The Manual

Enron and the cult of Emperor Worship

I have been reading a lot about Enron lately, and, recently watched the movie. (The smartest guys in the room).

I have also just started the adventure that is the Book of Revelations. Needless to say, Revelations has been freaking me out, and bemusing me more than somewhat (as Damon Runyon would have put it).

So I started reading stuff that might enlighten me about Revelations. Now I know what Dispensational Interpretation is, I have to say, I don't feel any better. However, when I read today about the Cult of Emperor worship I knew I had to blog.

I always feel pompous lecturing on Church history. I have been a Christian for five minutes, and it doesn't sit well on my shoulders to do that. BUT. All I know about communicating with people (which, by God's Grace is really quite a lot) tells me that assuming knowledge in your audience is a huge mistake.

So, if you really need to know how Roman Emperor worship worked and how it lay behind a lot of Christian persecution, wikipedia comes to our rescue, here and here.

That gets me off the hook on pompous lecturing.

So what has all this to do with Enron?

Well the movie has some pretty sordid tape recordings of Enron traders talking about how cool it would be if George W Bush made their boss Ken Lay secretary of energy. (he nearly did too, George W was a big Enron fan).

The Enron staff, the Enron shareholders, the business media, all practically deified the management of Enron.
Why?
Because they made money, and, let's face it we live in a society where money is worshiped.
We live in a world where earthly power is worshiped.

So there is Emperor worship all around us.
In China where the communist party hierarchy is not allowed to be criticized.
In New York, where no one could suggest that Enron were con artists ( until they were...)
and now we have Madoff. (If he has passed you by check here.)

What's my point?

Well in the first century Christian persecution was legalized by Emperor Worship. If Domitian was God, then Jesus couldn't be. It was easier, more lucrative and safer to worship Emperor Domitian and feed Christians to lions, than to give up profit and follow the Lamb.

Well look around you today!
There are many countries where Christian persecution today is every bit as deadly as it was 1930 years ago.
But even in the civilized west there is Christian persecution of a more subtle form.
The snide remarks, the jokes, the raised eyebrows.
We are told Christianity can't be right because there is no profit in it.
We are told Christianity can't be right because scientists have proved the world is more than 6000 years old.

All these other emperor-gods are worshipped so blindly.
Money
Science
Technology

"Technology is God, so Jesus can't be. Science trumps creation so the Bible can't be. I own 9 houses and have more money than i can ever spend, if i want the tree of life I will buy it"

In First Century Roman Empire you couldn't do business unless your Guild was affiliated with Emperor Worship. The Pax Romana was making free trade and money-making easier. The powers that be, and the rich, loved the enabler that was the Empire, so worshipping the Emperor became a smart move.

Worshiping God became dangerous.

And in 21st Century western life, it makes as much sense to worship the money that emerges from the Pax Americana, and to deifiy those whose gift is making money (or stealing it via fraud).

This isn't about our choice being hard.
Because we have made our choice - and thank heaven we made the right one.

It is about the wrongness of emperor worship for the non-Christian majority. Better by far to actually be atheist than to worship emperors.

Domitian was not God
The rulers of Enron were not God.
Bernard Madoff is not God.

History shows us that whenever the world gets to worshiping any of these emperors, then disaster beckons.

Only God is God and to him who overcomes he promises the tree of life.

We know what a good deal that is, the worshipers of emperors just don't get it.

See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ

Col 2: 8

Discipline? Well yes, one day...

I was listening to Radio 4, as usual, this morning.
Ros Altman, a former adviser to Tony Blair, and Jim O'Neill, chief economist at Goldman Sachs, discussed the Bank of England's decision to cut interest rates to the lowest level in 57 years.

I met Jim many years ago when he was at Marine Midland Bank New York (part of HSBC whose Frankfurt branch i was chief dealer of at the time).

Ros was propounding the view that low rates punished savers, and that, we had needed more savers in the past and that we got into this mess by imprudent lending and imprudent borrowing.

Good point Ros.

Jim, always a plain speaker was making the point that what we needed in the past was not relevant.

Well said, Jim.

I rarely say good things about anyone from HSBC - or Goldmans - for whom Jim now works, but, unsurprisingly, I found he spoke sense.

Here's the thing, Ros.

We do need savers, we need prudent savers, but to be a prudent saver, you need a job.
To be a prudent saver you need to have a house whose mortgage you can afford.

What we need now are safer jobs.
This means companies more sure of getting credit, and more sure that one or two folks might buy their products.

The Bank of England's current approach is right.

Jim said something fab about it being very English to worry about what we should do when we get out of this mess, when what we should be doing is whatever it takes to get out of the mess.

There is no doubt that Winston Churchill took steps that pretty much ensured that Britain was bankrupt after the war, and that our creditor, the US, would be handed on a plate, the dominance (economic and military) of the free world.

Bad boy Winston!
However, Winston at least ensured that he didn;t hand the dominance of the world tp Adolf Hitler.
Good boy Winston!

We learn in business (and in playing Puerto Rico) that you never have enough time and money and resources to do everything you want to do.

It will always make sense to solve the biggest problem first. Winston knew that. Winston was good in a crisis. He wasn't so clever if there wasn;t a crisis, but thankfully we had him when we really needed him.

Gordon Brown is not ever going to be Winston, but at least he too is solving the most pressing problem and not worrying about the others.

Ros, you ARE right, we need more savers in the future. We need a whole new culture, which values denial and waiting and discipline and not just instant gratification.
We certainly need a new culture in the City too.

But for now we need to survive. So I like the lower rates.

The manual does support Ros, and of course the manual supports prayer.
I think we have a better chance with prayer than we have with the Bank of England. But. Later let's try self discipline?

    No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.

Hebrews 12: 11

I suspect that little message is Pearls thrown to pigs, (Matthew 7:6) in the Big Brother generation, but we have to keep sowing seeds don't we?

2500 year old Proverbs still make sense

Proverbs 18:11

The wealth of the rich is their fortified city,
they imagine it an unscaleable  wall.

Matthew 5:19

Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.

God has been telling people for thousands of years that money doesn't make you happy.
Of all the temptations to leave the path of light, money has had the longest run of success.

Here in 2008 we sit in the ruin of the system built by the worshippers of Mammon, and yet Mammon retains his worshippers.

It's hard to understand. Of course, living in the marketing generation we should understand that Mammon advertises. Constantly.  God doesn't.

But, God did create a marketing department. Many years ago He inaugurated it with 12 people, but He told us all, through those 12 people, and the words and sacrifice of His only Son, He told US to be His marketing department.

As a novice Christian I feel the conflict between being passionately evangelistic and being one of "those" Christians who used to freak me out back in the days before the Holy Spirit jumped me. I am scared of preaching or ramming it down peoples throats - of casting my pearls before swine...I am sure more mature Christians feel that conflict too.

Well we are the only marketing God does, so let's not be shy ... let's meet the challenge of not being off-putting or fanatical, but let's do the job.

The secret of great blogging

... Is timing....I had spent about an hour today blogging about the mayhem in the financial markets, the greed that caused it, and related stuff. So when, a few minutes after I had finished I opened the manual and the following leapt out at me

Luke 3: 7-14

 John said to the crowds coming out to be baptized by him, "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our father.' For I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. The axe is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire."

 "What should we do then?" the crowd asked.

 John answered, "The man with two tunics should share with him who has none, and the one who has food should do the same."

 Tax collectors also came to be baptized. "Teacher," they asked, "what should we do?"

"Don't collect any more than you are required to," he told  them. Then some soldiers asked him, "And what should we do?"

      He replied, "Don't extort money and don't accuse people falsely—be content with your pay."

Sadly we need a few thousand other people to read that today, and every day for the coming months.

I really am not a dangerous radical who wants to destroy the very foundations of our society.

I am however beginning to question those foundations, because as a society we have lost sight of "fairness".

Now I don't want to lose sight of fairness. I just don't.  My friend Andy Heslop posted a comment the other week from my idol Winston who said that the free market system was a dreadful way to run an economy, but better than all the others.

It is also true that the Soviet experiment (I can't call it Marxism or Communism or Socialism) failed. Partially because actually we aren't all created equal.

We may not be equal. We may not deserve equal rewards. We may have different gifts and talents, and they may be assigned different values by society at different times. But what we should all be is treated fairly.
By society and by each other.

And the first thing is that the current market system is not fair. It is rife with insider trading for a start. Secondly the rewards are paid to the few, and the risks are carried by the many. Let me illustrate the risks and rewards a bit as we approach 2009:

The BBC news website carried an item today that said that redundancy will rise in 2009. It also (worryingly for Bozo) said that older workers would suffer most, as (rather unfairly) if you are over 65 your employer doesn't need a business reason to boot you onto the street!

My friend Robin (he of the rather clever oil price predictions) also emailed me recently to point out that City bonuses would still be £3 BILLION this year. I found an article that supports his theory here. (actually it was probably the source of his theory!)

So here's the thing.

There are a set of people in this world, whose greed, has led the world to the brink of a financial collapse that could have shaken our society past the crumbling of its foundations. These people could have levelled society far more effectively than a few outraged blogs by aging gurus like Bozo. They could have ended the world as we know it. And, aside from the fact that it was driven by greed and lacked all sense of moral or ethical value, it was also being bad at their jobs!

And the London City corps of that bunch of people will share out £3,000,000,000 next spring, for being bad at their jobs and almost ending the world.

That £3,000,000,000
could pay
£20,000
to
150,000 people next year.

People who haven't tried to destroy society.
People with families and mortgages.
And many of whom will be made redundant in 2009.

I think Andy Heslop, especially in the light of the Soviet failure is not wrong to say that the free market is better than the other systems.

But the manual still bears reading, because the sermon on the mount still represents the best system of managing a society that has ever been voiced.

Two quotes leap to mind:

    No one can serve two masters, either he will hate the one and love the other or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.

I don't think anyone would argue we have been serving money for many years. For obvious reasons. Like all false prophets it promises happiness sooner than heaven does. It has glamour and allure. It gets you in Hello Magazine. Which brings me to my second quote

In the sermon on the mount we are told that we can choose to be like:

    ...a wise man who builds his house on the rock. The rain came down, stream rose and the winds blew and beat against that house: yet it did not fall because it has its foundation on the rock.

It seems to me that following Money has made us more like:

    ...a foolish man who built his house upon sand. The rain came down the streams rose and the wind blew and beat against that house: and it fell with a GREAT CRASH

OK, I confess it was my idea to capitalise GREAT CRASH, but, seriously!

Still meaningful after all these years! I just think we need saving by someone other than Gordon Brown.

Forgive the presumption (please)

Can there be anything more presumptuous than a newcomer to The Manual commenting on it?

Well, perhaps not, and perhaps my comments are all old hat, and maybe deeply flawed. But I have recently discovered The Manual, and it is a source of incredible inspiration.

What amazes me most is that, as I write my blog, which focuses mainly on "Business Thinking", "Financial Markets", "Business Communications" and related subjects (unless there is a major sports tournament underway, when I generally get sidetracked), I keep finding common-sense statements in The Bible.

I am sure many of you take that for granted, having more experience of it than I do, but I am regularly amazed.

Today I read:

The wicked desire the plunder of evil men,
but the root of the righteous flourishes.

(Proverbs 12:12)

And I thought well the plunder is going down the toilet pretty fast.
So maybe it's a good time for the short sellers and the corporate raiders to reconsider the righteous man approach, after all a flourishing root has more value than a frozen Icelandic bank account doesn't it?

Who knows, it may catch on!