The writer is assistant lecturer at William & Mary and author of the forthcoming book “The Confidence Map”

With All Attention on Sam Bankman-Fried and the Crypto Collapse of the dayit’s as if the crowd misses the big picture.

If we step back and look at major organizational collapses over the past five years, they are different from other collapses. When the dot.com and real estate bubbles burst, we witnessed the failure of institutions, which then led to a crisis of confidence in their leaders.

Enron’s demise devastated Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling, while WorldCom’s failure upset Bernie Ebbers. In 2008, bank failures led to the ousting of bank CEOs. We witnessed a “Lehman moment” rather than a “Final Fuld”.

But in this cycle we see the downfall of oversized dream sellers – a collection of Harold Hills straight out of the 1960s film The Music Man – whose personal meltdowns take institutions down with them. (Think Adam Neumann, Markus Braun, Trevor Milton, Lex Greensill, Bill Hwang, Do Kwon and now Bankman-Fried.)

In all cases, attention turned first to the outlandish promises and audacious overstepping of a single individual, then to the perilous financial consequences for their organizations. It was the flaws of a bold name atop the marquee that brought the whole show to a close.

In an age awash with business strategies and “move fast and break things” social media influencers, I guess our fascination with the C-suite’s disruptive storytellers shouldn’t be so surprising. Today’s technology and free access to capital has allowed individuals to become huge stars like never before.

With this oversized overnight success, however, came a series of shortcomings that are only now being revealed.

First, these people tend to rule without the usual checks and balances. Ownership or highly concentrated ownership, presumed genius or outright aggressiveness, they are masters of the art.

Second, blind loyalty was anything but a requirement—on the part of employees, capital providers, and customers. Hindsight was non-existent and skeptics were ridiculed for their disbelief.

Third, these people were surrounded by loyal and adoring fans. Rock musicians have never had it so good.

On the surface, it all seemed unstoppable. Founders and CEOs seemed to wield power like autocrats or cult leaders.

The challenge with cults, however, is that they foster environments of conformity, not trust. Only the leader has certainty and control. Everyone else is helpless. Moreover, any certainty that exists results from obedience to this individual.

Provided the rewards of compliance and loyalty are high – and the penalty for non-compliance is particularly harsh – such an environment can be easily maintained.

However, problems quickly arise when these factors are reversed. Extreme power is either absolute or non-existent. The environments of helplessness and certainty are inherently binary. There is no middle ground. And in this context, a collapse of trust is coming quickly.

The failures we have seen have been treated by investors as isolated cases of aberrant leadership. After the collapse of several cryptocurrency firms and the fall of Kwon and Terraform Labs earlier this year, Bankman-Fried has been equated with both JPMorgan and Warren Buffett. But the question is what happens when larger-than-life heroes come under the microscope. What if all we’ve seen so far was just the disappearance of the “subprime” characters from this saga?

And let’s be honest. It’s not like we’re running out of additional names. This is where the problem lies. Not only is the list of sellers particularly long this cycle, but it is also far-reaching. As we have already seen with crypto, the risk of contagion is far higher than popular industry adjectives such as “decentralized” would suggest.

What we are witnessing now with the failure of FTX is not a crypto crisis; it is a crisis of sectarian celebrity. The collapse of trust in emperors can bring down large empires in a flash. With so much tied to a small handful of star individuals in tech and finance, we could easily see the same SBF-FTX happening elsewhere.

Unlike in the past, what matters most today is not the strength of the balance sheet or the reputation of institutions, but the trust that the crowd places in a few high-profile figures. As these numbers disappear, so will the markets.

Like it or not, this time it’s personal.

Knoxville, Tenn., November 17, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — Pilot Company is advancing its new Team Member Experience (TMX) department with the addition of a new key leader: Angie Cody, director of inclusion, diversity and equity. This new leadership role will build on the company’s 64-year history as a premier travel center network and premier workplace by creating meaningful strategic programs that foster a more inclusive environment among team members.

“We are proud to employ nearly 30,000 team members who come from incredibly diverse backgrounds and experiences,” said Paul River, Chief People Officer of Pilot Company. “The success of our business is built on the strength of our team, which is why this position is essential to providing an exceptional, inclusive and complete experience.”

Angie Cody will oversee and develop opportunities to create a more inclusive workplace, joining the TMX department of Pilot Company. She will manage current Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Awareness (IDEA) efforts, develop strategic action plans for promoting an accessible, equitable and inclusive work environment, and help us increase the company recruitment pipeline for diversity. Under her leadership, Pilot Company recently launched five new business resource groups – Emerging Leaders, Building Relationships in Diverse Group Environments (BRIDGE), Pride of Pilot, Women of Pilot and Veterans of Pilot – to help educate and inform diversity change efforts across the company. Cody brings more than a decade of experience building and leading global inclusion, diversity and equity initiatives to the company, including co-founding the St. Louis Diversity and Inclusion Consortium.

Since joining at the start of the summer, Cody has already helped drive improvements to support workforce opportunities, including a new IDEA council made up of 15 senior leaders who represent different fields. within the company. These efforts and new implementations have been recognized by the American Trucking Associations, which recently awarded Pilot Company their DEI Change Leader Award.

“Our business is continuing to advance the overall team member experience, and DEI is an extremely important part of that roadmap,” Cody said. “Diversity strengthens our business because it broadens our horizons and helps us learn from others’ perspectives to bring new ideas and initiatives that make Pilot Company a more inclusive and welcoming place to work and shop.”

Cody is a United States Marine Corps veteran, graduate of Columbia College with a BA in Finance and is a Certified Diversity Executive (CDE) by the Society for Diversity. She moved in 2022 to Knoxville, TN of St. Louis, Missouri with his wife, Becky.

For more information about Pilot Company and its management, or to learn more about how to join the team, visit pilotcompany.com.

About the pilot company:

Pilot Travel Centers LLC (“Pilot Company”) retains North America drivers moving as a leading fuel supplier and largest travel center operator. Founded in 1958 and based in Knoxville, TN, Pilot Company has expanded its network to more than 800 retail and refueling outlets and supplies more than 14 billion gallons of fuel annually to the market. Pilot Company has the fourth largest tanker fleet with over 1,600 trucks that supply DEF, bio and renewable fuels, and provide transportation and disposal services to the oil industry. Pilot Company serves 1.3 million customers daily and provides more than 70,000 fleet customers with fuel, credit, factoring, service and rewards solutions. Its network of Pilot and Flying J Travel Centers includes more than 750 locations in 44 states and six Canadian provinces with more than 790 restaurants, 75,000 truck parking spaces, 5,300 luxury showers, 6,200 diesel lanes and offers maintenance trucks and tire service with Southern Tire Mart at Pilot Flying J. The One9 Fuel Network connects a variety of refueling points to provide small fleets and independent professional drivers with everyday value, convenience, credit and benefits . More location and reward information is available in the myRewards Plus app.

Pilot Company is currently ranked #7 on the Forbes list of America’s Largest Private Companies. For more information about Pilot Company, its 30,000 team members and its commitment to giving back, visit www.pilotcompany.com.

SOURCE Pilot Company

Afghanistan’s supreme leader has ordered judges to fully implement aspects of Islamic law, including public executions, stonings, floggings and amputation of limbs for thieves, chief spokesman says of the Taliban.

Zabihullah Mujahid tweeted on Sunday that Haibatullah Akhundzada’s “mandatory” order came after the secret leader met with a group of judges.

Akhundzada, who has not been filmed or photographed in public since the Taliban returned to power in August last year, rules by decree from Kandahar, the movement’s birthplace and spiritual heart.

The Taliban promised a softer version of the hardline rule that characterized their first stint in power, from 1996 to 2001, but gradually cracked down on rights and freedoms.

“Carefully examine the records of thieves, kidnappers and seditionists,” Mujahid said quoting Akhundzada. These files in which all Sharia [Islamic law] conditions of hudud and qisas have been met, you are obligated to implement them. It is the Sharia rule and my commandment, which is obligatory.

Mujahid was unavailable on Monday to expand on his tweet.

Hudud refers to offenses for which, under Islamic law, certain types of punishment are prescribed, while qisas translates to “retaliation in kind” – in effect, an eye for an eye.

Hudud crimes include adultery – and falsely accusing someone – drinking alcohol, theft, kidnapping and highway robbery, apostasy and rebellion.

Qisas covers murder and willful injury, among other things, but also allows families of victims to accept compensation instead of punishment.

Islamic scholars argue that crimes leading to the hudud punishment require a very high degree of proof, including – in the case of adultery – a confession or the presence of four adult male Muslims.

Since the takeover last year, videos and photos of Taliban fighters inflicting summary floggings on people accused of various offenses have frequently appeared on social media.

On several occasions, the Taliban have also publicly displayed the bodies of kidnappers they believe were killed in gunfights.

Cases of adultery being whipped in rural areas after Friday prayers have also been reported, but independent verification has been difficult to obtain.

Rahima Popalzai, a legal and political analyst, said the edict could be an attempt by the Taliban to harden a reputation they say has softened since their return to power.

“If they really start implementing hudud and qisas, they will aim to create the fear that society has gradually lost,” she said, adding that the Taliban also wanted to restore their Islamic credentials. “As a theocratic configuration, the Taliban wants to strengthen its religious identity among Muslim countries.”

The hard-won rights of women in particular have evaporated in the past 15 months and they are increasingly being pushed out of public life.

Most female government workers have lost their jobs or are paid a pittance to stay home, while women are barred from traveling without a male relative and must cover themselves with a burqa or hijab when they are away from home.

Last week, the Taliban also banned women from entering parks, fairgrounds, gymnasiums and bathhouses.

During their first period of rule, the Taliban regularly meted out public punishment, including floggings and executions at Kabul’s Ghazi Stadium.

NEW YORK and WASHINGTON, November 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — GreenMet, a leading U.S. developer of sustainable supply chains for critical minerals and metals for United Stateshelped secure a $50 million investment by a division of Cerberus Capital Management, LP for the development of the Torngat Metals Ltd. rare earth project, one of the largest rare earth projects in the world, located at Strange Lake, Canada.

The rare earths project in the Torngat region of Eastern Quebec will be an important link in a new North American rare earths supply chain that will be critical to addressing electrification, defense and economic security priorities.

GreenMet, run by U.S. Army veterans and government officials, including Drew Horna former Special Forces commander who helped shape US strategic minerals policy while in the US government, is one of the world’s leading developers of responsible, sustainable and secure supply chains for minerals and metals critical to United Statesand helped identify and develop the Torngat investment opportunity.

“GreenMet, with Libra Group, an international business group and strategic investor in GreenMet, is developing supply chain projects like this around the world and we are proud of our role in initiating and collaborating on the Torngat Strange Lake project to help secure the America’s Clean Energy Future,“said the President and CEO of GreenMet Drew Horn. “This project will help reduce the United States’ dependence on foreign supply and processing capacity of critical minerals, making this investment crucial to America’s economy, defense, and energy security. North America.“

“I am honored to be part of the clean energy revolution in my role with GreenMet,” said Darrell Blocker, member of the board of directors of GreenMet. “After decades protecting America with government roles in national security and intelligence, including as a senior CIA officer in AfricaI am familiar with the capacity for global cooperation to meet the clean energy metals supply needs of the United States as we establish a North American supply chain essential not only for the transition to electrification, but also for our national security and our economic success.“

About Green Met

GreenMet (www.Greenmet.com) is a leading company that develops sustainable, reliable and secure supply chain infrastructure of critical minerals and metals to meet North America’s energy and technology needs. This includes the production of rare earth minerals and metals and the manufacture of key magnets, battery materials and green steel. GreenMet works with countries around the world and its U.S. partners to provide American leadership in the transition to a green energy future.

About Torngat Metals Ltd.

Torngat is a private company developing the Strange Lake Project in the Nunavik region of Quebec to provide a responsible, long-term supply of rare earths needed for many cutting-edge, low-carbon technologies, including electric vehicles and wind turbines. www.torngatmetals.com.

About Cerberus

Cerberus is a global leader in alternative investing with approximately $60 billion of assets in complementary credit, private equity and real estate strategies. www.cerberus.com.

SOURCE GreenMet

In the 1970s, Steven Bowman was a student at St. Ignatius High School and wanted to pursue a career in medicine.

This is where Maxine Duster came in. She encouraged him to apply to a program that matched black students with black doctors. The experience gave him an adrenaline-filled night as he shadowed a doctor at the old Cook County Hospital.

“They put me to work,” Bowman said. “I was helping to do gastric lavage on a guy who was having gastrointestinal bleeding, putting a tube up his nose and squirting water into it, irrigating his stomach.”

After graduating from Washington University Medical School, “I moved back to the county. I worked there for 30 years in emergency medicine,” said Bowman, who is now medical director for the Illinois Department of Corrections.

He said that, thanks to Ms. Duster, “I had all these other great things that happened.”

Ms Duster, 83, an educator and civic activist from Chicago, died Oct. 26 at a memorial care center in Rockford, according to her daughter Michelle Duster.

Dr. Darryl L. Fortson said she also connected him with black doctors at what is now Stroger Hospital when he was a 15-year-old student, St. Ignatius.

“It was a fantastic experience,” he said. “We wore white coats and just followed the doctors like a school of fish.”

“She saved a lot of lives,” Fortson said. “Not just people in medical fields who are forever indebted to him, but everyone we care for.”

Fortson said the program was part of the women’s group Chicago Focus, an anti-racism organization that Ms Duster helped lead. In the late 1960s, he pressured department stores to hire black salespeople and exhibit black mannequins.

She also pushed for black hiring at Illinois Bell and Peoples Gas and served on the boards of the Chicago Child Care Society and the Harold Washington Foundation as well as advisory committees promoting achievement and leadership. black exhibitions at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Museum of Science and Industry.

Ms. Duster was born in Pelham, Texas, a small enclave founded by former slaves. At one time, her black farmers owned 6,000 acres of land on which they raised cotton and cattle, according to Connie Hicks, Ms Duster’s cousin and curator at the Pelham Community History Museum. The town’s population – now about 35 people – peaked at 400 in the 1930s and 1940s, she said.

Ms Duster was related by blood or marriage to all of her playmates, elders and teachers, Michelle Duster said. The children felt safe running from house to house to play and drink lemonade.

“She would go to her grandmother’s house, and they would have cake, and they would ride a horse called Paint,” her daughter said. “She had pet chickens.”

Young Maxine enjoyed listening to the radio show “The Lone Ranger” and her great-grandfather’s ghost stories, according to an interview she did with online site HistoryMakers.

“Town was all about family,” Hicks said. “During segregation, we depended on each other. Pelham had its own post office and our own school and cotton gin, and we had a bank and a store. I think everyone who grew up here instilled that in themselves – that they were somebody.

Mrs. Duster looked fondly at her childhood. She helped organize reunions that brought people back to Pelham, connecting former residents and their descendants from across the country.

She and her five siblings attended college. She went to Texas Southern University.

“Max” followed a cousin to Chicago, where she earned a master’s degree in communications from Governors State University and a master’s degree in human resources management from National Louis University.

And she met Donald Duster, a business executive and grandson of anti-lynching activist Ida B. Wells, journalist and founder of the NAACP. They were married from 1962 until his death in 2013 and raised their family in Calumet Heights.

In the 1960s, Ms Duster began teaching at Morgan Park Academy and then at Caldwell Primary School. In the 1980s, she was community relations manager for the Michael Reese Hospital and served on a school desegregation oversight board. She then worked for the Chicago Urban League, where she developed a program to help students become math and science teachers, her daughter said.

In the 1990s, she was principal of the Corporate/Community School of America in North Lawndale. She also led two programs promoting children’s literacy: a Chicago Public Schools initiative called Working in the Schools and Reach Out and Read, where she raised money for books for children. at Cook County Hospital.

John H. White/Sun-Times File

“Doctors on the ‘pediatric’ ward were ‘prescribing’ books” for their young patients, Michelle Duster said. “For many of these children, it was their first book.

“She had three kids, and she went to school and got two master’s degrees, and she was involved in all these organizations, and she had a full-time job, and she was a wife,” her daughter said. daughter. “She showed us by example how to be civic-minded and give back.”

If Ms Duster saw any injustice or incompetence, she encouraged people to “write a letter to the company or the alderman”, her son Dan Duster said. “She really wanted to stand up for her own rights.”

She welcomed her children’s friends into her home, even if sometimes young visitors resented her linguistic advice.

“My mom was an eighth-grade English teacher,” her son said, “and she was correcting the whole neighborhood on their grammar.”

“We used to talk about books for hours and hours on the phone,” her sister Norma Bean said. “In every city we usually visited, we had to find the nearest bookstore.”

Ms Duster never left the house without her hair and makeup “done”, her daughter said. She loved browsing thrift stores for bargains on classic leather handbags and well-tailored clothes.

She preferred a good hot dog or hamburger to fancy restaurants.

And if she was absent on a day when the Dallas Cowboys were going to play, she would say, “We have to be back at kickoff.

For 40 years, Ms. Duster played bridge with the same group of women. She liked to play tennis. And, even though dementia set in, she continued to tap her feet to her favorite Motown songs, her son said.

In addition to her children Michelle and Dan and her sister Norma, Ms. Duster is survived by her son David and another sister, Alma Wyatt.

She donated her body to medical research.

Her daughter said a celebration of her life was planned for next year, possibly in August, her birthday month.

FARGO — A former leader of North Dakota’s university system has died.

Robert Potts died on Friday, October 28 at his home in Florence, Alabama, after being diagnosed with cancer, according to an obituary. He was 78 years old.

Potts served as chancellor of the University System of North Dakota from 2004 to 2006. The Forum reported that a majority of the State Board of Higher Education in 2006 wanted Potts to step down a year before his contract expired.

Potts chose to resign on July 31, 2006, citing philosophical differences with board members over how the system should operate and apply policies equally to all campuses, according to Forum records.

He also told the newspaper that Joseph Chapman, then president of North Dakota State University, refused to accept his authority and “basically thumbed his nose at me.” Chapman claimed he “tried to be professional in all of this”.

Potts was asked to continue as a consultant for the university system after leaving his position as chancellor. He became president of Arkansas State University in 2006. He retired as interim president of the Arkansas University System in 2011.

In a statement, the North Dakota University System called his career a “legacy of leadership in higher education.” The release says he has made many contributions to higher education.

“Potts never forgot North Dakota and made many lifelong friends here, often returning to the state to enjoy the outdoor activities the state has to offer,” the statement read.

CNN
—

The first modern piece of federal legislation addressing the infrastructure of voting systems across the country, known as the Help America Vote Act, celebrates its 20th anniversary on Saturday.

HAVA was created on a bipartisan basis after the 2000 presidential election, which was decided by the Supreme Court after extremely thin margins revealed the need to fix antiquated voting systems. As Congress has become more partisan, funding for HAVA has dropped significantly.

Less than two weeks before the country faces its first midterm election since the 2020 presidential race, where former President Donald Trump’s refusal to concede and efforts to overturn the results culminated in the attack by his supporters on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, co-author of the development of HAVA 20 years ago, reflected on the importance of this legislation in a wide-ranging conversation with CNN.

“It was clearly a partisan era, as it is today,” Hoyer told CNN in an interview, comparing the fallout from the 2000 election to current election issues. “But there wasn’t the dishonesty to claim something that wasn’t fact.”

Lawmakers crafted HAVA after the fate of the 2000 presidential election between then-Democratic candidate Al Gore and then-Republican candidate George W. Bush received 537 votes out of nearly 6 million voters in Florida, and exposed a wide range of voting irregularities. Phrases such as “hanging chads” when a ballot is not fully perforated, “pregnant chads”, when paper ballots are dimpled but not punctured, and “butterfly ballots”, where the wrong Ballot design confused voters about which candidate they were voting for, dominating the national conversation until the Supreme Court finally ruled that Bush had won.

When passed in 2002, HAVA made sweeping reforms to voting systems across the country to improve the administration of elections for federal office. He created a new federal agency, the Election Assistance Commission (EAC), which still exists today, to help advise states in their election administration, set national guidelines and create a national program for testing, certification and decertification of voting systems. The legislation also provided grants to states, which the EAC was responsible for overseeing, to address a wide range of issues, including updating voting systems, creating new training for election officials, particularly for students, and even making all polling stations available to people with disabilities.

“The EAC is the only federal agency focused exclusively on election administration and our mission has grown over the years since the transition from HAVA to play a critical role in supporting election officials across the country,” said EAC President Thomas Hicks said in a statement to CNN. “The EAC is a critical component to ensuring free, fair, secure, and accessible elections across the United States.”

HAVA has sought to restore faith in the country’s electoral system, Hoyer said, but the dynamic has changed — a growing number of Americans are unwilling to accept results they don’t agree with.

“It’s not so much the technology that’s at issue now,” Hoyer told CNN. “That was the case in 2000. Now it’s a question of whether or not people are willing to accept outcomes that the courts have time and again ruled legitimate.”

Another key difference between now and then, Hoyer said, was that the two sides could find common ground in the early 2000s when it came to election-related funding.

“They weren’t hostile to it in 2002,” Hoyer said of then-Republicans, who had a majority in the House when HAVA was signed into law. “We got an overwhelming majority of Democrats and Republicans voting for the creation of HAVA, state funding, and the provisions we provided for the advisory capacity of the Election Assistance Commission. Unfortunately, this bipartisan commitment no longer exists.

In the fallout from the 2020 presidential election, Trump and his allies repeatedly questioned the validity of voting systems, making false claims about foreign interference and voting machine irregularities. Courts across the country have struck down Trump’s claims about problems with voting machines. One company, Dominion Voting Systems, sued Trump’s campaign and conservative media allies for defamation.

A wave of candidates refusing the elections manufactured in the mold of Trump have appeared on the scene since Trump’s defeat, creating new concern that those who could potentially oversee the election may not accept future results with which they are not. Okay.

Threats against nonpartisan poll workers and fears about security at polling stations also increased. As the 2022 midterm elections approach, states across the country have been scrambling to further secure their polling places and poll workers in anticipation of disruptions.

“It’s a sad day in America where there are threats against election officials, threats against voters and the creation of an atmosphere around voting that is perceived as dangerous,” Hoyer said. “These are despotic countries that present their citizens with such an environment, and I hope that Republicans, Democrats and Independents will all reject this type of violence. But unfortunately, we have seen that this is not always the case.

Hoyer believes that if more funding had been given to HAVA over the years, the American people would have had more faith in the country’s voting systems and it would have been harder for election lies related to voting systems to spread.

“Frankly, if we had funded HAVA effectively over the years, I think we’d be much more likely to have an audience that would conclude, ‘Look, the machine we used was honest, it was transparent, it works well and it reflects our vote,” the Majority Leader said.

HAVA initially provided approximately $3.5 billion in funding, but the commitment to fully repay programs enacted by legislation has dwindled.

In 2011, when Republicans reclaimed the House, HAVA’s broad funding languished. Over the years, Republicans have sought to abolish the EAC.

More recently, Congress appropriated a total of about $800 million in 2018 and 2020 combined. In 2018, Congress provided $380 million in election security grants due to bipartisan concerns about Russian interference in the election. A second $400 million was earmarked in the CARES Act in 2020 to help states run their elections during the Covid pandemic.

In December 2021, secretaries of state and election officials across the country sent a letter to President Joe Biden asking for $5 billion in the Biden administration’s next budget, as part of a broader request to the Congress to allocate $20 billion in funding to local and state election administrators for secure election infrastructure over the next 10 years.

National Association of Secretaries of State communications director Maria Benson said in a statement to CNN, “NASS is proud of the work done by our members responsible for elections to invest in their electoral systems and processes.” Benson asked Congress to reference the organization’s resolution on stable federal funding for election security and asked lawmakers to directly seek input from secretaries of state when considering funding for HAVA at the coming.

Hicks told CNN, “Election officials have historically done more with less, and the EAC has distributed and administered $880 million in congressional HAVA election security grants over the past four years to support them. But the EAC has heard from election officials across the country that consistent funding is needed to support their short- and long-term planning.

Congress is currently deliberating on its government funding bill before the mid-December deadline, which could include more funding for HAVA. Hoyer said he hopes Republicans come to the table and funding is approved, but he acknowledged the roadblocks Republicans have put in place when it comes to funding HAVA.

“The way we resolve our differences is through elections,” Hoyer said. “And if these elections have no merit, then as we have seen in the insurgency, some people may be incentivized to try to establish an outcome through violence, not through voting. And it is very dangerous for our democracy, and for the stability of our country. It is a great fear that I have.