Back in the year 2000 – shortly before 9/11, way before the invasion of Iraq, and way-way before the collapse of the global credit system – a serious debate raged. The central question was a profound one.

“Which economy are we in?”
Good question. What’s everyone think?

The year 2000 was the backside of the dot.com bubble, still bloated and ready to burst. Money flowed, valuations were generous, VC-backed investments were the rage, technology was everything, more people had more than they had ever had before. Which, I guess, meant people had lots of free time to think about exactly which economy they were enjoying so much.

Pundits said we were in the midst of the Internet economy, the technology economy, the Silicon-Valley economy, the dot.com economy, the wired economy – and the big kahuna of them all – the new economy. My personal favorite is the new economy – because it made so little sense, as if the all too human drivers of economic sustainability took a permanent vacation. Plus, the moment you anoint a new economy, it starts becoming an old economy. And as we are painfully learning today, sometimes an old economy can become barely an economy at all.

“So, again, what economy is this today ?
My answer is the same as it was in 2000. This is the Performance Economy.
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By STEPHANIE FIERMAN

“Optics,” in Wall Street parlance, means how something looks or appears on its face (without a lot of detail).

It’s ironic that the phrase originates in the investment community – because said community seems particularly blind to the topic and its power.

I submit to you the following:

1. AIG used taxpayer money on sales retreats, replete with spa treatments. After getting pilloried in the press for such profligacy, the firm went ahead and used more taxpayer money on deferred comp for the top 5% of its executives. Earth to AIG, come in AIG…

2. The CEOs of GM, Chrysler and Ford flew to Washington DC in private jets this week to plead for a bailout. The Washington Post labeled this a case of “stone-cold tone-deafness.”

3. James Cayne, the former CEO of Bear Stearns, was busy playing bridge in Tennessee without a cell phone or Blackberry while the financial community struggled to save (or sell) his firm.

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The following piece appeared in HR Leaders

By JARVIS CROMWELL

Sure, trust is “topic A” among the pundits and in many respects it’s turning out to be one of the defining issues of the emerging century.

No news there. What is getting less attention is that the current state of low-trust is not confined to the financial markets. Public distrust in big business, Congress, even not-for-profits, reached its lowest ebb in a century… and not this past year, but back in 2002. In writing about how striking a finding this was for business results at that time, the Roper Organization grimly noted:

“It is unprecedented to see this many people with an unfavorable opinion of big business.”

For HR professionals, low-trust must now become a central issue in shaping human capital strategies, employee engagement and corporate performance initiatives. Continue Reading