JPMorgan has been found to have violated rules established by many different public commissions.  These violations have forced the big banks to admit to wrongdoing, which doesn’t happen very often.  The fines come in the wake of a trading scandal that resulted in $ 6 billion dollars lost.  The losses were attempted to be covered up by avoiding extra oversight and evidence of “unsafe and unsound” behaviour was noted.  In fact, at an earlier point in this case CEO Jamie Dimon sat in front senators that he could not publicly defend the trades.  At the point of his testimony all of the information still hadn’t been revealed.  Even with all this controversy the Dimon kept both his job as chairman and as CEO.  The malpractice that has been displayed by the traders of JPMorgan has put a wound in their reputation that will also affect the company greatly.

Some say that the fines on JPMorgan were excessive and purely political.  They reason that JPMorgan only hurt itself by these trading losses because they only lost their money and paying a fine for a self-damaging crime doesn’t seem right.  Also that previous crimes such as the Goldman Sachs subprime mortgage rates were actually defrauding the clients of their money still had a much smaller payout.

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links:

http://money.cnn.com/2013/09/19/investing/jpmorgan-london-whale-fine/index.html

http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2013/09/18/jpmorgan-london-whale-fine/?iid=EL

http://money.cnn.com/2013/03/14/investing/jpmorgan-senate/index.html?iid=EL

http://money.cnn.com/2012/06/13/investing/jpmorgan-jamie-dimon/index.htm?iid=EL

Smithfield Foods, a major producer of pork that has 46,000 employees across the globe has recently cut a deal to be bought out by Shuanghui International Holdings Ltd.  This is the largest takeover of an American company by a Chinese firm which including debt is valued at $7.1 billion.  Pork producing companies such as Smithfield foods have seen costs rise due to increasing inputs (eg. the corn to feed the hogs).  With these rising costs they have been unable to increase the prices as the demand for pork has proven to be highly elastic.

With the takeover many hog farmers are worried that this will cause a decrease in their sales.  Smithfield would purchase hogs from the local farmers but now many people are worried they might only slaughter their own pigs now.  Despite this bit of backlash executives have been very insistent that this takeover was good for the overall industry and Smithfield itself.  The share-holder vote for whether to let the takeover continue got 96% of the votes.  CEO Larry Pope had this to say about the doubts “The times for this company and the future, I think are very bright,” Pope said. “It’s the same old Smithfield, but better.”

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Links:

http://www.kcautv.com/story/23398003/local-pork-producers-weigh-in-on-possible-smithfield-foods-buyout

http://www.therecord.com/news-story/4122340-smithfield-foods-shareholders-approve-pork-producer-s-sale-to-chinese-company/

Even with Google’s extreme successes in business, evidence has come up that some of this success may be attributed to ethical violations.  According to nine plaintiffs google has been crossing a “creepy line” when it comes to the scanning of customer’s e-mails.  This puts them in violation of federal wire-tapping laws.  Google has put up a legal fight and claimed that the users agreed to these violations when they consented to Google’s terms of service.  These terms apparently state that users consented to having their e-mails read for the purpose of targeted advertising.  The judge did not agree with that statement and decided to let the lawsuit continue.

After reading the privacy policies myself it made me uncomfortable to continue using my gmail account.  It does not specifically state that google will scan your e-mails for targeted advertising.  The one quote from the terms of service that seemed to have any relation was under the heading “information we collect” in which Google says, “When you use our services or view content provided by Google, we may automatically collect and store certain information… This may include:… details of how you used our service, such as your search queries.”  With no other policies that even refer to any interception of information with regards to email I agree with US District Judge Lucy Koh that, “Nothing in the policies suggests that Google intercepts email communication in transit between users, and in fact, the policies obscure Google’s intent to engage in such interceptions,”

On a more happy note, Happy 15th Birthday Google!

Links used:

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/americas/2013/09/us-judge-allows-lawsuit-against-google-2013926213729988976.html

http://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/terms/

http://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/privacy/