The series of Wall Street lawyer discussions of Risk Metrics and reform legislation shows how defensive big corporations are about “reform” and accountability. There is no shame, no hint of accepting greater responsibility for what almost became a great depression fueled by toxic instruments and corporate greed using customer money to enrich the managers.

GM: Leaving aside the fact that the Big Three ceded effective management control to the unions 30 years ago, the Chapter 11 filings of GM and Chrysler undid close to 200 years of federal bankruptcy legal evolution. The protection of the union contracts due to political dictate places all boards in proverbially uncharted waters. If the feds move in on another ‘sensitive’ (from their point of view) filing, that entity may have to push for a Chapter 7. This is a critical subject, one on which you can probably follow up via a judicious link to a web posting by one of the larger bankruptcy specialist law firms. Since federal involvement was not by legislation, but by ‘friendly persuasion,’ boards are faced with a “here be monsters” place on the map.

Social Media: Critical subject. Firms should have Face Book pages linked back and forth to their websites. Marketing folks should be using Twitter to tap into ‘opinion leaders.’ A firm as sophisticated as P&G shouldn’t have made such a stumble. Boards have to grasp the market research potential of social media and marketing executives have to realize that the days of market control are over regardless of how well your overall system works (and P&G’s is one of the best on the globe). Had social media been available when Coke made its disastrous formula change, perhaps they might have caught what their focus groups didn’t

Subcontracting: It would be worth revisiting this subject in greater detail as the BP saga unfolds. Exploration and development firms in the petroleum industry generally contract out all phases of the development of a producing well from “dry hole” drilling through completion. This practice was long established on a global basis prior to the coining of the phrase “supply chain.” As the “operator,” the Ex & Dev firm turns over each phase of the well‘s development to a highly experienced oil field service firm. The operator has a detailed contract with each contractee which allows the operator to overrule the contractee. However, in so doing, the operator ‘takes back’ responsibility. The legal side of such practices in the petroleum industry is very well defined and is memorialized in specialized legislation at both the state and federal levels. As supply chains have proliferated globally, the general law has fallen behind, particularly in regard to Asia – recall recent instances of lead in paints and adulterated fillers in Chinese products sent to the US. It would be interesting to follow this subject up by engaging Boeing which is currently managing one of the most pervasive and sophisticated global supply systems for both engineering services as well as subcontracted parts manufacturing

Massey Energy Inc. I think the board totally missed the ball on the safety violations. They have mines and there have been significant safety violations and deaths around the world. A responsible board member should have asked years ago, how are we doing and what does our safety record look like? This behavior could have changed company perspective on safety. I know of a major automobile manufacturer who responded in this way to a board request for data.

With the introduction of the Palm Treo 600 the US was introduced to the Original Smartphone. Subsequent generations eventually acquired a feature set that encompassed what all the modern phones of today can do. This included a touch screen, multitasking, web browsing, tethering, business applications such as spreadsheets and presentations, video and audio player, and the list goes on. More importantly, the platform was open for developers to write their own applications for it, and even those home-brewed apps can compete with the Apple Apps Store in the availability of software to do what you need. And more to the point, those applications were actually useful. Palm Inc. needs to go back to its roots and play their own game, not the closed platform and limited features that plague the market today.

Here’s one vote for Thain. He restored integrity to the NY Stock Exchange after Grasso left. He had a solid two dozen years in banking. Did Merrill Lynch have a bad year in 2008? Yes, but what investment bank or cluster of funds didn’t? Thain has degrees from MIT and the Harvard Business School. Let’s give him a chance to take CIT out of bankruptcy and TARP.

The College of St. Catherine in Minnesota has published a research paper on the number of women on corporate boards and at the “C” level in corporations. When one considers that women account for 90% of the purchasing descisons, it is astounding that there are so very few women in these roles. What are corporations thinking? A great group to contact is the Womens’ Business Leaders in Healthcare. Their goal is to increase the number of executive women serving on for-profit boards , and they have the contacts to make this happen.

Congress is now aggressively looking at past regulators and others to assign blame for the current financial crisis. Certainly they played a role, especially as it relates to poor oversight. But, who were the underwriters of these mortgages, who packaged them into securities, who rated the securities, and then who sold them? To really expand the club, who was stupid enough to insure them? There is plenty of blame to go around, and numerous people qualify for the all-star cast beyond just the regulators.

Reference your comment in the recent Letter about AIG needing some good PR. First, I agree with you and then I saw the next day on the WSJ front page that GM’s Chair Ed Whitacre must have seen your remarks and boldly stated “My prediction is we {General Motors} will be profitable in 2010″