The 25 Percent Solution
At the Washington Post, Jennifer Rubin spots “A bank that proudly does business in Iran:”
The international bank HSBC says it is pulling an ad that juxtaposes a plug for the bank’s ability to find “potential in unexpected places” with a factoid about Iran: “Only 4% of American films are made by women. In Iran it’s 25%.”
A reader e-mailed me about the ad last week. The implication that Iranian women — who are tortured, beaten, murdered and imprisoned for exercising rights of free speech — are better situated than their American counterparts was simply preposterous.
When I contact HSBC on Thursday, spokesman Robert Sherman denied that the ad suggested the bank was exploring investment opportunities in Iran. “The ad makes no such statement,” he claimed via e-mail. Why bring up Iran then?
Since it may very well disappear soon from HSBC’s Website, you can see the complete text of the ad here, and a portion at the top of the page, where a Commentary reader spotted it at the airport in Athens, Greece.
Back when I worked in one 20 years ago, banking used to be thought of a rather staid field. As Michael Lewis put it back then in Liar’s Poker, most bank executives were part of the 3-6-3 club: Pay three percent interest to their customers for holding their money, with which they could make loans at six percent, head to the golf club at 3:00 PM. Repeat ad nauseam.
Perhaps to add a little excitement to their lives, the advertising of banks and financial firms have become increasingly politicized. But maybe those of us who don’t embrace the ever-increasingly holistic politics of the left are more aware of it than those on the inside of the boardroom. So far this year, we’ve seen Wachovia Bank (now part of Wells Fargo) embrace the reprimitivism of Earth Hour, proudly announcing on their ATM machines and on Wells Fargo Websites:
Even as “progressives” long for the cargo cult of the New Deal and public works projects such as Hoover Dam, American Express ran this ad in primetime earlier this year, celebrating a modern-day “dam buster” — a man who’s proudly working to destroy a hydroelectric dam in California:
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YouTube Direkt
Last year James Lileks spotted this Orwellian environmentally-themed ad from MasterCard:
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YouTube Direkt
Regarding HSBC, Jennifer notes this:
A day after I contacted HSBC, I received a follow-up e-mail from Sherman that read: “The ad was meant to encourage debate and discussion, and we certainly did not intend to cause offense. Subsequent to hearing some recent concerns, we are removing the ad from our global campaign.”
So a variation on the standard “botched joke” mulligan of the left, in other words.
Facts are irrelevant.
Bashing America is all that matters.
@CW
All those PRICKS at HSBC who had ANYTHING to do with this incredibly stupid banal gaffe, should have their butts KICKED real hard. There are usually a dozen paper pushers and lawyers who check and approve such things. They should lose their bonuses for the whole year, and instead receive a letter of reprimand, to be kept in their personnel file.
And the ‘Ad Agency’ which concocted this monstrosity (the same as for the eco-blow-up video?) should be terminated with prejudice. Pour encouragez les autres.
Then take the positive view. This, and the eco-blow-up fiasco should deter all other Useful Idiots, whether principal or ad agency, from future MINDLESS ‘creativity’ of the same ilk.
In the US 100% of new children are birthed by women, and none of these women have been impregnated by transgenders! That’s two more bits of discrimination we need to remedy!
Well, HSBC (Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corp) was formerly know as BBME (British Bank of thr Middle East) so why are you surprised?
Spoken to the point. Nobody should be surprised at prejudice against America originating in the UK.
In America only 4% of women have their noses cut off. In Iran 25% lose their noses, and ears, and or fingers.
At the risk of pointing out the obvious, round numbers like 25% are always suspicious.
33% of my bank accounts are currently with HSBC, but sometime next year that will be 0%. Well done, sirs.
One of the Conspirators over at the Volokh Conspiracy says he’s cancelled his HSBC credit card.
The story is getting out, and people aren’t happy about it.
It is interesting, or telling, that in its reply e-mail to Jenifer, HSBC did not apologize for being wrong, but rather, for “causing offense.”
HSBC published a “history” of the banks it has controlled. At one time or another HSBC had the Central Bank of Persia, the Central bank of the UAE, Central Bank of Dubai, Bank of Saudi Arabia, acted as Central Bank of half a dozen post colonial African countries among others. Central Bank means acting pretty much like the Federal Reserve does here in the US, creating and managing currencies and trade.
HSBC is a “depositor” bank where companies and countries put their money for safety. They are not aggressive lenders and have a very “global” point of view. My business unit was swept up in a purchase by HSBC, only to be discarded on the scrap heap when the rate of return didn’t meet their expectation and the business model didn’t fit in their “culture”. A profitable company is no more because the mammoth didn’t like it.
HSBC is a “green”, “global government” bank that is very conscious of its “brand” standing. It compares itself to Coca Cola or Microsoft and wants to be regarded both as a traditional financial firm as well as a “leading financial service”. Problem is that both are mutually incompatible. As a result, they put out idiotic ads as you point out, then have to backtrack when they don’t get the “sophisticated” conversation they expect. They are so “politically correct” they can’t understand their own contradictions.
Must be terrible to be so rich and misunderstood.
Oh, this will probably spice up the discussion:
http://www.hsbcamanah.com/ … “Islamic Finance for Life”
“A Global Shariah Advisory Board and regional Shariah committees consisting of independent Shariah scholars advise HSBC Amanah on matters related to Shariah.”
Have at it, folks!
Having it both ways: being the bloodstream of the evil capitalist military industrial corporatist megabehemoth complex, and utterly repudiating it. The first corporate leader to find his guts and claim to be a profit-maker loud and proud can call himself a true revolutionary. The sensitive environmentalists and mullah-lovers are drones.
Socialism in its Green, Fascist, or Communist forms is as all-encompassing morality as Islam: all within the state, nothing outside the state. Already wise bureaucrats legislate on the proper sexual activities, economic activities, familial activities, et. al. The 20th century saw the birth of a new, godless religion, with it’s titular head of Gaia, but its actual authority in the all-wise state. The 21st will see it’s world-wide implementation. As paganism fell before Christianity, so shall the Jews & Christians be destroyed by Fascism.
Wasn’t the child at the bathroom basin a 1970s environazi ad?
I encourage all feminist film-makers to immediately abandon the terrible oppression of patriarchal America for Iran, never to return.. It’s win-win!
HSBC does handle the credit card operations in the U.S. of Government Motors. There’s gotta be some sort of politically-correct synergy there.
(As for Amex and MasterCard, usually you can tell when a new “hot” trend has run it’s course, when advertisers start using it to try and peddle their product. In this case, the two credit card giants, like the Upstate New York Republican Party officials who picked Dede Scozzafava because no conservative could ever win elected office again in the northeast after 2008, thought — or were convinced by their ad agencies — that a great wave of liberalism was sweeping over the nation, and they had to get their corporate images right with the public after the banking crisis of late ’08. Hence a pair of ads as keenly in touch with the pulse of American TV viewers in late 2009 and early 2010 as Nancy Pelosi was in touch with the political desires of flyover country.)
Have business people gone left/libetarded-stupid because they think it’ll get ‘em more business? Say the Moon is made of green cheese too, why don’t they?
To answer your question, yes, they have. Also remember that ad agencies are a bastion of leftist ideology.
“And, through this blog post, we are asking you to join us by turning off your non-essential lights during Earth Hour.”–Wells Fargo
Sorry, all my lights are essential, kinda like the ones you have lit at your banking outlets 24 hours a day, 365 days a year (even though most of the time…nobody’s even at the bank!).
As an Iranian-American, let me chime in as well. Lies and statistics are part of IRI parcel and propaganda machine. Please do not look at Iran with a Western lens. All of Iran’s government offices are headed by IRI insiders, at the service of IRI to skew whatever necessary to make IRI look good.
Ahmadinejad also believes that “there are no gays in Iran” remember? Or “Iranian women are among the freest in the world.” So much freedom that when they peacefully demonstrate and chant “where is my vote?” they are arrested by IRI Basij thugs, taken to Kahrizak prison and raped.
The unemployment rate in Iran under the ruler of the clerical regime is twice the average among the top 10 oil-rich countries in the world, according to a state-run news agency.
Khabar Online, which is affiliated with Ali Larijani, the regime’s Majlis (Parliament) Speaker, wrote, “The average unemployment rate in the world’s top 10 oil-producing nations is about seven percent, due to oil revenues, which is about half of the rate in Iran.”
According to IRI state run media:
Khabar Online wrote that while the three figures of the rate of unemployment, GDP, and economic growth are high in the 10 largest oil-producing countries, Iran scores among the worst among these nations when it comes to these criteria.
Iran is tenth, ninth and sixth when it comes to the rate of unemployment, GDP and rate of economic growth, respectively.
______
There is a love and hate and master-slave relationship between mullahs and Brits that goes back decades with roles switched based on the direction political winds are blowing.
Isn’t it a requirement of employment that any man hired by a bank has to have his testicles surgically removed?
At least, that’s what all bankers I’ve ever known appear to have undergone.
Of all the insulting ads by any corporation, the one by MasterCard was perhaps the most insulting and demeaning toward men in general. The dad was portrayed as an environemental imbecile and the kid, the all-seeing, all-knowing, all-wise sage who had to show the old man the right way to do everything. Needless to say, since this commercial, my MasterCard has stayed inactive and will continue to do so.
The white male has been portrayed as an idiot, insensitive, inconsiderate, immoral, ignorant, and totally stupid member of society, not worthy of respect by any member of the family unit by advertising agencies who must be staffed by the worst of the worst from the far left segment of society. Fox has always been touted as the conservative voice but if you stop and really look at its programming, especially on Sunday night, one will see that in reality, Fox is among the leaders who use television as a means of furthering a negative image of white males in society.
Well, enough of the soap box for now. Back to the subject at hand. For those of us who have actually worked in the ME, the lies from HSBC are nothing new. The trouble is, they actually believed what the ad had to say. In their minds, women in America are downtrodden and not respected by their husbands and family members or society in general. Why? You need to have a modicum of understanding of the ME mindset before you can appreciate the irony of it all. If you respect your women, then you will keep them in line through use of the Koran, religious dogma, and Sharia law in general. Otherwise, if you let them go against the laws of the land and the teachings of the Koran, you do not respect your women and therefore, they are not given the “opportunity” to grow in the eyes of Mohammed. Much the same as an automobile accident in a ME country. If you and a ME resident are in an accident,even if it is the ME residents fault, you are still to blame. Why? Because if you were not in their country, and if you were not driving a vehicle, the accident would not have happened so therefore, it is your fault. Understand yet?
If a Westerner gets in a car accident in an ME country, it is undoutedly caused by the ME driver. It is difficult to imagine a part of the world where the “drivers” are poorer. Beacuse these people don’t grow up in a car culture, they never, ever, ever figure out the basics of driving. I could take the most air-headed 16-year-old girl in California who has never driven before, and in three weeks make her into a far better driver than the most experienced cab driver in Saudi Arabia, UAE, Jordan, Iraq . . . pick your ME country–they are all the same.
Why is it that I distinctly remember seeing signs on the buildings for this company IN HONG KONG back in the late 1980′s that said …
Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank of China?
I’ll look around. I think I have photos of these somewhere.
Acronym:
The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation. Yes, Hongkong is spelled as one word in the name.
HSBC moved its headquarters from Hong Kong to London in 1990 because it didn’t trust the Beijing government to stay out of its affairs.
This is interesting because I really like Iranian films. They’re polite, poetic, and well-crafted. Far better than any films from the Hollywood gay global-warming Sean Penn school of film-making. So, what should I do? Stay with Sean Penn and the rest of the Buddhist leftoid fruit-cakes whether I like it or not?
How thoughtful of HSBC to encourage debate and discussion. HSBC must think of us as gullible idiots, but one has to wonder if they are also financing Iran’s nuclear program and military arms, including those weapons manufactured for use against US forces. I’m pretty much convinced they may be doing so.
So, he wants to destroy a dam because the resevoir behind it has “silted up”.
What part of a “dredging operation” does he not understand?
Plus, without that dam, a lot of property downstream will suffer periodic flooding and destruction.
Perhaps this “great environmentalist” can use his rock-climbing equipment to find the cave he should crawl into where he can shivver in the dark, and leave the rest of us alone.
Will all be well if we stone any women caught committing adultery? Here homosexuals agitate for marriage. In Iran, they catch falling walls. Or take short drops until they are caught by a noose.
Yeah, we need to be more like them. You keep thinking nobody can be that oblivious, then they make a commercial advertising it.
HSBC sent me a credit card solicitation just today, by happy coincidence. I was able to mail my hand-written letter protesting their “glorify Iran” policies to them — sans completed credit card application, of course, for why would I want an outrageously priced credit card from a predatory lender like them? — in their own postage-paid envelope. I like that they’ll have to pay the post office to read my protest.
I might be HSBC’s longest running cardholder having started with a card from a Buffalo, NY bank that they acquired back in the 70′s. I had never missed a payment in over 30 years and have great credit in general. One month last year my payment was 2 days late and they promptly jacked up my interest rate to 29.99%. Bingo – one less cardholder. Moved everything else also.
What is annoying is that bankers are able to prosper inspite of rampant boneheadedness – because crony capitalism with the government assures that they will. It’s no wonder that someone thought it was a good idea to try to find a silver lining in the Burqa.