bozo's return

Defending Paris and the Free Market

Last night on the tube I saw in someone else's Evening Standard the headline of an article:

"So have the free marketeers been proved wrong?"

Which reminded Bozo of a much loved witticism. Viz

"How many Frenchmen does it take to defend Paris?"

"Who knows, they have never tried!"

The one thing we learned from the crash and the credit crunch is that the market system we have been running in the West bears no relationship to a free market system. Any more than the Soviet system that collapsed in 1989/90 represented Communism in any real sense.

Let's go back to the Soviets for a second. Basically, everyone had a job, but people didn't always have food - still less tvs or gagdets or a free press. But the system could say - "Everyone has jobs!"

When the food went short - it wasn't the people running the system (let us call them the Apparatchiks) who suffered. Apparatchiks always  eat well and get limos to drive them down special lanes in the middle of the road. It is only the ordinary folk who actually suffered from Soviet systemic failure. The central system always paid whatever price was needed to be paid to preserthe system. And this system endured from 1917 to 1989 with only a few million victims of starvation or purge. It endured until the cost of military competition with Ronald Reagan made the last rouble of cash or credit just run out.

Whoa!! Wait a minute.

Let me get this right.

You mean when the system went wrong, the central government bailed out the system?

You mean that when the system went wrong, ordinary people suffered but the people at the top of the system didn't?

Surely thats the same system we have been running!!!!!!!!!!!!

Indeed erudite readers. Exactly the same.

We have no idea if the free market works - because we don't operate it.

Bear Stearns and Lehmans may have been allowed to go broke - but AIG wasn't. And if AIG had - well then so would half a dozen other investment banks (with Goldmans at the fore). Indeed - we are told that the reason AIG and RBS et al were balied out is to preserve western society as we know it. Right?

When Hank Paulsen was still at Goldmans he could have explained how the free market worked. That's why, as Secretary of the Treasury, he let Lehmans go down the loo. The market reaction to this scared ole Hank so he then decided the greater good involved making sure Goldmans survived.

The whole market - at this point in time was not saying "We are a free market, government must keep its hands off. The market will police our failures!"

Or if it was I didn't hear them - and nor did ole Hank. (Nor ole Gordon).

What I heard the market saying was:

"Give us money now! Or we won't get our bonuses! Er no, we mean give us money now or the whole fabric of western society will crumble into dust!"

Nowadays - whenever the subject of more stringent government regulation comes up the HSBCs of this world talk about moving HQ back to Asia. Why? So they can be free of course! free to be proper free marketeers! Until they need the tax payer to pay their losses and underwrite their bonuses again.

You can make a gazillion comments telling me Capitalism is superior to Communism.

You can tell me the western system has given more people more benefits than the Soviet system.

You can tell me more scientific and medical progress has been made in the Western system (and I will nod my head and say, yeah, military too - and wait till we start designing the enclaves we will need to build to protect the wealthy from the rapidly growing underclasses we have created).

You can tell me all that - and I will say but two things

1) Fine, its superior - but don't tell me its the free market - because in the free market the Federal Government doesn't own AIG or Royal Bank of Scotland "in order to preserve society as we know it".

2) The Soviet system worked too - until there wasnt enough money to bail it out any more.

I will let Abraham Lincoln say the third thing:

Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.

Feel free to spout that capitalism is superior - but don't tell me its the free market - not until 100 years after the banks return to private ownership.

The soviet system did not fail for any other reasons than that the pople stopped standing for it and the money to preserve it ran out.

When I read about JP Morgan's CIO (already long gone from our headlines) I am left wondering how long a "free" market full of such cowboys will take to repeat the whole crash. After all - if you keep doing what you have always done - you will get what you always got! And if we get another crash or two - I do wonder if the people will stand for it -and if the money will exist to bail it out again.

How familiar it all sounds.

 

Out of the mouths of babes...

As regular readers will know Bozo is a solid follower of the razor sharp philosophy of Hobbes (as in Calvin and Hobbes/ Bill Watterson).

Today I would like to highlight the wisdom of 6 year old Calvin in the 'toon published last Sunday online here.

With full acknowledgement to Mr Watterson let me share his wisdom (for those of you too lazy to click on the link), Calvin, whilst careering downhill on a cart with Hobbes, says:

It's true Hobbes, ignorance is bliss. Once you know things you start seeing problems everywhere and once you see problems you feel like you ought to try and fix them and fixing problems always seems to require personal change and change means doing things that aren't fun. And I say Phooey to that! But if you;re wilfully stupid you don't know any better and you can keep doing whatever you like!

The secret to Happiness is short-term stupid self-interest!

Hobbes interupts to say:

We're heading for that cliff!

Calvin Continues:

I don't want to know about it.

 

In a crumpled heap at the bottom Hobbes says :

I'm not sure I can stand so much bliss.

Calvin replies:

Careful, we don't want to learn anything from this.

 

Well surely it is entering the realm of patronising my well-read, well-educated, street-smart readers to point out the similarity of the whole 'toon to the behaviour of investment bankers?

Of course, there is a slight difference, the investment bankers float gently to earth on the parachute of immense bonuses leaving the hoi polloi to do the actual crashing.

But recent activity at JP Morgan clearly confirms that none of them want to learn anything at all from the last crash.

Rober Peston (many thanks and acknoweldgements to him) in his blog yesterday (to be found here) has actually found an investment banker who fulfilled the Hobbes role and told JP morgan their CIO was heading for a cliff.

His name? Bill Winters, former co-head of JPMorgan investment bank.

His warning?

• that the risks being taken by JP Morgan's Chief Investment Office were not transparent enough
• that it was a discreet trading operation answerable only to Dimon and whose deployment of the bank's precious capital could not be scrutinised by other senior executives

The result?

Well now you know why he is the former co-head. His warnings got him "pushed out of the bank in summer 2009" as Mr Peston puts it.

Yup he warned them three years ago and they echoed Calvin "I don't want to know about it!" and got rid of him.

Of course Jamie Dimon and Ina Drew have lost their jobs. But Jamie Dimon and Ina Drew are wealthy people who have benefited from bonuses generated by the CIO's activities for the past 3 years since the got rid of Mr Winters - so they will, I suspect, cope with this setback they will be floating gently to earth on their bonus parachutes.

Who will be lying in a crumpled heap at the foot of the cliff?

Interestingly, JP Morgan's employees are suing the bank for trashing their retirement funds. I hope they win - it will compensate them for the inevitable job cutbacks.

When JPM announces the rank and file redundancies remember where you read it first.

The reward culture challenge

The clever Mrs Bozo has set this challenge for the banking readership

Listen to what your reward is telling your people.

It is the clearest and loudest communication you have with them

It doesn't matter what you tell them about anything - their performance, prudence, rules, compliance, ethics -it matters what you tell them when you pay them (or don't).

Risk, Regulation and Relocation

Alliteration alive and well...

 

Some random thoughts from the Bozo on the subjects of Risk, Regulation and Relocation.

Starting at the end.

I read with a smile today that Stuart Gulliver has told investors that relocating HSBC back to Asia is postponed indefinitely. Of course there may be a myriad of reasons (SG cites "too many moving parts") but SG himself lives in South Ken (I mean who wouldnt! Bozo lived there himself for a while) and let's face it the convenience of a 10 minute limo drive to the corporate box at Stamford Bridge or Twickenham is a lot more alluring than Hong Kong - let alone Zug. And I would be unsurprised to learn that many of the senior execs at HSBC - as well as many of the traders have weektime pads with postcodes such as SW1, SW7, SW5, SW10, W1 (with of course two or three other addresses each too)... and much as you might whine about high taxation (which whilst you might be technically liable for -  you don't seem to actually pay anyway) and new regulation - none of you really want to relocate to Zug, or Shanghai, still less Beijing or boring old Singapore (hardly a tax haven itself).

So What about Risk - well I smiled when I read in last night's Standard that JP Morgan's losses are more like £4.4 billion than £2 billion. How very predictable. But it also raised an eyebrow because last night I also viewed a documentary on PBS called "Breaking the Bank" - it was about the financial crisis but focused very much on the experience of BoA/Nationsbank/whatever taking over M Lynch. Clearly they got screwed - and clearly goold old Hank (line Goldman's pockets) Paulsen gave them little option. But the funny thing was that some guru/insdier said:

"We nationalised the banking industry that day in September, and the man at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave is now the most influential man on Wall Street."

Really?

I alread blogged about how little Barack has done to reform the culture of Wall Street - but the fact is that his failure to do so means that it is not his fault that some dipstick egomaniac at JPM has set fire to another large chunk of economic growth - soon no doubt to be paid for by some massive redundancies among the ordinary working people of JP Morgan - it is the fault of the ongoing unchanged culture of Wall Street.

The tax payers of the western world (and I mean those who actually PAY taxes) have paid a trillion or several to bail out a banking system which is so unchanged that it is already showing signs of doing exactly what it was doing in the lead up to the last crisis - less than 4 years after the so-called nationalisation of the banking system!!!!

There is an old saying - if you keep doing what you're doing, you will get what you always get.

So why is anyone in banking surprised by what has happened at JPMorgan?????

Which brings me to ask what the big problem of regulation is. Why are you all so worried about regulation?

I mean, given what has been happening since 2007 it seems clear that regulation isn't preventing banks making fortunes - it will be preventing them losing fortunes!

But I already know the answer - and so do they - and so should the government - and all of you.

The truth of the matter is that this London Whale - and his boss, and the senior people surrounding them are all stinking rich from bonuses paid before these positions went south. They are none of them going to go to prison (unlike the bloke who nicked a pair of traders in the riots) and they are none of them going to be asked to pay the cash back.

Despite all the lessons the bonus culture continues despite all these lessons to say to traders:

"you keep the winnings, the shareholders or (better still) the tax payers, will take care of the losses."

So why is anyone surprised that the behaviour of traders is just as dangerously irrational today as in 2006/07???

There is no real believable indivdual downside to a trader from irrational trading behaviour. None. So why is anyone surprised when more evidence of it comes to light?

Regulation is not really the answer - it really isn't - the real answer is cultural change in banking. The real answer is prudent rationality. But we have seen so much evidence that prudent rationality is out of the reach of the people running the world's largest banks that regulation is left to be the only answer.

Prison might help ... not so much fun having a pad in SW7 and another beside Lac Geneve when you are doing a 5 stretch in Wandsworth sharing a cell with an armed robber.

And you may tell me no laws have been broken - and I will - as usual sigh  a long deep sigh and marvel at a society that will lock up an unemployed, uneducated, teenager for nicking trainers but has no lawas to punish highly educated, wealthy, privileged people sending the economy deep into the toilet for the sake of the ablity to buy another house and another car.

Sigh...

 

Politics, statesmanship, slavery

Let me give you one of my favourite political quotes:

"The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves and then we shall save our country"

Of course it could be about today. But it was Abraham Lincoln's congressional address in December 1862.

When there is a war going on that has slavery at its core, the word disenthrall has extr special connotations. But we are a society in thrall right now.

The staff at JP MOrgans CIO division (and probably not just them) are in thrall too. They are in thrall to money. To the making of it. To the worship of it. Because needing three homes and five cars is being enslaved to stuff. Because needing yet another £1,000,000 in bonus, when you get paid £1,000,000 and your bonus is already likely to double that anyway is the act of a junkie.

Here is another quote:

"Just because something is technically legal doesn't mean that it's appropriate. If I went around doing whatever I thought I could get by with, I'd be a slave to my whims."

That was St Paul writing to the Corinthians. He wasn't talking about making money. But he may as well have been.

I am not against money - it serves a purpose. I am not even againts the rich - the ones who actually pay taxes and give to charities also serve a purpose. But I cannot see how this so called more psoperous world we live in is really doing any good for any but the top 1 percentile of the wealthy.

Since the fall of the Iron Curtain, every year the gap in the west between rich and poor has got wider. Every single year!

And people say to me, "why does God allow poverty and starvation in Africa?" Well I think God provided us a world with more than enough resources to feed everyone. We just arent very good at distributing it fairly. And those people who ask me the question would be outraged if God;s solution was take some of what they have and give it away!! They feel God's solution should be just to create some more for the poor without taking any from the rich - just so they can feel better about having five cars and three homes and a £1,000 a week cocaine habit.

But there is an argument for a fairer society that ought to make sense to even the most rabid atheist.

The last time we had a recession this deep and long and in which the poor suffered all the pain and the rich just shrugged their shoulders was the 1930s. In which time poor people across large parts of the world became massively radicalised. The democractic governments had done nothing for them - so the lunatic fringe got a big look from the masses. So we had the atheist Hitler, and the atheist Stalin. And a war that killed millions upon millions of people.

We all look at documentaries about those times and ask:

"how could ordinary Germans support that lunatic?"

And I think the answer is simple: "What have the democrats given me except poverty and austerity and how come while i have all that to deal with, the rich get richer!"

We want to throw a rioter in jail for stealing a pair of trainers - but not one single person involved with the whole financial collapse of the world has ever been charged with anything. And we call that morality!

You may think France in 1789 is ancient history. You may think Russia in 1917 is ancient history. But ancient history is there to show the dimwitted what happens when the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

We are creating a society where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer and it doesnt matter who you vote for the same thing happens. [Thirteen years of New Labour saw the rich get richer and the poor get poorer!]

Let us be wise enough to see sense before we radicalise another generation of young people who see no benefit in preserving decent democratic government.

Let us disentrhall ourselves from the addiction to money for money's sake.

 

Not so much Outrage as Despair

So, it is a US Election Year - and i do despair.

Like many - I was rather pleased when Barack  was elected. Of course to a large degree what he had most going for him was that he was NOT George W.

regular readers will know that I was rather upset with him when he got all anti British and spent such a lot of airtime making political capital at the expense of BP - Or British Petroleum as he insisted on calling it.

 

That his outrage was insincere and totally political became oh so clear when Haliburton or American Haliburton as I like to call them) were found by US Courts to be equally liable with BP for the Gulf Oil disaster. Surprisingly we heard little from Obama on the subject. Not a single word in fact.

So we begin to suspect that he is just another typical US politician after all.

My one big hope was the statement he made in an interviews that "We have to change the culture of Wall Street."

This was a policy I could get behind.

And this is where I now feel so let down.

JP Morgan's recent trading disaster. For those of you who havent heard click here.

Looks like the culture change is pretty slow work huh Mr President?

In the Telegraph article it says that the first warnings about the activity of JP MOrgan's CIO deoartment were made in2007. That is (a) 5 years ago, and (b) just before the biggest financial meltdown in Global History. Yet, despite Bear Stearn's collapse, despite Lehman's collapse, despite the fact the only reason Goldman's still exists was the government bailout of AIG and the fact that theTreasury Secretary Hank Paulsen coerced AIG into paying out 100% of its debts and also made them give up the right to sue Goldmans. Of course Paulsen's previous job, as CEO of Goldmans had nothing to do with this, but I digress. Despite all that went on. J P Morgan did not rein in the CIO.

No far from it. The assets controlled by this bunch of cowboys has actually tripled since 2007 to $350 Billion.

So what has this got to do with Barack?

Well - unlike the last fiasco - it happened on his watch. And it happened after he promised change.

But what has he done to generate this change?

Zilch.

The core of his economic advisory team have always been the same academics who are paid fat consultancy fees by the financial services industry to keep the pedal to the metal on deregulation of banking and maintaining the open ended legality of the derivatives casino.

My favourtie case study in this regard is Larry Summers.

Larry worked on the Council of Economic Advisors under Reagan. Great start huh? He was a key economics man for Clinton at the time when Ole Bill was breaking down Glass-Steagal and allowing high street banks to join in the casino, putting depositors money at risk. My favourtie Clinto years story is then he and Alan Greenspan (another man asleep at the sub-prime wheel) joined in with Ken Lay of Enron to blame California Governor Davis for what Enron were doing to the state oif California!

The man is a total shill for the derivatives casino. Famously, at a symposium in which the Wolrd Bank presented a paper that said derivatives were making the financial world more risky not less, Summers sttod up and practically called them idiots. This was 12 months before CDOs caused the biggest depression ever known by the human race.

He is not just a shill though - he believes in this nonsense!!!  As president of Harvard University (it is his academic track record that theoretically qualifies him as un unbiased advisor to presidents) he persuaded the University to enter the Casino with its own money. By 2008 that little experiment had cost Harvard over $800 MILLION.

 

So why is Larry Summers a case study of how Obama let us all down in the refomr of financial services?

Well who was it who Obama hired as director of the White House National Economic Council?

Exactly.

Barack, I would be lying if I claimed not to be an expert on culture change - all my readers knw that is one of my fondest claims! But, even if you are NOT an expert on culture change, you kinda know that if you want to change the culture, hiring members of the Old Guard is not the way to go.

The fact is since january 2009, your main concern has been to be re-elected. And the banking industry floats a 10 digit amount of dollars in campaing contributions around the place, and you did not want to disqualify yourself from it.

The frightening thing, the seriously most frightening thing, is that the Republicans, especially the Tea Party versions ( and heaven forfend Sarah, the most unGodly Christian woman ever Palin!) of the Republicans represent a still worse option.

 

The USA is not the land of the free. It is the land where the rich run the show no matter who is in government and their influence on the global world is scary. It truly is.

 

 

 

Greek Philosophy

Interesting new from the home of Plato and Socrates.

The country that wants to spend the taxes paid by other country's citizens (because their own don't pay any) has voted for a party that has laying land mines on the Turkish border as its key stone policy!

Tosa stole crap.
Its an anagram of plato and socrates
And although not as polished as stole crap oats. It has more resonance don't you think?

Sent from my BlackBerry smartphone from Virgin Media

Outraged

I meant to blog this yesterday - but I had forgotten to update my typepad subscription!

I don't know what the Daily Mail had on their front page yesterday - why on earth would I? But while having my morning Espresso in my favourite coffee shop next to Twickenham Station I noticed the lead article in the Metro (you may think it a very tabloiu read - but it doesnt have the pompous and supremley rubbish writing to be found pouring from the editor's pen at City AM) that - the highest earners in our fair land pay less tax (as a percentage) than their cleaners!

Yes - that's correct - our millionaires are not paying the 50% tax rate they moan about - nor even the 40% tax rate - they are paying under 20%.

Now I know my dear friend "Bozo's Antagonist" has moaned on these very pages about high taxation. But I also know that he is actually paying the 40% rate.

I don't know about you - but to me, "outraged" was a good word to describe how I felt on reading this (certainly more apt than "surprised"). Outraged is a good Daily Mail kind of word too.

The Daily Mail - and its readers - would be outraged by benefit fraud. They would be outraged by illegal immigration. We know they were outraged by the riots and the looting. But are they outraged that those best able to contribute to rebuilding the country's finances (which were destroyed by high earners in the City - albeit with a bit of help from useless Gordon) - are in fact doing their damndest to make sure they contribute as little as possible???

While bankers make sure their tax bill is as low as possible, RBS (owned by the tax payer) is making those tax payers redundant at record pace and other City institutions are still paying massive bonuses to people who call their client's muppets and invest hours of meetings into debating not how they can add value to their clients endeavours or the country's wealth - but how they can shaft everyone in order to line their pockets!

Now Bozo does not condone or encourage rioting - or looting. But am I really the only person who understands that this country is FULL of pent up outrage at the two tier society that we have created?

You know when you put up taxes, those who (in theory if not practice) might suffer scream in pain and talk about leaving the country and setting up shop elsewhere. (To my mind Zug is welcome to them -especially as they don't actually payt their way). But, when instead of getting cash from the rich we are forced to make the already disadvantaged yet more disadvantaged what do we expect them to do?

Well that is easy, led by the Daily Mail we expect them to be compliant, we expect them to accept that the country is in a tough place and that suffering must result.

And, unlike the investment bankers, they cannot take their riches and leave.

But heaven forbid they should be upset or angry!

Well in the absence of rioting or looting - Bozo for one is going to be OUTRAGED!

And I hope you are too.

 

 

Us Mean-Spirited Christians

I know a lot of Bozo Readers struggle with the concept of God, let alone the worship of God. So You folk may as well stop reading now - this one is not for you.

Those of you who get the concept of God will understand that we believe He is in charge. He made the universe, the world and everything in it and us.

That means it is His world not ours [although he does give us control over it - an aspect of the deal I am sure He often regrets as He looks at the mess we are making of it].

That means we accept that it is His morality that rules, not ours.

Our society and laws [in this country at least] allow you to freely decide that your morality is more valid than God's.

But if you take this option and want to make your own judgements higher morally than God's. Why would you want to come into His house and celebrate your same sex marriage anyway?

The Times in its article on Saturday strongly implied that not wanting to celebrate same-sex marriages in Church premises was "mean-spirited" [I cannot imagine what Jeremy Clarkson is if we are mean-spirited].

It also implied that gays and lesbians are not welcome in Church. I cannot speak for every Church, but in all the Church's I know gays and lesbians are as welcome as I am. Because like me, they are sinners.

Like all of us they are sinners. As St Pauls says - all have sinned, all fall short of the glory of God. This means that all the Churches I have ever worshiped in are full of sinners!

Jesus died so our sins would be forgiven - not so that they would stop being sins and become "OK".

We go to Church to worship and adore God - to thank Him for His forgiveness and to ask Him to help us to stop sinning and stop making the sad mess of our lives that most of us achieve.

Any gay or lesbian is welcome to come with me to do that. And will be as loved by God as I am - and I hope, by His grace be as loved by our congregation as I am. We have all sinned. We are none of us better than you in God's eyes.

What we don't want to do, however, is celebrate our sin in Church.

If a bunch of us married blokes go down the pub and have a few pints and spend the evening lusting after the single women there - and then go and watch some porn we don't ask the vicar to hold a ceremony celebrating it!

We go to Church and place our sins before our very merciful God - and He forgives us. Anyone is allowed and weclome to do that. God will forgive any and all who believe in jesus Christ as Lord and saviour - no matter what they have done. And most of us have done plenty. Church is a place for sinners to go to confess sin and celebrate forgiveness.

I am not against same-sex marriage. I would happily go to one and have a great time. But God makes little secret of the fact that He thinks same-sex relationships are wrong. Forgiveness is freely available. Condoning is not.  So if you want to come into my Church at least have the decency to accept that even if His morality doesn't count for much in YOUR WORLD - at least let it still counts for something in HIS HOUSE.

This does not make us mean-spirited.

You are allowed to protest against BP's drilling of oil - but they won't let you do it inside the foyer of their St James Square HQ.

You are even alllowed to protest against parliamentary democracy (or the fiddling of expenses by MPs) but they won't give you permission to do it INSIDE the House of Parliament.

You can protest against the Monarchy - but they won't give you permission to do it in Buckingham Palace.

Live your morality - but if you want to celebrate in God's house - at least have some respect for His morality.

I think Christiians are a highly persecuted minority in our country these days. And we are so far from mean spirited about it.

We do not demand (like they do in Iran) that ours is the only religion allowed and sentence the preachers of other religions to death (like they do in Iran)

We do not demand (like many right-wing politicians in the US) that prayer in school is compulsory.

We do not even demand that the BBC stop showing programmes which have scripts that make use of our Lord and saviour's name in the form of a swear word!

You may notice that script writers don't disrespect the Moslem faith that way.

I cringe every time i hear a character on film or tv say J...C  in the same tone as they might say F..F..S.

As if using the Lord's name as a swear word is less offensive than the F word!

Offensive to who?

There is politically correct respect in this country for just about every religion in the world - except the worship of Jesus Christ as Lord and saviour.

If you want to tell our God that He is wrong, and that your morality is more valid than His - fine do it.

But don't do it in His house.

 

Broken Britain

You know - if I had a shop - I'd be pretty angry if a bunch of kids smashed the windows and nicked my stock.

Angry enough to want them locked up.

I think it is clear that moral values in Britain are deeply flawed right now.

The best recent example though is not an under-educated, unemplyed yobbo nicking a few pairs of trainers. It's the Secretary of State for Defence.

 

It really doesn't matter that security might or might not have been breached. (well OK it DOES matter - it's just not relevant to my point). What matters is that Mr Fox's moral compass is so skewy that he thinks it is Ok to take his best mate on a few jollies which serve to use the Secretary of State's position in global business and politics to provide a benefit to the image, reputation and deal-making abilities of someone whose only qualification for receiving such a benefit is that he is Liam's mate.

You may think that having safe streets is more important, you may think that looting is worse than using your political position to benefit your mates.

But I think if we have a society that condones one set of abject moral failure.

then we condone abject moral failure on every level.

If we don't have a new Secretary of State soon - then we have a government that had better keep its mouth shut about moral values.