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.