After much deliberation I’ve decided it: out of all the brands of multiple products in the market, Nike gets me.
Here’s a recent viral video they made for the new Nike+ Fuelband (you will see from recent posts that I just got the GPS Sportswatch and prior to that used Nike+ on my iPod). It’s a great video!
Worth every penny. It’s awesome.
…and to be bound by the Thunderbird Oath of Honor.
Thank you, President Cabrera.
Here is a link to my latest article on AQBlog, titled “Religious Awakening in Mexico and the Pope’s Visit” , published on March 22th, 2012. Please feel free to visit and comment. Here is a verbatim copy of it in case you prefer to read it on my personal blog, though I recommend actually going to the site because of additional content, other blogger’s articles, etc.
—-
Pope Benedict XVI’s first visit to Mexico will begin on March 23 but unlike his predecessor, Benedict will not feel as comfortable calling Mexico siempre fiel—and so hopefully some of his agenda will include discussion on religious diversity.
Pope John Paul II called Mexico “forever faithful” in 1990 due to Catholicism being the dominant faith in the country. However, rising popularity of other religions and the emergence of atheist and agnostic thought in the country could very well be pushing Mexico to a tipping point, leading to question the favored role Catholicism plays in sociopolitical life.
To this day, many large companies in Mexico (national and international) hold posadas, celebrate Christmas and observe other Catholic holidays such as Easter. Some even hold mass within their facilities to kick off special events. On the flip side, there are very few companies in Mexico that observe Yom Kippur or Ramadan. It is still a commonplace human resource practice to ask potential employees what their religion is during recruitment and—though none will publicly accept it—religion still plays a criteria in actual talent selection (otherwise, why would they ask about it?). This, by the way, is illegal under Article 3 of the Federal Labor Law.
Catholicism is not just favored in the private sector. During the first weeks of December and leading up to the 12th (Day of the Virgen de Guadalupe) Catholics are not only allowed to march on some of the busiest streets in the cities as part of their pilgrimage while causing transit chaos, they are even escorted by public officials to guarantee their safety. This is a nicety not usually awarded to other faiths and it is funded by taxes paid for by people of all faiths.
In Monterrey, people who park in unauthorized spaces close to a Catholic church on Sunday seldom get a ticket and, in the municipality of San Pedro, traffic officials stop cars in order to let the faithful cross the street to and from mass. This is the same municipality which in 1996 famously repealed (without clear legal justification) a permit given to the Mormon Church to build a temple next to a Catholic school. The Mormons were then left with the only option of establishing it in the outskirts of the metropolitan area.
This differentiated treatment expected and accepted for and by many Catholics, is usually justified through statements such as “95 percent of the country is Catholic so it is ok to favor them” or the less defensive “this special treatment doesn’t hurt anyone. It doesn’t really matter.”
But religious intolerance does hurt society and becomes even more relevant when a critical mass of it is affected. When my taxes are being used to protect and legitimize a group of people who block an avenue not because they are participating in some form of social protest but just so they can practice their faith, it matters. Every time somebody gets a parking ticket for breaking the law but a Catholic doesn’t because public officials look the other way if the offender is on their way to Sunday mass, it matters.
Moreover, according to the 2000 census the percentage of Mexican Catholics was not 95 percent, but actually 76.5 percent and rapidly dropping. It would be a conservative assumption to think that today at least 30 percent of the population is not Catholic—so when a governmental action disregards or minimizes the beliefs of more than 33 million people in the country, it certainly does matter.
It is understandable that Mexican Catholics would want to hold on to this favored position (who wouldn’t?) but for the sake of social wellbeing, they need to come to terms with the fact that Mexico can no longer be thought of as “a Catholic country.” Forward-thinking companies and government agencies would do well in recognizing that they need to start revising the assumptions under which they operate and evolve their practices in order to become more inclusive. The non-Catholic groups and their rights cannot and should no longer be ignored.
This was published today bythe NYTimes. An interesting Op-Ed “artilcle”/resign letter by Goldman Sachs Executive Director worth discussing:
TODAY is my last day at Goldman Sachs. After almost 12 years at the firm — first as a summer intern while at Stanford, then in New York for 10 years, and now in London — I believe I have worked here long enough to understand the trajectory of its culture, its people and its identity. And I can honestly say that the environment now is as toxic and destructive as I have ever seen it.
To put the problem in the simplest terms, the interests of the client continue to be sidelined in the way the firm operates and thinks about making money. Goldman Sachs is one of the world’s largest and most important investment banks and it is too integral to global finance to continue to act this way. The firm has veered so far from the place I joined right out of college that I can no longer in good conscience say that I identify with what it stands for.
It might sound surprising to a skeptical public, but culture was always a vital part of Goldman Sachs’s success. It revolved around teamwork, integrity, a spirit of humility, and always doing right by our clients. The culture was the secret sauce that made this place great and allowed us to earn our clients’ trust for 143 years. It wasn’t just about making money; this alone will not sustain a firm for so long. It had something to do with pride and belief in the organization. I am sad to say that I look around today and see virtually no trace of the culture that made me love working for this firm for many years. I no longer have the pride, or the belief.
But this was not always the case. For more than a decade I recruited and mentored candidates through our grueling interview process. I was selected as one of 10 people (out of a firm of more than 30,000) to appear on our recruiting video, which is played on every college campus we visit around the world. In 2006 I managed the summer intern program in sales and trading in New York for the 80 college students who made the cut, out of the thousands who applied.
I knew it was time to leave when I realized I could no longer look students in the eye and tell them what a great place this was to work.
When the history books are written about Goldman Sachs, they may reflect that the current chief executive officer, Lloyd C. Blankfein, and the president, Gary D. Cohn, lost hold of the firm’s culture on their watch. I truly believe that this decline in the firm’s moral fiber represents the single most serious threat to its long-run survival.
Over the course of my career I have had the privilege of advising two of the largest hedge funds on the planet, five of the largest asset managers in the United States, and three of the most prominent sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East and Asia. My clients have a total asset base of more than a trillion dollars. I have always taken a lot of pride in advising my clients to do what I believe is right for them, even if it means less money for the firm. This view is becoming increasingly unpopular at Goldman Sachs. Another sign that it was time to leave.
How did we get here? The firm changed the way it thought about leadership. Leadership used to be about ideas, setting an example and doing the right thing. Today, if you make enough money for the firm (and are not currently an ax murderer) you will be promoted into a position of influence.
What are three quick ways to become a leader? a) Execute on the firm’s “axes,” which is Goldman-speak for persuading your clients to invest in the stocks or other products that we are trying to get rid of because they are not seen as having a lot of potential profit. b) “Hunt Elephants.” In English: get your clients — some of whom are sophisticated, and some of whom aren’t — to trade whatever will bring the biggest profit to Goldman. Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t like selling my clients a product that is wrong for them. c) Find yourself sitting in a seat where your job is to trade any illiquid, opaque product with a three-letter acronym.
Today, many of these leaders display a Goldman Sachs culture quotient of exactly zero percent. I attend derivatives sales meetings where not one single minute is spent asking questions about how we can help clients. It’s purely about how we can make the most possible money off of them. If you were an alien from Mars and sat in on one of these meetings, you would believe that a client’s success or progress was not part of the thought process at all.
It makes me ill how callously people talk about ripping their clients off. Over the last 12 months I have seen five different managing directors refer to their own clients as “muppets,” sometimes over internal e-mail. Even after the S.E.C., Fabulous Fab, Abacus, God’s work, Carl Levin, Vampire Squids? No humility? I mean, come on. Integrity? It is eroding. I don’t know of any illegal behavior, but will people push the envelope and pitch lucrative and complicated products to clients even if they are not the simplest investments or the ones most directly aligned with the client’s goals? Absolutely. Every day, in fact.
It astounds me how little senior management gets a basic truth: If clients don’t trust you they will eventually stop doing business with you. It doesn’t matter how smart you are.
These days, the most common question I get from junior analysts about derivatives is, “How much money did we make off the client?” It bothers me every time I hear it, because it is a clear reflection of what they are observing from their leaders about the way they should behave. Now project 10 years into the future: You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that the junior analyst sitting quietly in the corner of the room hearing about “muppets,” “ripping eyeballs out” and “getting paid” doesn’t exactly turn into a model citizen.
When I was a first-year analyst I didn’t know where the bathroom was, or how to tie my shoelaces. I was taught to be concerned with learning the ropes, finding out what a derivative was, understanding finance, getting to know our clients and what motivated them, learning how they defined success and what we could do to help them get there.
My proudest moments in life — getting a full scholarship to go from South Africa to Stanford University, being selected as a Rhodes Scholar national finalist, winning a bronze medal for table tennis at the Maccabiah Games in Israel, known as the Jewish Olympics — have all come through hard work, with no shortcuts. Goldman Sachs today has become too much about shortcuts and not enough about achievement. It just doesn’t feel right to me anymore.
I hope this can be a wake-up call to the board of directors. Make the client the focal point of your business again. Without clients you will not make money. In fact, you will not exist. Weed out the morally bankrupt people, no matter how much money they make for the firm. And get the culture right again, so people want to work here for the right reasons. People who care only about making money will not sustain this firm — or the trust of its clients — for very much longer.
Dear John Lennon,
So things have drastically changed since you were roaming around the streets of New York and I feel it’s about time that I write to you and let you know that we need you to get back here and finish what you started. It just hasn’t been the same without you.
After a huge lull period where youth simply gave up and decided to become part of the broken rat race system (we called that the 90s and pretty much carrying on until 2008), we now see a weird cuasi rebellious group raising their voice to speak out against that which is unfair and inherently wrong in society. Well, not really. For some reason, young people no longer raise their voices to speak out against or for something. It’s become a lot simpler… now they “Like” and “Share” things they feel passionate about for around 5 minutes and then it’s on to the next thing.
The face of idealism changes faster than Mitt Romney’s mind. Oh wait, you don’t know who Mitt Romney is. In sum, he’s a pompous asshole who thinks he can oust the current black US president. Yes, if you can believe it, a black guy made it to Penn 1600 and he didn’t do it by way of your pals at the Black Panther Party for Self Defense.
Anyways John, I’m kind of getting off subject here. I was telling you about today’s hope for a better tomorrow. They’re not as lazy as my generation but they are pretty close. But now they have the social media tools to make them build up a cloud of smoke through which they can feel good because they “support” something onerous. Again, the concept of supporting and becoming involved is nothing like when you were around. The movement is virtual in developed and developing countries. The only difference is that where in developing countries social media technology has become a habilitator and facilitator for social movement, in the developed world, it’s made people feel proud about “changing the world” by being couch potatoes and for the most part. doing nothing of real relevance or significance.
We lacked the spirit to raise our voices so we did the inexplicable: we shut up. But hey, at least we were honest about it. Your generation believed in symbols. Mine became a symbol of conformity. The next one copy-pastes symbols on their little bit of virtual reality and feels they’ve stopped the world’s injustices.
They’re ready to be inspired, John. But they need something or someone to inspire them by not trying to sell them a product as opposed to pushing an idea and breaking the boundaries of social awareness. They need you.
And for that matter, your wife needs you BAD. I’m telling you buddy, Yoko has been getting weirder and weirder ever since they came out with that Twitter thing. You know I love you and would never say anything mean to you about your choice of women but it is because I love you that I have to be honest and say: bitch’s gone off the reservation, man.
So you see, you’ve got to figure out a way to get back here and sort these people out (both the youth generation and Yoko). That asswipe Justin Bieber just ain’t cutting it, man.
Talk to you soon,
Arjan
Happy International Women’s Day
Here is a link to my latest article on AQBlog, titled “Mexico’s Presidential Race: Running on Air” , published on Feb. 15th, 2012. Please feel free to visit and comment. Here is a verbatim copy of it in case you prefer to read it on my personal blog, though I recommend actually going to the site because of additional content, other blogger’s articles, etc.
—-
The stage is finally set for the presidential race between Josefina Vázquez Mota (PAN), Andrés Manuel López Obrador (PRD/PT) and Enrique Peña Nieto (PRI/PVEM). What is about to unfold in the coming months is a barrage of party propaganda and news media stories designed to pull the undecided electorate toward one or the other candidates, but the actual content of the messages will surely show the lack of political consciousness in Mexico.
The product of a school system in crisis, a large portion of Mexico’s constituency is comprised of uneducated voters. Moreover, for those lucky enough to have gone through formal schooling, two essential things are missing: development of a widespread civic/political culture and embedding the capacity for critical thinking. With regard to elections, Mexicans’ decisions have traditionally been based on a simplistic understanding of what candidates represent, if we like the way they talk and even their looks.
A very young and sensationalist media also works against the creation of a politically informed voter base. Mainstream newspapers and TV networks are more interested in covering and making fun of the latest verbal gaffe by one of the candidates than really doing an in-depth analysis of the actual platforms they are running on. And the worst part is some of the current candidates have caught wind of this so their campaign focus will be less on substance and more on giving the media what they want in order to get more exposure. A secondary concern is the actual proposals and solutions to the country’s biggest challenges.
Of the three candidates, the only one who has provided public discourse with a somewhat clear and consistent direction is López Obrador. To be fair, his campaign is six years ahead of the other two but that doesn’t excuse the fact that Vázquez and Peña have been unable to effectively communicate what they stand for and what their governments would seek. They might not even be trying to do this, as they’ve found they can try to win the election through other strategies.
Today we know that López Obrador opposes the neoliberal model and his macroeconomic policies are less focused on healthy management of public debt and more on building infrastructure. In his presidency, public spending would likely go up via populist programs, less worried about sustainable finance (the way his administration ran Mexico City). We know he opposes the military’s involvement in the war on drugs and gang-related violence, though we are not yet clear on his proposal for an effective alternative. Because he includes it in his rhetoric, we are clear on his views on supporting the agricultural sector and the ever-pervasive and violent SME (Sindicato Mexicano de Electricistas), a union which represents employees of a public company that doesn’t exist anymore. His foreign affairs policies would likely skew away from the globalization dynamic and steer more toward regional bloc building with Latin America. Somewhat ironically, being open about his platform has done very little to help AMLO gain support. According to a recent poll, his numbers have been stagnant since October 2011 despite heavy campaigning.
Josefina Vázquez Mota will use her political background and take advantage of the gender-role dynamics to position herself as the modern, socially-focused candidate. We will likely see her include education and jobs as the cornerstones of her campaign but her views on the economic model might only be inferred from her allegiance to the PAN party. On her official website, the closest thing to an actual political platform is an invitation to build a national plan through social inclusion and civil participation. Her public appearances follow suit, with statements on how we must build the nation together but lacking substance. Vázquez’ popularity has recently jumped in the polls, catapulting her as the viable alternative for voters who wish to keep the PRI from coming back to power and (at least for now), relegating López to a distant third place position. Her role in the race is being questioned by the media not for her position on any of the issues but by raising the question “is Mexico ready for a woman to be President?”
The leading candidate is still Peña Nieto but his numbers have been on a tailspin due to a series of statements that validate López’ criticism against him for being a “product” or “junk food” candidate. Of the three, Peña is the one whose positions on anything are still a complete mystery. His public speeches have been empty and unclear. Besides representing the return of PRI to power, Mexicans have no idea what he stands for or his value proposition. He apparently opposes the ruling party’s recent administration but his platform called “An Effective State” provides nothing new, different or innovative that has not already been pushed forward by Calderón’s administration.
Why is Peña leading in the polls? Because Mexicans do not vote based on substance. Part of his popularity might be attributed to people disappointed of the PAN alternative looking back to the PRI and thinking “we were better off back then.” Add to this Peña’s good looks and his marriage to a soap opera star which helped him gain points early on in the race. However, Peña is running out of fuel and has nothing with which to fill the tank. Until he proves otherwise, Peña is the candidate “running on empty” as López has pointed out. The possibility of either Vázquez or López catching up, is still very much on the table.
It’s too late for this presidential race, but if Mexicans are to make the right decisions in elections to come, we must invest in creating a better informed and politically conscious voter base and we can’t expect the political elite to do it for us. It’s easier for them to run on personal popularity.
*Arjan Shahani is a contributing blogger to AmericasQuarterly.org. He lives in Monterrey, Mexico, and is an MBA graduate from Thunderbird University and Tecnológico de Monterrey and a member of the International Advisory Board of Global Majority—an international non-profit organization dedicated to the promotion of non-violent conflict resolution.
Se ve interesante y tengo interés en ir al cine para conocer más del documental. Una observación sin embargo: veo que es dirigida por Carlos Loret de Mola y por lo menos en el trailer considero que hay un elemento importante faltante en el análisis: el rol de los medios (particularmente la televisora para la que él trabaja) en estupidificar a nuestra población y proveerla de entretenimiento basura. Ojalá dentro del documental se incluya este componente.
¿Vamos al cine?
ArjanShahani.com 