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Books > Business & Economics > Finance & accounting
This is the first detailed study of how Bernard L. Madoff and his
accomplices perpetrated a Ponzi scheme of epic proportions-what has
been referred to as the "con of the century." In December 2008,
Bernard L. Madoff was arrested for perpetrating a protracted Ponzi
scheme of inconceivably huge proportions that defrauded clients of
his securities company of nearly $20 billion-and was consequently
sentenced to 150 years in jail. How did Madoff pull this off for
years, even returning some or all of clients' money when they
asked, while in actuality was financing the lavish lifestyles of
himself, his family, and his accomplices with the stolen funds? And
why didn't anyone in the highly regulated investment industry catch
on sooner? Bernard Madoff and His Accomplices: Anatomy of a Con
examines Bernard L. Madoff's unprecedented confidence game (con
game), drawing back the curtain on what actually went on at his
investment firm, Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, and
exposing the day-to-day activities of his accomplices that enabled
the elaborate con to succeed for as long as it did. Through the
examination of court testimony and other court documents, the
mechanics of the con game become clear, elucidating how Madoff's
friends and employees hustled money from investors; the methods by
which false records, monthly statements to investors, and other
documents were manufactured and mass-produced; and how a multitude
of felonies and the highest levels of fraud became everyday
practices. Presents the first study of Bernard L. Madoff Investment
Securities, the organization where the fraud began, was centered,
and flourished by duping investors for at least a decade Documents
how investors who depend on and trust investment professionals can
lose money, especially given that some investment companies do not
always act in their clients' best interests and that Wall Street
regulators are often ineffective Takes readers backstage to see the
intricate details of the "theatre production" of a con game-the
playacting, performances, pretending, utilization of props, and
false representations that are required to achieve a "standing
ovation" (i.e., the total fleecing of the marks)
In 1918, the Soviet revolutionary government repudiated the Tsarist
regime's sovereign debt, triggering one of the biggest sovereign
defaults ever. Yet the price of Russian bonds remained high for
years. Combing French archival records, Kim Oosterlinck shows that,
far from irrational, investors had legitimate reasons to hope for
repayment. Soviet debt recognition, a change in government, a
bailout by the French government, or French banks, or a seceding
country would have guaranteed at least a partial reimbursement. As
Greece and other European countries raise the possibility of
sovereign default, Oosterlinck's superbly researched study is more
urgent than ever.
When just a handful of economists predicted the 2008 financial
crisis, people should wonder how so many well educated people with
enormous datasets and computing power can be so wrong. In this
short book Ionut Purica joins a growing number of economists who
explore the failings of mainstream economics and propose solutions
developed in other disciplines, such as sociology and evolutionary
biology. While it might be premature to call for a revolution, Dr.
Purica echoes John Maynard Keynes in believing that economic ideas
are "dangerous for good or evil." In recent years evil seems to
have had the upper hand. "Nonlinear Dynamics of Financial Crises"
points to their ability to do good.
With the gradual resumption of economic activity, most businesses
are facing a range of challenges associated with implementing
measures to protect the health and safety of their employees. Some
employers had to put certain business activities on hold and even
start new ones in order to keep their organizations operating
efficiently. The global COVID-19 pandemic plus digital
transformation and the pressure of Industry 4.0 have challenged
companies to manage their organizations in newfound ways. In the
short term, they are facing enormous changes to their business
plans; in the long term, they must adapt and continue to progress
on their original goals. Reviving Businesses With New
Organizational Change Management Strategies is a crucial reference
book that analyzes the sensitivity of organizations to change
management based on methodologies and tools to control impacts, to
understand how employees will be impacted in their environment, and
to learn how technology will help both the industry and
professionals. This book also explores types of frameworks that are
built for communication and business continuity, the importance of
collaborative and interactive relationships for change management,
and emotional factors and issues for change management. Covering
topics including change management models, cybersecurity, Health
4.0, privacy and security, and information systems management, this
text is essential for managers, executives, human resources
managers, academicians, students, and researchers looking for
successful business strategies that are leading to increased
efficiency, performance, and growth.
This book explores the system of financing local governments in
selected countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Using evidence
from the last two decades, the authors, experts on their particular
countries, describe the development of the current local government
finance system in each nation, and the major challenges and policy
options they face. The contributions in this book provide
comprehensive coverage of a transitional Europe that encompasses
both modern local public finance theory and specific applications
in the target countries. The book is a recommended read not only
for students of local government and local public finance, but also
practitioners and all those who have to deal with the
accountability and financial issues at local government level in
Central and Eastern Europe.
The story of banking in twentieth-century Oklahoma is also the
story of the Sooner State's first hundred years, as Michael J.
Hightower's new book demonstrates. Oklahoma statehood coincided
with the Panic of 1907, and both events signaled seismic shifts in
state banking practices. Much as Oklahoma banks shed their frontier
persona to become more tightly integrated in the national economy,
so too was decentralized banking revealed as an anachronism,
utterly unsuited to an increasingly global economy. With creation
of the Federal Reserve System in 1913 and subsequent choice of
Oklahoma City as the location for a branch bank, frontier banking
began yielding to systems commensurate with the needs of the new
century.
Through meticulous research and personal interviews with bankers
statewide, Hightower has crafted a compelling narrative of Oklahoma
banking in the twentieth century. One of the first acts of the new
state legislature was to guarantee that depositors in
state-chartered banks would never lose a penny. Meanwhile, land and
oil speculators and the bankers who funded their dreams were
elevating get-rich-quick (and often get-poor-quick) schemes to an
art form. In defense of country banks, the Oklahoma Bankers
Association dispatched armed vigilantes to stop robbers in their
tracks.
Subsequent developments in Oklahoma banking include adaptation to
regulations spawned by the Great Depression, the post-World War II
boom, the 1980s depression in the oil patch, and changes fostered
by rapid-fire advances in technology and communication. The demise
of Penn Square Bank offers one of history's few unambiguous
lessons, and it warrants two chapters--one on the rise, and one on
the fall. Increasing regulation of the banking industry, the
survival of family banks, and the resilience of community banking
are consistent themes in a state that is only a few generations
removed from the frontier.
This comprehensive source of information about financial fraud
delivers a mature approach to fraud detection and prevention. It
brings together all important aspect of analytics used in
investigating modern crime in financial markets and uses R for its
statistical examples. It focuses on crime in financial markets as
opposed to the financial industry, and it highlights technical
aspects of crime detection and prevention as opposed to their
qualitative aspects. For those with strong analytic skills, this
book unleashes the usefulness of powerful predictive and
prescriptive analytics in predicting and preventing modern crime in
financial markets.
In response to demographic change many countries in the European
Union have reformed their pension systems. During the last two
decades personal pensions have been introduced in Belgium, Denmark,
France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Sweden, and the UK. This
book is a critical examination of the objectives of personal
pensions in these countries and the use of tax incentives to
encourage individuals to save for their retirement. It also
includes discussion on personal pensions in the United States. The
volume focuses on issues such as risk, administrative expense, and
the role of tax allowances in encouraging personal pension
provision. Based on the evidence from these countries it is
concluded that expectations relating to the take up of personal
pensions have not been met and that EU countries should not rely on
personal pensions to improve income adequacy at the lower end of
the income distribution. Academics and researchers teaching and
studying employee benefits and pension costs - particularly in
countries that have recently reformed their pension systems - will
warmly welcome this book. Government bodies involved in pension
reform and European Commission institutions concerned with the
evolution and problems with pension policy within the EU will also
find this book an informative and invaluable read.
The New York Times bestseller from business journalist Christopher
Leonard infiltrates one of America’s most mysterious
institutions—the Federal Reserve—to show how its policies
spearheaded by Chairman Jerome Powell over the past ten years have
accelerated income inequality and put our country’s economic
stability at risk. If you asked most people what forces led to
today’s unprecedented income inequality and financial crashes, no
one would say the Federal Reserve. For most of its history, the Fed
has enjoyed the fawning adoration of the press. When the economy
grew, it was credited to the Fed. When the economy imploded in
2008, the Fed got credit for rescuing us. But here, for the first
time, is the inside story of how the Fed has reshaped the American
economy for the worse. It all started on November 3, 2010, when the
Fed began a radical intervention called quantitative easing. In
just a few short years, the Fed more than quadrupled the money
supply with one goal: to encourage banks and other investors to
extend more risky debt. Leaders at the Fed knew that they were
undertaking a bold experiment that would produce few real jobs,
with long-term risks that were hard to measure. But the Fed
proceeded anyway…and then found itself trapped. Once it printed
all that money, there was no way to withdraw it from circulation.
The Fed tried several times, only to see the market start to crash,
at which point the Fed turned the money spigot back on. That’s
what it did when COVID hit, printing 300 years’ worth of money in
a few short months. Which brings us to now: Ten years on, the gap
between the rich and poor has grown dramatically, inflation is
raging, and the stock market is driven by boom, busts, and
bailouts. Middle-class Americans seem stuck in a stage of permanent
stagnation, with wage gains wiped out by high prices even as they
remain buried under credit card debt, car loan debt, and student
debt. Meanwhile, the “too big to fail” banks remain bigger and
more powerful than ever while the richest Americans enjoy the gains
of a hyper-charged financial system. The Lords of Easy Money
“skillfully” (The Wall Street Journal) tells the
“fascinating” (The New York Times) tale of how quantitative
easing is imperiling the American economy through the story of the
one man who tried to warn us. This is the first inside story of how
we really got here—and why our economy rests on such unstable
ground.
As a leader in your organization, you will be very familiar with
your organization’s key financial statements and monthly
management reports. You may have spent countless hours discussing
budgets and expenditures. But how much time have you spent
reflecting on the fact that these revenues are generated by actual
customers—the people who pull out their wallets and pay for your
products and services? In The Customer-Base Audit: The First Step
on the Journey to Customer Centricity, experts Peter Fader, Bruce
Hardie, and Michael Ross start you on the path toward really
getting to understand your customers’ buying behavior as well as
the health of your overall customer base. A customer-base audit is
a systematic review of the buying behavior of a firm’s customers
using data captured by its transaction systems. It will help you
answer questions such as: -- How healthy is your customer base? How
realistic are your growth objectives? -- How do your customers
differ in terms of their behavior and value? -- How has the quality
of your customers changed over time? -- What changes in customer
behavior lie behind period-to-period changes in firm performance?
-- What is important to your high-value customers? Which products
help you acquire and retain your best customers? Fader, Hardie, and
Ross present five “lenses” through which an executive can
address questions like those above. The answers are often lurking
in various parts of the organization, but it is rare to find all
the relevant analyses in one place, let alone performed on a
regular basis (as an audit should be). Yet without such a basic,
systematic understanding of the foundations of the firm’s primary
source of cash flow, how can executives make informed decisions?
Fader, a Wharton professor, is the author of Customer Centricity
and coauthor of The Customer Centricity Playbook, both of which
have helped businesses radically rethink how they relate to
customers. In this first step of the journey, Fader, Hardie, and
Ross assist leaders in gaining a fundamental understanding of their
customers’ buying behavior—and thus their company as a whole.
The history of customs duties reflects the development of the Qing
fiscal system, especially in its transition from a rather
traditional to a more modern economy. Mainly based on Qing
archives, this book, the first research monograph on this subject
in the English language, not only gives a brief introduction of
each customs post's transformation over time, but also provides the
complete statistical data of each of these post over the Qing
dynasty. Contributors are: Bas van Leeuwen, Bozhong Li, Maaten
Duijvendak, Martin Uebele, Peter Foldvari, Yi Xu.
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