The investment bank Goldman Sachs sold BB rated collateralized debt obligation known as CDO’s and other “garbage” to individuals then betted against it because the investment bank knew they would default. If these investments did default, these banks would earn an enormous profit. The employees at the Goldman Sachs did not disclose to their clients they had adverse interests regarding what they were selling and in the end, it led to the financial crisis and multiple lawsuits against the bank. We believe the values of greed and reckless guided employee behaviour during the crisis, as Goldman Sachs employees continued to sell their products without regret until it was too late.
The opportunity for power and competition seems to also be one of the largest intersecting parts of this whole debacle. In the film, I heard and saw that these bankers placed bets on the crash of all the loans. These bankers knowingly put countless families and individuals in
A decade ago the Lehman Brothers were the fourth largest investment bank in America. Dealing with Investment banking and investment management, the Lehman Brothers was one of the largest global financial service providers. Consequently, the subprime mortgage crisis left the company filing for the declaration of the chapter 11 bankruptcy protections, due to the unnecessary undertaken risk and obnoxious negligence accusations directed towards the group. Companies should utilize observational and analytical pundit functions in identifying the presence of crisis situations to avoid an economic downturn in the business (Pontell, 2014). The fraud would have prevented through stronger and better internal controls, which
Q1 – What was up with Wall Street? The Goldman Standard and Shades of Gray.
The word “fraud” was magnified in the business world around the end of 2001 and the beginning of 2002. No one had seen anything like it. Enron, one of the country’s largest energy companies, went bankrupt and took down with it Arthur Andersen, one of the five largest audit and accounting firms in the world. Enron was followed by other accounting scandals such as WorldCom, Tyco, Freddie Mac, and HealthSouth, yet Enron will always be remembered as one of the worst corporate accounting scandals of all time. Enron’s collapse was brought upon by the greed of its corporate hierarchy and how it preyed upon its faithful stockholders and employees who invested so much of their time and money into the company. Enron seemed to portray that the goal of corporate America was to drive up stock prices and get to the peak of the financial mountain by any means necessary. The “Conspiracy of Fools” is a tale of power, crony capitalism, and company greed that lead Enron down the dark road of corporate America.
In The Divide, author Matt Taibbi portrays the effects of the Recession on the employees of the large bank firms that committed fraud. Taibbi discusses the life of Linda Almonte, a former executive for JPMorgan Chase. Originally, Linda worked for Washington Mutual, but a large amount of fraudulent activity happened at the bank firm and caused the bank to fail. They were giving loans to “anything that moved” (357) without looking at the consequences. However, the massive amounts of loan were not what “killed the company” (358), it was destroyed because of their inability to rid of their “defective product” (358). After Linda discovered that JPMorgan Chase was committing suspicious acts, she decided to investigate. Not only did she find
Bank of America is one of the largest banks in the nation. It is a multinational company and it is recognized by its high revenue value. Unfortunately, Bank of America has endured many complaints and harsh views regarding their lack of ethics. Ethical issues occur when there is a blatant disregard to implement integrity, trust, and responsibility. In some financial institutions, ethical matters are displayed in the way the consumers are treated. Within the past nine years, Bank of America has diminished all of their ethical promises by revealing customer information without their permission; discriminating against consumers based on their race; and manipulating overdraft fees in order to benefit the bank. In order to assess these problems, it is vital to recognize what Bank of America claims to stand for and determine where their most concerning issues are generated from.
In a globalized world, the Common Good Approach has increased in relevance for judging ethical behavior. It presents “a vision of society as a community whose members are joined in the shared pursuit of values and goals they hold in common” (Markkula, para 12). This Approach calls attention to the conditions that are important to the common welfare of everyone. The principle states: "What is ethical is what advances the common good" (Markkula, para 12). The common goal when considering the bailout is a stable economy. What remains unanswered is why some financial institutions, such as JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, were helped with TARP funds while other banks, such as Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, were allowed to
The latest scandal in the Financial Industry was Wells Fargo’s creation of over 2 million false accounts in September of 2016. It is undeniable that the actions from the employees by creation fake bank accounts and credit cards is not an ethical dilemma. In fact, these actions are not only unethical, but also illegal and therefore, should be penalized by court. However, the company’s actions before and after are ethically questionable. First, were the sales expectations too high?
Quickly these corporations became known as the Fallen Angels and they were looking to rebound in any way possible. Operating managers at the time believed the corporations would rebound fairly easily because corporations would have no choice but to put all their attention on controlling their debt. However, in a situation such as this, close precision and execution is required otherwise the smallest mistake can lead to failure. According to Warren Buffet, “a plan that requires dodging them all is a plan for disaster.” The accumulation of debt continued to rise and not even the healthiest of corporations could obtain the capital to finance it. Even though businesses continued to suffer from accumulating debt, Investment Bankers noted that researchers found over time “higher interest rates received from low grade bonds had more than compensated for their higher rate of default.” From this information, Investment Bankers saw this accumulation of debt as an opportunity for investors. They concluded it was beneficial to have a diversified portfolio of junk bonds because the returns would be higher than a portfolio of high grade bonds. However Warren Buffet disagrees and discovered a hole in this fundamental approach by the Investment Bankers.
In the wake of the recent financial crisis, many commentators attempted to analyze the roots of the conflict from a political or economic perspective. Anthropologist Karen Ho, a veteran of Wall Street as well as an academic, attempted to understand the reason that Wall Street behaves the way it does in her 2009 anthropological study of American finance entitled Liquidated: An ethnography of Wall Street from a cultural perspective. The central paradox with which Ho begins her book is: " the economy experienced not only record corporate profits and the longest rising stock market ever, but also record downsizings," further concentrating the wealth in America (Ho 2009: 1-2). But how can corporations grow richer as the American public as a whole grows poorer? Corporations no longer view themselves as responsible for taking care of their employees, creating good products, or serving their original mission. Instead, the focus is on generating shareholder wealth (Ho 2009:3). Shareholders, not the larger public, have become the symbolic and real focus of firm strategy. The shareholder "symbolized and 'stood in' for the whole of the corporation and became the sole locus of concern and analysis" during the time Ho conducted her study in the late 1990s and continues to this day (Ho 2009:175)
Business Industry has witnessed the outcomes of bad moral decisions taken by business leaders. Enron’s story is only one example of corporate scandals and cases of bad moral decisions, which has not only shaken the public trust in corporations, but also affected the bank accounts of investors and employees. Before the bankruptcy of Enron; it was included in one of the fortune 500 companies after its fraudulent accounting case the share went down to $1 (Enron scandal, 2010; PBS, 2002; Godwin, 2006; Godwin, 2008).
Enclosed is a copy of “Group Assignment” about the understanding of CDOs. This report is aim to critically examined how CDOs may help banks to avoid liquidity risk and create more assets, and also problems in term of the purpose of CDOs, the role of three mechanisms in CDOs and problems faced in CDOs. After that, it discusses how CDOs created problem for Lehman Brothers by analysis subprime mortgage crisis. Finally, this report provides some recommendations for making the CDOs as effective liquidity risk
The collapse of Enron and all of the questions that arise to try and explain how this company failed, it all comes back to the values of management. The last option on our training plan will provide training in ethics. Enron executives and employees were caught in the desire to report ever-increasing earnings in order to keep stock prices rising, and to protect their jobs and wealth in their retirement plans (,2002).
The among the many functions of commerce is creating wealth for society. However, it is questionable if the firm in Margin Call follows through with its role acting in the interests of society in its bleak predicament. Once it is revealed that there is a high probability of the firm being devalued beyond market capitalization, the employees of an unnamed company attempt to formulate a solution to the imminent crisis. Although there is some dissent from Sam Rogers, Head of Sales and Trading, CEO Tuld promptly decides to liquidate the firm’s toxic assets onto the market. Despite the unanimous direction the firm moves in, there are various sources of internal tensions between the firm’s employees in that they individually represent differing perspectives within the social context of the firm. Through the various rationales the executives possess as well as the relationships between the employees and the firm itself, Margin Call illustrates the conviction that although the role of commerce is to engender a certain lifestyle for the public, the executives in the firm have warped this belief into a justification for the extreme measures they lead the firm to take in the name of their profit and their survival.
This work will examine the case 'Banking Industry Meltdown: The Ethical Financial Risk Derivatives" and determine which moral philosophy is most applicable to an understanding of the banking industry meltdown and explain the rationale. The case study will be analyzed and white-collar crimes considered as to whether they are different in any substantive manner from other more blue-collar crimes. This study will determine and discuss the role that corporate culture played in banking industry scenario and the response will be supported with specific examples. This work will postulate how leaders within the banking industry could have used their influence to avert the industry meltdown.