About character, integrity, and being racist
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Not true at all. You just didn't hear of it until then.
US banks quit dealing with him ages ago.
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@jon-nyc said in About character, integrity, and being racist:
Not true at all. You just didn't hear of it until then.
US banks quit dealing with him ages ago.
I googled that. I found that the NYT, WP, and a few other similar "news" sources made that claim, but then it quickly spiraled down into a quagmire of conspiracy theory nonsense that got crazier and crazier. Then I found where he had negotiated with several banks to save his company when the SHTF, but it seems that all were eventually satisfied, so I think this is another case of a story with a grain of truth, cherry picked to omit the parts that hurt the narrative, and pretty much just typical bull shit.
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@jon-nyc said in About character, integrity, and being racist:
Not that I know of. But I was in the securities side, not commercial banking.
By the way I don't think the idea that this is standard fare for a 100MM company holds water. He had a special reputation for stiffing people. Note that he was always dealing with foreign banks. US banks knew better. Maybe they got burned decades earlier.
No one said it was standard fare.
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The top person in the company sets the tone. I agree that he/she will not be involved in every decision, but people below them certainly know the ethics and "tone" of the company and react appropriately.
Example: A friend of mine worked for a company where it was forbidden to have a relationship with a direct report. Under the previous head of the company, the rule was there, but "wink wink", there was no real punishment.
New CEO came in, reinforced the rule (among other things). A very high performer (junior vice minister or something like that) was found to be having a relationship with his secretary. Next day, his office was cleaned out and he was gone. Was the CEO personally involved in the removal - I doubt it. And he may not have even know about it. But, everybody knew what happened.
BUT, you can be sure that this did not occur again with anybody else.
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That really does not matter at all. Development is by its nature speculative. If any of the assumptions under which the project was initiated fail to be accurate the project can be in jeopardy. I've seen many projects fail, particularly around 2009, and lots of vendors got stiffed there too. If there's no money no one gets paid.
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We had multi-million dollar construction over the years in the school district. One bond passed by the voters in 2016 was for half a billion dollars.
The district held General Contractors to account, but the school district knew NOTHING about which or how many sub-contractors were involved in a respective project. That's not a completely true statement, but there was never a constant policing of the nuts and bolts of what was going on, but there was intense oversite given we were using public funds. There are lots and lots of sub-contractors, and some of them do shitty work trying to maximize the income for the owner or LLC. I heard of many such issues, but the distance from an executive's office to the guy wearing boots on the ground in a construction site is huge.
So, for anyone that thinks Trump had anything to do with what happened with some sub-contractor who would again sub-contract out part of a project or anything similar, of course Trump would not know. And whatever "tone" he set, would be the responsibilities of his project managers, who would obviously tell the General Contractors on down to superintendents and foremen "any problems e.g., stiffing a sub-contractor that fulfilled their job, it's your responsibility to get them handled, if you ever want to be considered for a future contract."
That's the important part, in terms of the hierarchy. Even if Trump heard about a code or zoning issue or a myriad of other issues etc., unless the issue was big enough $ or big enough in terms of public relations, he would not be directly involved, and probably not involved on purpose due to potential liability. Ignorance is bliss, until those times it backfires of course.
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@Rainman I agree with you that in any large corporation, the top person has no way of knowing every detail.
However, I do believe that the culture of the organization can be (largely) set by the top person or people.
I think that you and @jon-nyc and @Horace have a lot of business experience and have come across this in your work careers.