this debt is now 15 years (think paying until age 40).
half of US 25-year-olds live with their parents, more than twice the number from 15 years ago.
Over one million US college students are “Sugar babies”: selling sex as part-time employment. The UK has the same condition (here, here).
31% of US adjunct professors live in poverty.
15-minute video of obvious solutions: Mark Anielski and Ellen Brown’s powerful 15-minute response to an interview at the Seizing an Alternative conference (and here, with videos here) with former World Bank economist Herman Daly and co-author John B. Cobb of For the Common Good (video should start at 1:04:43):

81-minute interview with Byron Dale and Greg Soderberg of WealthMoney.org (the three of us have combined over 90 years of research on this topic):

Endnotes:

1) Of $60 trillion total debt, a conservative current interest cost of 5% is $3 trillion every year. Two trillion dollars of savings if the profits are transferred to the American public rather than to the banking industry is probably low. St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank: https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/TCMDO

2) The US GDP is ~$17 trillion. Three percent growth is moderately conservative.

3) Of the US Federal government’s ~$4 trillion annual budget, about $1.7 trillion is received from income tax.

4) Tax Foundation. Hodge, S, Moody, J, Warcholik, W. The Rising Cost of Complying with the Federal Income Tax. Jan. 10, 2006: http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/show/1281.html

Demand .01% arrests for Orwellian lies and crimes

Obviously, when the truth is rogue state empire annually killing millions, harming billions, and looting trillions, the foremost response for justice is public call for .01% arrests.

Obviously.

The categories of crime include:

Wars of Aggression (the worst crime a nation can commit).
Likely treason for lying to US military, ordering unlawful attack and invasions of foreign lands, and causing thousands of US military deaths.
Crimes Against Humanity for ongoing intentional policy of poverty that’s killed over 400 million human beings just since 1995 (~75% children; more deaths than from all wars in Earth’s recorded history).
Tens of trillions in looting, including $6.5 trillion just reported by the US Department of “Defense” as “lost.”
In just 90 seconds, former US Marine Ken O’Keefe powerfully states how you may choose to voice “very obvious solutions”: arrest the criminal leaders (video starts at 20:51, then finishes this episode of Cross Talk):

3-minute video: Police, Military – Was your Oath sincere?

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I make all factual assertions as a National Board Certified Teacher of US Government, Economics, and History, with all economics factual claims receiving zero refutation since I began writing in 2008 among Advanced Placement Macroeconomics teachers on our discussion board, public audiences of these articles, and international conferences (and here). I invite readers to empower their civic voices with the strongest comprehensive facts most important to building a brighter future. I challenge professionals, academics, and citizens to add their voices for the benefit of all Earth’s inhabitants.
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Carl Herman is a National Board Certified Teacher of US Government, Economics, and History; also credentialed in Mathematics. He worked with both US political parties over 18 years and two UN Summits with the citizen’s lobby, RESULTS, for US domestic and foreign policy to end poverty. He can be reached at [email protected]

Note: My work from 2012 to October, 2017 is on Washington’s Blog. Work back to 2009 is blocked by Examiner.com (and from other whistleblowers), so some links to those essays are blocked. If you’d like to search for those articles other sites may have republished, use words from the article title within the blocked link. Or, go to http://archive.org/web/, paste the expired link into the box, click “Browse history,” then click onto the screenshots of that page for each time it was screen-shot and uploaded to webarchive (blocked author pages: here, here).