This semester we were asked by a finance instructor for tips on how to increase the number of women in her finance classes. She said that there is not a single woman in her class; all her finance MBAs are men.

Ethics is elemental (although this has nothing to do with gender.) Finance is often - and this is my personal opinion - taught in ways that purport it is value neutral; the quantitative aspect of it further reinforces this. The work is somewhat presented as pure and practical and free of ethical debates, when in fact so much of what gets done is none of those things. The systems thinking aspect of it is lost in the compartmentalization. Perhaps it is a grave oversimplification, but for some people being involved in, say, a defense deal, is going to feel like they're also indirectly involved in weapons production and its end results. Life isn't always simple, but if I invest in this, I'm going to feel like I'm profiting from this. If you didn't pitch that weapons manufacturer financing - if nobody pitched that deal - where would the resources come to expand production in that segment of the economy?

If you don't water the seeds, they won't grow into trees. And finance courses, in my (limited) experience, don't prepare you to tackle the ethics side of things. What do you do if you are assigned to a group that deals with the producer of WMDs? Many, many women and men alike find even the prospect of such a scenario extremely troublesome. I'll be the first to argue that to do so - to raise the issue of whether, say, financing a certain project or company is ethical - is still more often than not considered naive or self aggrandizing. Someone once accused me of having a big ego (and he may well be right, but it was nonetheless an accusation hard to refute without fueling the fire), when he praised Michael Milken in an introductory CoFi class, and I raised my hand to point out Mr Milken was in prison for insider trading. Likewise, back when it was still legal, I was wondering why banks were taking research analysts to pitches and roadshows. These are (or were) not, some argue, strictly speaking "finance" issues. But they deal with the foundations, the building blocks, the ethos of the field. If legal professionals or healthcare workers were accused of corruption, malpractice, and failure to follow their professional oath, we'd say something - and people do. So why can some other professionals hide under the guise of numbers and the detached middlemannish nature of the business?

What we do and how we do it matters, and it has consequences. You cannot throw a rock in the water and expect no ripples. But as a finance student you are rarely taught or encouraged to approach the value judgments you might have to make in the field of finance, when hundreds of millions of dollars or euros literally start to seem like peanuts and when a deal is supposed to be just a deal, no questions asked. I argue that finance students still aren't taught to engage eloquently and reasonably with the qualitative or ethical side of the subject, and when you think about it, you're sort of lost.

There are sustainable investment ventures, which is great. There are sustainability indexes, which is great too. This blog entry doesn't concern those; it concerns the mainstream aspects of the business, and why someone might be turned off. Many women as well as men are, I believe, turned off from the field of finance, because they sense the arrogance and the detachment from the rest of society. For an industry that sells the tenets of efficiency and change, there are many examples that suggest Wall Street professionals themselves are hardly welcoming of it.

You can't play fair, if people egregiously bend the rules decade after decade and get away with it. I'm not talking about bending the rules a little bit or cutting the corners a little bit. I'm talking about outright misconduct that appears to be obvious to anyone but the offender, who is like the emperor walking naked down Main Street, insisting his subjects compliment his attire. You can't instill the fairness mindset, if individuals who should set the standards abuse the system to their advantage. I have never understood why white collars and years of education make misconduct less reprehensible. You would think people with a higher education are better equipped to tell the difference between right and wrong, reasonable and unreasonable, acceptable and unacceptable. In answering the question, "how would we graduate more female finance MBAs", I would say, these issues must be addressed. How do you address them, especially if most people on the street think there's no problem? I have no idea. This is an issue that polarizes people, compartmentalizes them by class and gender, and easily alienates men from women even further. There's a huge issue there. It's not only about making the business woman friendly; it's about making it fair and ethical and transparent and open minded.

At the grocery store a half hour ago, the line was long enough for me to pull out the Wall Street Journal. On page 24 appeared a familiar face. It was Richard Grasso. Four years ago (now former) New York Stock Exchange chairman Dick Grasso received the highest pay package ever given to the head of a non-profit organization: 187.5 million dollars, consisting of a $139.5 million lump sum and a $48 million guarantee over the next four years.

At the time when the Grasso case kept making the headlines, I was working in finance and had a very amicable and just boss, who sort of agreed with me - nobody, we genuinely felt, especially not the head of a non-profit organization, was worth $187.5 million. It wasn't just that we felt that Grasso's pay package seemed unreasonable. New York's not-for-profit corporation law explicitly states that officers only be paid a compensation that is "reasonable." Does $187.5 million sound reasonable? Not to me, and New York then-attorney general Eliot Spitzer didn't think so either; he sued Grasso. At that time, even though I'm not big on ultimatums, I half vowed to myself that if the courts ruled in Grasso's favor, I would never ever work in business again. It was almost too easy a vow to make, because I never thought the state would lose the case.

But in the world of high finance, apparently things are not that simple. Today, the WSJ and the NYT report that Mr Grasso has just won a key round in a ruling over his pay: the appellate court ruled that the AG "does not have to authority" to bring major parts of its case against Mr Grasso. Consequently, Dick Grasso may be able to keep the money after all. One hundred, eighty-seven and a half million dollars. Grasso has also sued the NYSE for another extra $50 million in compensation and for damages due to defamation after his departure from the NYSE in 2003. Might this have something to do with his legal fees, which some say have exceeded 100 million dollars?

"This lawsuit from my point is about honor", Mr Grasso said in January.

Now, I don't know how Dick Grasso defines honor, but some of us are not yet jaded enough not to find the Grasso case outrageous.

Not-for-profit corporate law states that officer pay should be "commensurate with services performed." Lumping all of Mr Grasso's compensation together and considering it his 2003 salary, consider that the average annual pay of, say, a family doctor in the US is $152,249. Nurses earn about $55,000 a year. Thus, Mr Grasso's pay implies that he is valued at the equivalent of 1,231 doctors or 3,409 nurses. Mr Grasso didn't diagnose cancer. Mr Grasso didn't perform dialysis or assist in heart surgery. Extending this further, Mr Grasso didn't found a company. He didn't even run a company. He didn't inherit a family business. He didn't invent a thing, anything. He was the head of a non-profit securities trading platform, bound by a law meant to limit pay to what is reasonable and commensurate with services performed.

The world is warming. 3,381 American military personnel have been killed in Iraq. 46.6 million Americans don't have health insurance. About 60 percent of 16-25 year-old Americans are functionally illiterate. And some guy can get paid a couple hundred million dollars for sitting in the office and taking clients to Le Bernardin.

I'm not sure what I'm advocating here, but people should really just do something, anything - perhaps start by switching off their television sets and participating in public discourse, because this isn't right. It's wrong on so many levels.

Dr Bowers' Lectures; "The Smartest Guys in the Room"

Helen Bowers, a finance professor from the University of Delaware, is teaching a five-day short course on corporate governance at Hanken this week. We started yesterday, and actually ended by watching The Corporation, which the CSR course and Net Impact showed in Casa back in January. Corporate governance, Dr Bowers said, is about how to solve a lot of the issues that cause CSR problems. Her lecture schedule is on the sidebar right here.

On Thursday (rm 305 at 16:15) there'll be a showing of The Smartest Guys in the Room, a 2005 movie about one of the biggest business scandals in American history -- the collapse of Enron. If you're interested, you know how to get there!

Tears in Silicon Valley: No More Crying on the Inside

John Doerr's appearance at the TED conference last Thursday took a few days to become news. Some internet sharks are missing the point, looking for the odd video clip of the actual moment he started feeling emotional. (TED is one of those invitation-only networking events that are seldom talked about in the papers. For what it's worth, I'd never heard of it before today. The conference has its own blog for anyone who's interested.)

John Doerr is one of the most successful venture capitalists around; some have called him the best ever. He funded Google, Amazon.com, Netscape and others. Mr Doerr is a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, and has appeared on shows such as Charlie Rose to discuss advances in green energy; Doerr heads his VC firm's greentech program. I'll embed the Charlie Rose episode below; it's a good one. (NB: the man in that picture with Rose is not Doerr, but Scott McNealy, the head of Sun Microsystems.)

Anyway, at the TED conference last Thursday, John Doerr had climbed up to the podium to talk about global warming and green energy. Towards the end of his speech, Mr Doerr started crying. What did Doerr say?

"I'm scared. I don't think we're going to make it."

Now his emotional speech is making headlines; Business Week, the San Francisco Chronicle and the New York Times have all written about it.

Many critics are calling Doerr depressed. I don't know.

Mr Doerr certainly knows as well as anyone of his calibre where we're at with technological discovery, resource availability, and other key parameters. He is extremely well connected and successful by any measure. But the fact that someone like Mr Doerr would put himself out there to be potentially shot down and ridiculed is pretty huge, because where he's at, you do NOT cry in public. You just don't. The fact that he did speaks volumes about his state of mind.

American business thrives on presenting a positive front no matter what: even if the ship is sinking, spin it. Doerr's breakdown is disconcerting, because it's diametrically opposed to what people expect of someone like him. They don't call some of these guys vulture capitalists for nothing. Let me just say that for what my opinion is worth, I applaud this man for showing his feelings on an issue that ought to stir up emotions in millions more. Brave move.

It would be easy to just say John Doerr is depressed and that's that, but frankly, I don't think that's it. Getting concerned about Doerr's mental health isn't the issue here, that much goes without saying, even though one wishes for him to regain the optimism for which he's known. What issues moved this man to tears, in public no less, should be our chief concern. Of course, it requires the kind of gentleness and open-mindedness that Wall Street and Silicon Valley aren't necessarily famous for. I'm sure that Doerr is the talk of the town this week, with former business partners wondering if he's still good for business or if he might need help. Perhaps Doerr is just tired of pulling people along while witnessing others on his side of the income gap allegedly doing something like this -- who knows. But to disregard Doerr's tearfulness as a bad judgment call, a sign of depression or male menopause or an insincere publicity stunt would miss the point. Mr Doerr is likely just really, really concerned and anxious: even though he is doing enough, he's probably acutely aware that most of the rest of the world isn't.

It doesn't matter what the issue, looking from the outside in we can always rely on Someone Else to do the work. Even if we bought a year's worth of carbon offsets, Someone Else is going to have to do the actual roll-up-your-sleeves business and get down to it. Anyone can collect a pile of money through dubious means and try to feel good about giving it to charity when the end is near, but Someone Else is going to have to be out there, doing the work, whether it's a Doctor Without Borders patching combat wounds and bringing babies into the world on refugee camps or a treeplanter picking up mangrove seedlings in dirty water. Well, to bring this home, someone is going to have to decide that they'll forego a lucrative position in traditional industry and work for a Net Impact type industry or social cause. When people ask why, they'll need to explain why they won't just let Someone Else do it.

Sometimes that Someone Else we rely on is a person like Mr Doerr, and frankly, for all he's got I don't envy him. I look up to the work he's been doing with green energy; I don't wish to be him. It must be incredibly demanding to realize this is it and there's no "someone else" to turn to for ideas or guidance. Ignorance is, as the cliche goes, quite blissful, for this, I'm sure, isn't really news to anyone: on a global scale (which is Mr Doerr's scale) "Someone Else" does not really exist. The closest thing, to some, is probably God.

You know what, I'll pay a hundred euros if you can get me in the same room with Someone Else. I've waited my whole life to meet Someone Else. I've wanted to shake hands with her (or him) and say, Thanks, I owe you. Actually, I think I first relied on Someone Else when I swept the bread crumbs off the kitchen table onto the floor at age six and thought to myself that Someone Else will clean it up. (Mom cleaned it. Thanks Mom.) Her hands may have been invisible, but that was just because I wasn't looking.

The thing about market externalities is, the markets with the greatest externalities (including carbon dioxide) rely on Someone Else to clean up the crumbs.

Now I'm blue. Kind of. Shoot. It's contagious. Anyhow, happy Tuesday all, especially John Doerr.

Slow Travel; The Trouble with Palm Oil; Venture Capitalists and Energy Policy

Writer Ed Gillespie will begin a year-long journey around the world in March. Plenty of people travel around the world every year, but Gillespie plans to do it without flying. The Guardian helps Gillespie kick off the project with a piece on slow travel. He will also be blogging about his experiences on the road.

In other news, the Netherlands are quickly learning that not all biofuels are equal or eco-friendly. A few years ago the Dutch began to advocate the use of biofuels as a substitute for oil. In a follow-up, scientists were sent to investigate the palm plantations in Indonesia and Malaysia. The investigative team found that the plantations used great amounts of fertilizer, cut down huge tracts of rainforest to plant more palm trees, and burned peatland for additional plantations, releasing huge amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere. Whatever positive effects palm oil has were overshadowed by environmental degradation. A European Environment Agency representative noted, “It’s important to take a life-cycle view,” and not to “just see what the effects are here in Europe.”

Finally, the New York Times reports how tech barons take a new role: energy policy. Venture capitalists have a great stake in the outcomes of energy policy.