When a dear friend asked me to sit on a church organization's investment and endowment committee I balked. This is New York City, the land of Wall Street and astute bankers. What could I possibly add to any discussion, much less decision? Finally, I agreed but it would take many months before I was captivated. [...]
Category: Calls to action
What can I do?
It's a question almost everyone I know is asking. What does it really mean to be fully anti-racist? I am a white person living in a gloriously diverse community. We have these exchanges more now than ever before but in that context I mostly am in listening, learning, and supporting mode. This post offers preliminary [...]
About economic justice . . . again
I'm still self-isolating although I do have plans to meet some friends for distanced drinks in a few minutes. Much more seriously, of all the news and punditry about the pandemic grabbing my attention, the one that rankles most is the way it is exposing economic inequality. And that inequality shows up in unequal access [...]
Once again, small is less
I write this as we in New York City are beginning to see pandemic numbers trending in an encouraging direction. Of course I scanned that news, but then this headline jumped out at me-- Businesses Say Big Banks Flouted ‘First Come First Served’ for Aid New York Times, April 20, 2020, by Emily Flitter. Yes, [...]
I’ll show you my credit score, if you’ll show me . . .
I just came across the news that Facebook has a patent on an invention that allows lenders to view the credit scores of our circle of friends on Facebook to determine whether or not we are creditworthy. Check out some coverage here. I couldn't be more concerned about how social data are being collected in [...]
Peer-to-peer not so much
Data and Society is a think/do tank in New York City, initially funded by Microsoft and supported today by prominent organizations such as The Ford Foundation, Omidyar Network, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The team and an impressive group of Fellows (some of them faculty on sabbatical from their universities) take on the [...]
New data regulations; What could go wrong?
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has spoken. In a lengthy piece released a few months ago, the FTC took on the $150B data broker industry. Many of the companies focus on data collected for behavioral marketing/targeted advertising but credit bureaus comprise a significant segment of the industry. The title is descriptive--"Data Brokers: A Call for [...]
When good character has a (short-term) cost
I recently met a former colleague for coffee. Let's call him Andrew (not his real name). He was telling me about a family business he had joined in the past year. The company had grown over the years without taking investments but had a significant line of credit from a regional bank. What happened in [...]
