Outline of Financial Fraud by Bernie Madoff Essay

Outline of Financial Fraud by Bernie Madoff - Essay Example The fraud crime committed by Bernie Madoff remains the biggest fraud crime ever committed by anyone. It was beyond anybody’s imagination that a single person could trick so many intelligent and smart investors. Mr Madoff’s Ponzi scheme involved fraud of $65 billion, making a huge impact on the areas of the financial services industry. This was an example of a Ponzi scheme. A Ponzi scheme refers to the idea of using the new money to pay off old investors (Brigham & Ehrhardt 2013, p.265). Even though Mr Madoff was later on arrested in 2008 and is currently serving his 150-year imprisonment sentence, investors are still afraid of a recurrence of such a fraudulent scheme. Questions without answers continue streaming onto how even his close family members like his wife and two sons were unable to detect his fraudulent means. Madoff claimed that he carried out the fraud by himself, but there was a total of five others who had pleaded guilty to criminal charges by December 201 1 (Giles 2012, p.10). The Ponzi scheme like the one by Bernie Madoff was perpetrated based on the theory of rational expectations, mainly built on trust. His massive investment fraud was as a result of the trust investors had on him, built on his success in the Wall Street. It is common for general to rely on the judgements of others when making their investment decisions. Madoff would, for instance, use the word of mouth to popularise his investment ventures. For years, he had been a well-respected figure in the investment community. The success of his fraud could, therefore, be attributed to trust many people had on him. He used the many people who trusted him, so as to gain the trust of others. A small amount of initial trust grew into a large amount of trust, even though most of the trust was based on the little first-hand information. Instead of scrutinizing the primary source materials behind his venture, the investors tended to rely on the identities and the reputations of those who already trusted Madoff.     

Innovative Process Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Innovative Process - Case Study Example The company mostly followed the criteria of a "technology push" for its innovative process where the emphasis was mostly given to R&D without so much input from a user perspective of market perspective. However, as it is shown in the present study, the company was able to do admirably well in the various sectors it went after primarily due to the unusual yet productive and creative environment it provided for its workers. The presented analysis is centered around several axioms of the innovative process that kept in vigor within the Toledo Glass company during and after Mr. Johann Gerhart's time. More specifically, the paper discusses of the organizational culture in the company, of the innovative strategy it followed to achieve its notable success, and of the simplistic corporate structure it used to direct and develop the company throughout the years. Being an inventor himself, Mr. Gerhart was particularly fond of Thomas Edison of the General Electric company, and in several ways applied the Edisonian method of innovation in his Toledo Glass company. ... In his own saying about his assiduity toward the inventive process, Edison claimed "Results' Why man, I have gotten lots of results! If I find 10,000 ways something won't work, I haven't failed. I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt is often a step forward." His empirical approach to invention combined to an amazingly radiant drive got him the sympathy of several notable inventors of his time. Among those who admired him, Mr. Gerhart went a step further to emulate the Edisonian empirical method for coming up with commercially viable inventions. The Toledo company culture would remain deeply marked by the distinctive Edisonian method for arriving at novelties regardless of the field. In the early twentieth century, a select number of companies had the innovation strategy that Mr. Gerhart decided to implement in its company. In fact, the first laboratory of the Toledo company was established to model the Edison's Menlo Park facility in New Jersey. The facility was stocked w ith various equipment and tools to facilitate the innovative process of its workers through experimentation and trial and error. In the early facility, Mr. Gerhart set the stage for a company culture to be build around a liberal attitude toward innovation and invention. That particularity would eventually become the cornerstone of the Toledo Glass company. As pinpointed in the case study, Johann Gerhart began working with a small team of five inventors who were free to utilize the tools at hand to come up with new products having commercial viability in the glass industry. Each member of the team had "carte blanche" to specialize on the use of a given tool or equipment to derive newer and better processes for producing glass products. Agreeably the method is quite