Provident posts $14.3 million loss for 2010

Provident Community Bancshares reported a disastrous final three months of 2010, losing $10.4 million for the quarter ended Dec. 31. That compares to a $4.6 million dollar loss during the same period a year earlier.

For all of 2010, the Rock Hill-based parent of Provident Community Bank registered a deficit of $14.3 million, up from $7.8 million in 2009, according to information filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

Since the beginning of 2008, Provident has lost more than $22 million.

A spirited defense of corporate profits

A sizeable segment of society is under the assumption that it’s not enough for a business to turn a profit in order to be considered successful. True ascendency comes, they believe, when a company is a ”good corporate citizen,” which entails adhering to a code that benefits all society, rather than just the company shareholders.

Tibor Machan, a business professor and author, argues eloquently in Barron’s that business does indeed have a moral responsibility, and that it involves solely making profits.

Machan’s theory is similar to that of Milton Friedman, the late economist who in 1970 insisted that “the sole moral responsibility of corporate managers is to strive to make the company profitable.” This is what managers promise to do for the shareholders, he said.

Unfortunately, in response to Friedman, a great many people from the field of philosophical ethics began to write extensively about business ethics, insisting that corporate managers should help all those who can benefit from what a company is doing, all those who have a stake in a company’s fortunes.

“This became the corporate social responsibility movement,” Machan writes. “Today, journals, magazines, conferences and many books advance the idea that corporate managers have a moral responsibility to benefit society, and not primarily the owners—shareholders, investors, stockholders—of the company.”

This line of thinking, Machan contends, is an unsubtle attack on capitalist economics.