Go Lean Commentary
This investment in the turn-around of Detroit is business, not charity. “We could make this our finest moment”.
This was the theme of the Today Show’s Matt Lauer interview with Jaime Dimon, CEO of the US’s largest Bank Holding Company – JP Morgan Chase – that investing in the turn-around and rebirth of distressed cities can be good business. The publisher of the book Go Lean…Caribbean echoes the same sentiments: Ditto!
The same as there is profit involved in destruction and construction, there is profit to be made in community redevelopment, within a city or even for a region. The book posits that combining those two functions (destruction and construction) in an overall effort for rebirth, reboot and turn-around can be truly profitable, and also impact the Greater Good.
This book purports that an examination of the details of Detroit can be productive for the Caribbean; Detroit has a lot of urban blight – see photos here. Early in the book, the point of lessons from Detroit is pronounced in the Declaration of Interdependence (Page 14), with these opening statements:
xxxiii. Whereas lessons can be learned and applied from the study of the recent history of other societies, the Federation must formalize statutes and organizational dimensions to avoid the pitfalls of communities like … Detroit…
The City of Detroit is in crisis. In July 2013, Detroit became the largest U.S. city to seek bankruptcy protection. It is currently $19 billion in debt and has an unemployment rate of about 14% – more than double the national average. This is why the study of Detroit is such an ideal model for the Caribbean. We have many communities within the Caribbean’s 30 member-states with similar unemployment, urban blight, brain drain, and acute hopelessness.
By: David Muller
DETROIT, MI – Last November, the U.S. Department of Justice fined JP Morgan Chase a record $13 billion as part of a settlement over misleading investors over toxic mortgage-backed securities.
In the largest settlement with an American entity in the history of the U.S.A., the Justice Department said that “JPMorgan acknowledged it made serious misrepresentations to the public – including the investing public – about numerous RMBS transactions. The resolution also requires JPMorgan to provide much needed relief to underwater homeowners and potential homebuyers, including those in distressed areas of the country.”
On Wednesday morning, Jamie Dimon, the Chairman and CEO of JP Morgan Chase, was on NBC’s “Today Show” to tout a $100 million investment in the city of Detroit. Later, at noon on Wednesday, he is scheduled to unveil details of the five-year financial infusion in the city over the next five years at Detroit’s Garden Theater with Gov. Rick Snyder and Mayor Mike Duggan.
Dimon told “Today Show” host Matt Lauer that the bank’s investment in Detroit is not a public relations stunt. From the “Today Show”:
“‘The cynic would be wrong,’ Dimon told Lauer when asked if the investment was in response to a $13 billion fine levied against the company in an exclusive interview.
‘We invest and develop communities around the world. And we’ve been doing this since our heritage started 200 years ago,’ said Dimon. ‘So that’s what banks do. They do it commercially. They do community development.'”
According to the Detroit Free Press, the investment by Chase includes $25 million for blight removal and home loans, $12.5 million for job training, $50 million for development projects, $7 million for small business loans and $5.5 million toward the M-1 Rail, the city’s streetcar which is being built on Woodward Avenue.
Detroit’s MLive Media Group (Posted and retrieved 05-21-2014) –http://www.mlive.com/business/detroit/index.ssf/2014/05/jp_morgan_chase_ceo_jamie_dimo.html
Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
This book Go Lean… Caribbean, serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). This represents change for the region. The CU/Go Lean roadmap has 3 prime directives:
- Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy.
- Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic engines.
- Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines.
According to the foregoing article and VIDEO, the rebirth of Detroit will be financed, in part, with $100 million of community investment dollars from JP Morgan Chase. The Go Lean roadmap presents a plan to generate funding to Pay for Change (Page 101). Both the JP Morgan Chase/Detroit plan and the CU/Go Lean plan extend over a 5 year period. The Detroit plan is branded the “Motor City Makeover”; this branding and messaging is important for soliciting support and participation from the community in general. This parallels to the CU/Go Lean effort to foster the attitudes and motivations to forge change from Caribbean stakeholders. This is defined in the book as a community ethos. One such ethos is turn-around: a collective vision, succeeded by appropriate steps and actions, to reject the status quo and demand change.
The book details other ethos to adopt, plus the executions of the following strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to impact the rebirths, reboots and turn-arounds of Caribbean communities:
| Community Ethos – Deferred Gratification | Page 21 |
| Community Ethos – People Respond to Incentives | Page 21 |
| Community Ethos – Job Multiplier | Page 22 |
| Community Ethos – Light Up the Dark Places | Page 23 |
| Community Ethos – “Crap” Happens | Page 23 |
| Community Ethos – Lean Operations | Page 24 |
| Community Ethos – Return on Investments (ROI) | Page 24 |
| Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Future | Page 26 |
| Community Ethos – Ways to Help Entrepreneurship | Page 28 |
| Community Ethos – Ways to Impact a Turn-Around | Page 33 |
| Community Ethos – Impact the Greater Good | Page 37 |
| Strategy – Customers – Foreign Direct Investors | Page 48 |
| Tactical – Fostering a Technocracy | Page 64 |
| Tactical – Modeling Post WW II Germany – Marshall Plan | Page 68 |
| Tactical – Modeling Post WW II Japan – with no Marshall Plan | Page 69 |
| Separation of Powers – Public Works & Infrastructure | Page 82 |
| Separation of Powers – Housing and Urban Authority | Page 83 |
| Implementation – Ways to Pay for Change | Page 101 |
| Implementation – Ways to Re-boot Freeport – as a sample city | Page 112 |
| Planning – Ways to Improve Failed-State Indices | Page 132 |
| Planning – Lessons Learned from 2008 | Page 136 |
| Planning – Lessons from Detroit | Page 140 |
| Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy | Page 151 |
| Advocacy – Ways to Create Jobs | Page 152 |
| Advocacy – Ways to Improve Local Government | Page 169 |
| Advocacy – Ways to Better Manage the Social Contract | Page 170 |
| Advocacy – Ways to Preserve Caribbean Heritage | Page 218 |
| Advocacy – Ways to Promote World-Heritage-Sites | Page 248 |
The foregoing news article relates that the benefactor, JP Morgan Chase, had been cited and fined ($13 Billion) for inequities associated with the housing bubble and subsequent meltdown. They have a motivation to “curry favor” with the public after their 2008 track record. But they claim that this is not a Public Relations (PR) stunt, and they are willing to put their “money where their mouth is”. There are not a lot of outside benefactors offering to help Detroit, so this city must embrace all the help being offered.
This is another parallel for the CU effort.
There are not a lot of solutions being proffered to the Caribbean region at this time. The Go Lean roadmap is a complete solution for Caribbean elevation. The region is hereby urged to lean-in to this roadmap. This should help the Caribbean to fulfill its vision and get to its desired destination: a better place to live, work and play.
Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!