Genius on Hold

They look like

any American family.

To the eye,

nothing seems out of place.

They appear typical

by all accounts

for a family living in

post-World War II America.

An economic boom

was in progress,

and the horizon is filled

with opportunity.

The mood was different, then.

Very different from the mood

in America today.

With the recent collapse

of the American

banking system,

and the stunning fracture

of Wall Street,

America, as we know it,

has been changed forever.

Only one other time

has America experienced

a financial catastrophe

of such magnitude.

The Wall Street crash

in 1929

was the most devastating

economic upheaval

in American history.

The parallels between

the crash of 1929

and the recent

economic emergency

in America

are chilling.

In both instances,

massive speculation

gave license to those

who would take advantage

of a system,

flawed from the outset,

and permissive

to a fault.

The tragic irony of

the recent financial collapse

is that our companies, banks,

and financial institutions

operated, for the most part,

within the framework

of the law.

So, who is responsible

when so many

are so badly damaged?

Where are the checks

and balances?

Where is accountability,

when corporations,

institutions, and governments

are self

In the mid-1960s,

with the shifting

social climate,

a new concept is introduced

into the business mainstream:

Corporate social

responsibility.

CSR is defined as:

"economic, legal, ethical"

"and discretionary

expectations"

"which society has

of its corporations"

"and institutions

at any given point in time."

It sounds reasonable.

However,

this concept presupposes

society has sway

with big corporations

and big institutions.

It's rarely the case,

and it begs the question:

Is it realistic

for society

to have such moral expectations

of business,

where ethics and discretion

are concerned?

With government deregulation

during the past three decades,

and the freedoms

the government granted

to American banks

and financial institutions,

over-speculation

and dangerously creative

investment platforms

have proved one thing:

"Corporate Social

Responsibility"

appears to have become

a well-meaning proposition

with little traction,

while big stakeholders

and corporations

helm the economy.

If social responsibility

ought to apply

to corporations

and institutions,

should it not also apply

to government?

After all, government

sanctions the way

business works.

Government makes the rules

and creates the laws

in our society.

So why not "government

social responsibility?"

One thing is clear:

The application of

corporate social

responsibility

is no burden

to success,

because to corporations,

to Wall Street,

to the banking system,

it simply does not exist.

Greed rules.

1947, Florida.

The Shaw family

is living a life

not unlike any other

typical American family.

Walter Shaw is bright,

talented,

a man with

a promising future.

The war is over,

and everyone is back to work.

And a young man,

fresh off a Navy patrol boat,

is being groomed

for political office.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy's

father, Joseph,

is a fiercely ambitious man.

In the 1920s,

he amasses

most of his family fortune

in the stock market,

and he manages

to exit the market

just before its fall.

A few years later,

Kennedy is alleged

to have traded

in bootleg liquor

during the Prohibition era.

If nothing else,

it may be said

Kennedy has a knack

for good timing.

In 1934,

Joe Kennedy becomes chairman

of the Securities and Exchange

Commission,

where he outlaws

insider trading

and stock manipulation;

the very practice

which was rumored

to have made his,

and many of his friends,

their fortunes.

But his ambitions

were not only for wealth.

Power was the real prize.

Using his considerable

wealth and influence,

he aides his son

in a bid for a seat

in Congress.

John F. Kennedy is elected

to the 80th Congress

January 3, 1947,

while his brother, Robert,

attends law school.

In a surprising twist of fate,

the Kennedys and the Shaws

will soon cross paths,

and it will change their lives

forever.

Walter Shaw, breadwinner,

with a grade nine education,

works for the largest

corporate monopoly in America,

Bell Telephone,

while Betty Lou,

a stay-at-home mother,

raises their children.

Daughter, Linda,

attends middle school.

New baby brother, Thiel,

is just born.

My dad was still

at Bell Labs

when I was born

in '48.

Matter of fact,

I was born the year

the inven-

the-the speaker phone

was invented.

Walter Shaw

has been a lineman

for AT&T's

Bell Telephone company

since 1935.

He is paid a base salary,

with bumps in pay

based on how many feet of line

he could lay.

In other words,

he is paid by the foot.

My earliest memories of-

was Dad working for Bell Labs.

Uh, working-

Well, he started out...

He was a, uh, pole climber.

But, uh, early on, he...

He, ah, I would find him...

...tinkering with projects.

And he loved electronics.

It was a natural love.

Bell would soon learn

that Shaw is capable

of much more.

He studies

at Bell's engineering school,

where they discover

he has an aptitude

for calculus.

He becomes an engineer

in the research

and development division

of Bell Laboratories,

the technology research

and development division

of AT&T.

It's no secret that Bell

is the only telephone company

in America.

It was designed that way.

Bell Telephone began

in 1877,

with inventor

Alexander Graham Bell.

Bell succeeded

with his invention

and secured the patents

in 1876 and 1877.

The patents were

a contentious issue,

when many rivals

challenged Bell's right

to the invention.

During the 17 years

in which Bell

held the telephone patent,

he faced no less

than 600 lawsuits.

Once Bell's patent expired,

tens of thousands

of independent

telephone companies

sprung up across America.

Surprisingly

to the Bell system,

they were serving the areas

that Bell

had basically ignored.

So Bell started in Boston

and kind of slowly spread

from the Northeast

to the rest of the country.

And the independent movement

started in the Midwest,

or what, at the time,

they called the West,

places like Ohio, Indiana,

and Illinois,

and, ah, tried to spread

into the big cities.

And so, these companies

achieved astounding levels

of telephone penetration.

The telephone business

suddenly exploded,

but the thousands of new,

competing telephone companies

produced a new set of problems

for Bell.

They had, indeed,

underdeveloped the country,

so they entered a race

with the independents

to build out

the rest of the country.

That was

reasonably successfully,

and again, it was very good

for the consumer

because, ah, it spread

telephone service further

and further

into the country,

and deeper and deeper

into the cities.

And they lowered

their prices.

Uh, but the next thing

they did,

was they realized

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