PHI 2070 coming soon to a classroom near you

Should “ahimsa” rule the world? Can “nothingness” exist? Is evil good? Is God “in the excrement”? Why “miracle” is just a metaphor for the containment of power. Does “reincarnation” mean to change one’s personality? Did the Chinese invent pragmatism? How “koan” can change your life (and your idea of poetry). What’s Bodhidharma’s mindless mind? Why losing is not always losing and winning not always winning. Can “bravery” consist in dying? Why to destroy is to transform (careful! only for gods!).

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For this Summer A session, I'm teaching PHI 2070 (Eastern Philosophy). In case you're interested.

Help-Wanted for Fraud Investigations

In the NYTimes: Recently, the FBI announced that the number of open mortgage-fraud investigations was more than 1,600 at the end of fiscal 2008, which ended Sept. 30, compared with 881 two years earlier. In addition, 530 corporate-fraud investigations were open, it said.

A hero of the breed recently emerged in the form of Harry Markopolos, who repeatedly warned the Securities and Exchange Commission that Bernard L. Madoff was running a giant Ponzi scheme at the expense of investors. Mr. Markopolos, who was working for an investment company when he started looking into Mr. Madoff’s activities, left in 2004 to start his own investigation firm. Although the S.E.C. did not act on Mr. Markopolos’s warnings, he has helped ease the way for investigators in his wake who may suspect various “mini-Madoff” scandals and other types of fraud.

Wiki/Topics Chapters 6-8

Informed consent
Polygraph test: Despite claims of 90% - 95% reliability, critics charge that rather than a "test", the method amounts to an inherently unstandardizable interrogation technique whose accuracy cannot be established. A 1997 survey of 421 psychologists estimated the test's average accuracy at about 61%, a little better than chance.[18] Critics also argue that even given high estimates of the polygraph's accuracy a significant number of subjects (e.g. 10% given a 90% accuracy) will appear to be lying, and would unfairly suffer the consequences of "failing" the polygraph. In the 1998 Supreme Court case, United States v. Scheffer, the majority stated that "There is simply no consensus that polygraph evidence is reliable" and "Unlike other expert witnesses who testify about factual matters outside the jurors' knowledge, such as the analysis of fingerprints, ballistics, or DNA found at a crime scene, a polygraph expert can supply the jury only with another opinion...
Personality test
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Conflict of interest
Insider trading: For example, illegal insider trading would occur if the chief executive officer of Company A learned (prior to a public announcement) that Company A will be taken over, and bought shares in Company A knowing that the share price would likely rise.
Trade secret: a trade secret is information that: 1- is not generally known to the public; 2- confers some sort of economic benefit on its holder (where this benefit must derive specifically from its not being generally known, not just from the value of the information itself); 3- is the subject of reasonable efforts to maintain its secrecy.
Bribe: a form of pecuniary corruption, is an act implying money or gift given that alters the behaviour of the recipient. Bribery constitutes a crime and is defined as the offering, giving, receiving or soliciting of any item of value to influence the actions of an official or other person in discharge of a public or legal duty. The bribe is the gift bestowed to influence the recipient's conduct.
Whistleblowing

Political pressure

In the NYTimes:

The judge ruled that the agency had improperly bowed to political pressure from the Bush administration in 2006 when it set 18 as the age limit.

A case of political pressure? Indeed.

Wednesday night class (midterm extension)

For all of you who have not done the midterm.

I suggest to meet in my office this Wednesday at 6pm. This time I'll make sure the door is not locked. Call my extension (305)237-7554. We used to have a secretary until 6:30pm. Due to the money shortage, she leaves now at 6pm (something I wasn't aware of). If you have any questions, please, leave a note on this post.

Sorry about tonight (Wednesday class)

Kids: I won't be able to teach the class tonight. It seems I have a case of food poisoning. The homework is to go over chapter 8. Next week, we'll review for quiz #2, on chapters 6-8, due on april 1.

For the following week, I'll post the homework for chapter 9. I'll leave the post open for comments or questions.

More Madoff!

His accountant is charged with securities fraud. In the meantime, more on the A.I.G. saga.

From the NYTimes: Across the country, attorneys general have already begun indicting dozens of loan processors, mortgage brokers and bank officers. Last week alone, there were guilty pleas in Minnesota, Delaware, North Carolina and Connecticut and sentences in Florida and Vermont — all stemming from home loan scams.

Matter of fact vs. opinion

Journalism should be ethical. Generally, reporting the news and commenting the news are different endeavors. The former is objective and factual, the latter, subjective and emotional. Professional journalism makes a distinction between news and opinion (which may lack evidence). The result is referred to as newsworthiness. Thus, this piece in the NYTimes.

Ethical quandary (even in Harvard)

In the NYTimes: In a first-year pharmacology class at Harvard Medical School, Matt Zerden grew wary as the professor promoted the benefits of cholesterol drugs and seemed to belittle a student who asked about side effects. Mr. Zerden later discovered something by searching online that he began sharing with his classmates. The professor was not only a full-time member of the Harvard Medical faculty, but a paid consultant to 10 drug companies, including five makers of cholesterol treatments.

Bailout money and public deficit

First, the piece of news we talked about in class. The breakdown of the bailout here.
On a related topic: what's our public deficit? A rough estimate: For each one of us = $37,703.

More news about Bernard "the magician" Madoff

Fresh from the NYTimes: The witness, whistleblower Harry Markopolos, will testify that Mr. Madoff “was one of the most powerful men on Wall Street and in a position to easily end our careers or worse,” and that his fund “posed great danger” to those who investigated it, based on a version of his remarks that emerged Tuesday evening. (...) He (Markopolos) and his colleagues avoided taking their allegations to the industry self-regulatory agency, now called Finra, he said in the statement, because he believed Mr. Madoff and his brother, Peter B. Madoff, wielded too much power with that organization. Peter Madoff worked in his brother’s firm but has not been implicated in the apparent fraud. “We were concerned that we would have tipped off the target too directly and exposed ourselves to great harm,” he wrote. They did not turn to the F.B.I., he said, “because we believed the F.B.I. would have rejected us” without the endorsement of the S.E.C. staff. He did not address why he did not approach members of Congress, attorneys general in New York or Boston, or state or federal prosecutors

¿Do you have any questions regarding the quiz?

This is the link to our textbook. You see the chapter box on the top left handside. Look for chapter and you get essay questions, tutorial quiz, etc.

Watch out for mini-Madoffs!

From the NYTimes: On Monday, at a suburban New York train station, Nicholas Cosmo surrendered to federal authorities in connection with a suspected $380 million Ponzi scheme, in which investors paid a minimum of $20,000 for high-yield “private bridge” loans that he had arranged. Mr. Cosmo promised returns of 48 percent to 80 percent a year, and none of his investors apparently minded — or knew — that Mr. Cosmo had already been imprisoned for securities fraud. In the end, 1,500 people gave him their money, often through brokers who worked on his behalf.
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In Florida, not far from the Palm Beach clubs where Mr. Madoff wooed some of his investors, George L. Theodule, a Haitian immigrant and professed “man of God,” promised churchgoers in a Haitian-American community that he could double their money within 90 days. He accepted only cash, and despite the too-good-to-be-true sales pitch, he found plenty of investors willing to turn over tens of thousands of dollars. “The offices were beautiful, and I was told it was a limited liability corporation,” said Reggie Roseme, a deliveryman in Wellington, Fla., who lost his entire savings of $35,000 and now faces foreclosure on his home.

Florida fund manager surrenders

$300 million fund with total assets of less than $1 million.

PHI 2604 Chapter 3: Homework

1. “Justice” is usually defined as fairness. Is there a more detailed explanation based on today’s affairs?
2. What is the best way to cut the fiscal pie? Explain.
3. How would utilitarians do it? Cite Mill’s example of “talented workers.”
4. What would “worker participation” and “greater equality of income” mean for Mill?
5. What is the libertarian approach to justice? Define Nozick’s “entitlement theory.”
6. Explain Nozick’s other two principles.
7. Clarify Rawls’ idea of justice. Cite his two main principles.
8. Within Rawl’s theory, define:
a) Nature of choice
b) Veil of Ignorance
c) Choosing principles

More fraud1... (watch out)

Also from NYTimes: The head of Satyam Computer Services confessed to making up more than 10,000 employees to siphon money from the software company and to using his elderly mother’s name to buy land with the cash, a prosecutor said in a court appearance Thursday.
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¹The offense of deliberately deceiving another in order to damage them – usually, to obtain property or services unjustly. Fraud occurs when: 1- Income is overstated, assets are overstated, collateral is overstated, the length of employment is overstated or fictitious employment is reported, and employment is backstopped by conspirators. 2- The borrower's debts are not fully disclosed, nor is the borrower's credit history, which is often altered. Often, the borrower assumes the identity of another person (straw buyer). 3- The borrower states he intends to use the property for occupancy when he/she intends to use the property for rental income, or is purchasing the property for another party (nominee). 4- Appraisals almost always list the property as owner-occupied. Down payments do not exist or are borrowed and disguised with a fraudulent gift letter. The property value is inflated (faulty appraisal) to increase the sales value to make up for no down payment and to generate cash proceeds in fraud for profit.

Politics and crime

In the NYTimes, former senate majority leader Joseph L.Bruno was indicted on Friday on charges that he reaped millions of dollars from companies seeking business from the state or from labor unions, capping a long-running investigation into one of New York’s most powerful political figures. Mr. Bruno is accused of collecting more than $3 million over a 13-year period, beginning in 1993, from a handful of businessmen seeking state contracts and grants, as well as contracts to manage pension fund investments for at least 16 labor unions.

Is torture Ok?

An important element in the discussion we had last night (with the Wednesday night class) about torture here.
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Wikipedia has a good entry on torture.
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The Wall Street Journal calls it the "Jack Bauer Exception." To wit, effective immediately, the interrogation of anyone "in the custody or under the effective control of an officer, employee, or other agent of the United States Government" will be conducted within the limits of the Army Field Manual. That includes special-ops and the Central Intelligence Agency, which will now be required to give prisoners gentler treatment than common criminals. The Field Manual's confines don't even allow the average good cop/bad cop routines common in most police precincts.