Max Keiser rails against “zombie” banks, and rightly so as the economy suffers from the life-draining consequences of these wretched institutions. A zombie bank is a bank that that has an economic net worth of zero, or less than zero, but continues to operate as a result of government backings or bailouts.
But what about zombie organisations?
A zombie organisation is an organisation that also has a net worth of zero, or less than zero, since it has had all of its life-blood drained out of it and yet somehow, inexplicably, continues to walk the earth. Or, more accurately, the life-blood has left it – the good people of the organisation, the creative and honest people, have long since left to go onto better things, no longer able to endure the lack of management, and the incompetence and solipsism of the zombie organisation’s funeral directors. However, unlike the zombie banks, the zombie organisation is not being bailed out and instead has lost its source of funding, its fiscal blood supply, and yet stumbles on relentlessly, zombie-like, pursuing its mindless course.
I don’t know which is the saddest, the zombie bank or the zombie organisation. At least you can understand how the zombie bank continues in its unfortunate existence, pumped with the blood of tax-payers’ money. But how do you explain the continued existence of the zombie organisation, deprived of the blood of funding, unwanted even by its own host organisation, circling itself in its own uselessness and redundancy? Just how do you put the zombie organisation out of its misery?