Lehman Brothers Essays (Examples)

ehman Brothers and Risk Management

This report examines the ehman Brothers collapse and discusses issues of investment bank risk management. The report considers factors which contributed to ehman's failure, from financial engineering as practiced by CEO Richard Fuld and other executives to lax auditing by Ernst & Young to the influence of an industry characterized by excessive risk-taking. In particular, the report focuses on the presence of inherent conflicts of interest, as well as the existence of multiple instances of moral hazards and principal-agency conflicts.

This report discusses the findings of the ehman Brothers bankruptcy examiner and considers other analyses as well. A survey of the literature shows the investment banking industry has long been vulnerable to the risk management challenges that led to ehman Brothers' bankruptcy. Motivated by greed and enabled by lax government regulation and ineffective corporate governance, ehman gambled heavily on the performance of the subprime mortgage…

Lehman Brothers Case Study

The author of this report is asked to answer to several case study questions related to the collapse of Lehman Brothers and what led up to it. The first question asks about Lehman Brothers' epo 105 policy and what, if any, policy Ernst and Young (its auditor) had at that point to develop the accounting policy and process as well as monitor Lehman's usage and compliance of the same after the fact. The author is then asked to answer to whether there can be agreement with the comment "intent doesn't matter" as it applies to accounting rules. The third question asks whether the auditors have a responsibility to determine whether important transactions of a client are "accounting motivated" and the author is asked to defend any response given. Finally, the author is asked to analyze Lehman's net leverage ratio as related to the fact that the…

Lehman rothers Failure

On September 15, 2008, Lehman rothers, the fourth largest U.S. investment bank at the time, filed for bankruptcy. At the time of its collapse, Lehman rothers had $639 billion in assets, and $619 billion in debt, making it the largest bankruptcy filing in history. Lehman's collapse also made it the largest victim of the U.S. subprime mortgage crisis. This paper examines the collapse of Lehman rothers and the factors that led to that failure.

Lehman rothers started as an investment bank that dated back to the 1850s. During its 158-year history, the firm survived the railroad bankruptcies of the 1800s, the Great Depression and two World Wars. It did not, however, survive the subprime mortgage meltdown, or its own bad business decisions.

The subprime mortgage crisis had its beginnings in the early 2000s when fear of recession was significant. To head off recession, the Federal Reserve lowered…

..although these securitization trusts were based on many unaffordable and unsustainable mortgages, it didn't crumble right away because the companies were gouging so much out of the consumer, they still had a high rate of return" but then housing prices dropped and more and more homes were foreclosed upon (Rayman 2008, p.3).

At first "Lehman managed to avoid the fate of Bear Stearns, the other of all Street's small fry, which was bought by JP Morgan Chase at a bargain basement price under the threat of bankruptcy in March 2008. But by summer of 2008 the rollercoaster ride started to have more downs than ups. A series of write-offs was accompanied by new offerings to seek capital to bolster its finances," all of which failed (Lehman Brothers Holdings, INC, 2009, Times Topics). After the government announced its takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Lehman's stock plunged as the investors…

The reason for this is quite simple: it is more than sure that, in the case Lehman manages the buyout, the former management will no longer have a place to work in. The stockholders do not enter the equation, but do negotiate the price of their shares.

The interesting aspect is the way Lehman can come up with a sum large enough to cover all of the stockholders' financial demands. Leverage buyout! It may use junk bonds issuing (bonds at high interest rate) and then cover up the loan from the profits made in the deal.

Negotiations with each important stockholder in part are commenced and continue at an incredible pressure. The problem for each stockholder in part is when to sell. If they sell too soon, then they will not benefit from the subsequent new offer that Lehman is most likely to come up with if it is refused.…

Member of the Board of Lehman Bros.

As a member of the Board of Lehman Brothers in 2008, I can attest to the fact that none of us knew what we were doing: we were of a bygone age of banking, one that existed before the world of high finance had suddenly and virtually overnight taken on a new persona -- thanks to deregulatory practices and new schemes based on the securitization model invented by Lewis anieri of Salomon Brothers (Lewis, 1989). It became a world in which massive profits could be made (or looked as though they could be made) in no time at all, whereas in the past it would have taken years, decades to amass this kind of fortune. We did not understand it, but we approved it by our silence and resignation: we trusted the traders and managing directors who seemed to know this world better…

Financial Analysis of Lehman rother

Lehman rothers

The history has been full of financial collapses and financial scandals and one of the biggest financial collapses that a company has ever seen was that of Lehman brother. The collapse of a firm as huge as Lehman rother and a firm which has such great experience of over a hundred years lead the world into a shock. It created doubts in the minds of people regarding the condition of other financial institutions. The history of Lehman rother is rich which is further discussed.

The history of Lehman rother dates back to 1844, when a boy named Henry who was a 23-year-old son of a cattle merchant who immigrated to the United States from Germany and he settled in Alabama State of the United States where he opened dry goods store. In 1847, when Henry Lehman's elder brother arrived to Alabama, the firm…

By re-characterizing the epo 105 dealing as a sale, Lehman detached the account from its balance sheet (Durden, 2010).

Lehman frequently augmented its utilization of epo 105 transactions in the time previous to reporting interludes to decrease its openly reported net leverage and balance sheet. Lehman's intermittent reports did not reveal the money borrowing from the epo 105 transaction, even though Lehman had in reality borrowed tens of billions of dollars in these dealings, Lehman did not reveal the acknowledged responsibility to pay back the liabilities. Lehman utilized the money from the epo 105 dealings to pay off other dangers, thus dropping both the entire debts and the entire assets accounted for on its balance sheet and decreasing its power percentages. Therefore, Lehman's epo 105 dealing was made up of a two-fold procedure: performing epo 105 dealings followed by the utilization of epo 105 cash borrowings to pay down debts,…

According to Frank Ahrens (2010, April 20) not only did Lehmann Brothers hide this practice from the investing public, rating agencies, and government regulators, they even deceived their own board of directors. "In this way Lehmann reversed engineered the firm's leverage ratio for public consumption."

In 2008 analysts frequently asked about the means by which the company was able to achieve reduction in risk. Lehmann Brothers' company official reported reducing its leverage through the sale of less liquid asset categories claimed and simultaneously claimed they were trying to give the group a great amount of transparency on the balance sheet. (Ahrens, 2010, April 10)

Lehmann Brothers executives are currently under criminal investigation. Subpoenas in grand jury probes were issued as early as October, 2008. Andrew Clark (2010, March 12) reports the problem is that it isn't easy to prove fraud in many of these cases. A top law or accounting…

Margin Call

The movie Margin Call recounts a fictionalized version of the fall of Lehman Brothers in the autumn of 2008. The story centers around the trading floor, the company's exposure to toxic mortgage-backed securities and its responses to these challenges. The movie discusses and provides a framework for analyzing a number of financial concepts. This report will use Margin Call to discuss a number of different microeconomic concepts that are seen in the movie.

Market Failure

Lehman Brothers is ultimately a story of market failure, so this is a natural starting point for this analysis. Marker failure occurs when the "quantity of a product demanded by consumers does not equate to the quantity supplied by suppliers" (Investopedia, 2013). Market failure is evident in a number of ways, based on the story of the movie. For example, the traders are instructed to unload their positions in the toxic assets, but…

Improvements in Integrity, Financial Accountability, Ethical Conduct and Corporate Responsibilities under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002

e passed Sarbanes-Oxley in the wake of the Enron scandal to try to root out financial and accounting irregularities. How could similar irregularities occur at Lehman Brothers? History has a way of constantly repeating itself. -- Joseph Grant 2010

The high-profile corporate shenanigans by Enron and Lehman Brothers have made it clear that tough legislation was needed to compel Americans businesses to clean up their financial acts. Indeed, in response to Enron's late 2001 bankruptcy, Congress enacted the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 but the Lehman Brothers' bankruptcy in late 2008 made it clear that there was still a problem in some sectors of American business. This paper provides a review of the relevant literature to determine how the integrity of corporate finance, ethics, and other responsibilities have improved, what the corporate finance industry culture…

But amid the celebration, crucial opportunities have been lost: In September 2009, the "inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, a k a, the bank bailout fund, released his report on the 2008 rescue of the American International Group, the insurer. The gist of the report is that government officials made no serious attempt to extract concessions from bankers, even though these bankers received huge benefits from the rescue. And more than money was lost. By making what was in effect a multibillion-dollar gift to all Street, policy makers undermined their own credibility -- and put the broader economy at risk" (Krugman 2009). Many banks have given back their TARP funds, in exchange for the ability to once again engage in risky activities, to pay traders the bonuses they desire, and to pay executives what seems to be overinflated compensation. In June ten of the largest recipients of aid,…

As Taibbi shows, it is not easy: "I'm going to say something radical about the Tea Partiers. They're not all crazy. They're not even always wrong. hat they are, and they don't realize it, is an anachronism. They're fighting a 1960s battle in a world run by twenty-first-century crooks" (Griftopia 16-17). Taibbi makes clear that the Tea Party is not even homogenous: it is made up of a broad spectrum of individuals (some of whom do not even want to be called Tea Partiers) who are angry and looking for someway to focus their anger.

In conclusion, recouping the losses is not an easy thing to do. hen a company like Lehman Brothers can be allowed to collapse while their competition (Goldman Sachs) can be bailed out by tax payer dollars, citizens are going to start wondering how their country got to such a point in the first place. Taibbi…

eaction to Proposal

The Financial Accounting Standards Board proposal is not written in stone yet. The main reason for this is that the Financial Accounting Standards Board is allowing for some time is to allow for investors and companies to provide their feedback to the Financial Accounting Standards Board regarding the current framework and feel of the proposals. The two main points of feedback asked for with the proposal is what people and investors think about the proposal and what would they prefer to happen to the rules and reporting requirements. The current deadline for the feedback is March 29th, 2013 (FASB, 2013).

Theoretical Model & Hypotheses

The basic question and issue being address by the Financial Accounting Standards Board as it relates to repurchase agreements is quite clear and is made much more so by consulting the Financial Accounting Standards Board documentation on the topic. They note that the…

Deficiencies in Organizational Management That esulted in the Economic Meltdown

Since the onset of the global financial crisis, everyone wanted to know what happened and what caused the entire situation. Analysts, economists and experts have all come up with many different reasons and explanations for what triggered the meltdown. To some extent many of these are intertwined and connected to another. Organizations such as Bear Sterns, Lehman Brothers, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were flawed at similar regions. In other words, there was a common denominator that ultimately led to the crisis for all these corporations. A fundamental error which is present in nearly all of the organizations which were directly to blame for and were directly affected is the problem of governance and management within organizations. As the companies and firms were not managed in a sustainable and healthy manner, their minor everyday errors built up and lead to…

Nortel Case Study

Nortel Networks Corporation, more commonly referred to as Nortel, was a global company of Canadian origin that at its peak in the early 2000's had comprised of one-third of the total valuation of the companies listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX). Nortel was founded in 1895 in Montreal, Quebec, with its manufacturing headquarters currently located in Mississauga, Ontario. The company manufactured data networking equipment along with offering telecommunication services. It employed over 94,500 employees worldwide.

Nortel's troubles began in the 1990's when under CEO John Roth, the company expanded into the internet technology market. Roth used media to alter public perception of the company. The sale of the optic fibre networking gear by the company from then on was hyped up by the speculators in the market, driving the share price of the company up, even though the company failed to produce overall annual profits. This…

" The code also states when communicating investment information care must be taken to ensure that it is fair, accurate and complete as well as make full and fair disclosure of all matters that could reasonably be expected to impair their independence and objectivity or interfere with respective duties to their clients, prospective clients, and employer.

Evidence indicates Lehman's senior financial executives knew of the Repo 105 transactions and certified the accuracy of Lehman's financial statements and disclosures despite having full knowledge that the company had engaged in the use of these transactions to hide their toxic assets and make their financial statements appear to be in good health when, in reality, they were not. These executives were fully aware that the financial statements were misleading and did not fairly present the true position of the company.

Hiding toxic assets and releasing favorable financial statements to investors each quarter clearly…

Once this has happened, the auditor is in a position to assess the risk of material misstatement in the financial statements. The auditor should consider, for example, management's selection and application of accounting principles in assessing the risk of fraud. Some red flags identified in the alert are when the transaction is overly complex; whether or not management has discussed the accounting of such transactions; if management is placing undue emphasis on accounting treatment of a transaction; if transactions involve third parties, including special purpose entities; and if the transactions do not have sufficient substance.

The alert prescribes a course of action for situations when an auditor believes that there is a significant risk of material misstatement. The auditor must identify his or her findings in an engagement completion document; document actions taken to address significant unusual transactions and must state the basis for the conclusions reached.

In the Lehman…

Estimation Techniques of Financial Crisis

The unquestionable ethical conducts within the corporate circle had been the major factor that led to 2008/2009 financial crisis. By studying the root causes of the crisis, it has been revealed that bad conducts among the CEOs of Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Citigroup and Countrywide Financial have been the primary factors leading to 2008/2009 financial crisis.

Objective of this paper is to argue that the CEOs of Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Citigroup and Countrywide Financial did not take the interest of the companies into a consideration leading to frictions between the CEO and the shareholders

In 2007, the financial markets were shaken by a serious financial crisis because of a dryness in liquidity associated with a subprime mortgage business where people with doubtful credit reports were offered mortgage loans leading to a rise of loan default. Moreover, lack of transparency, greediness and excessive desire for…

With them saying in their first quarter 2008 earnings report that they had: a liquidity pool of $34 billion, unencumbered assets of $64 billion and $99 billion in regulated assets. At the same time they affirmed the Moody's credit rating of A1, on the basis of the company's capital basis and liquidity. (Kuhlengisa, 2008) This is problematic, because when looking at this statement and considering what would happen a few months later, it was obvious that managers / executives knew something was wrong. Instead of disclosing this fact to investors, they continued to play down the effects on its overall bottom line, until it could no longer be hidden. The way the accounting industry would help to perpetuate the collapse, is by having independent auditors making conservative estimates on those assets that were frozen. Using the Lehman rothers statement, the $64 billion in unencumbered assets was more than likely a…

The job in Structured Finance entails creation of financial vehicles to redirect cash flows to investors. Asset-backed Commercial Paper -- CP, collateralized bond obligations --CBOs and repackaged asset vehicles are the other growth areas. This job calls for a good blend of spreadsheet skills, accounting and legal expertise. Derivatives get their worth from options, swaps and futures which are instances of derivatives. This is a highly profitable business whose demand for skilled practitioners has been extremely high. Here the skills demanded are in mathematics particularly the stochastic differential equations. Advisory services are extended by the investment banks in favor of public and private banks participating in M&A & financing. This job demands evaluation of client's value, options for creation of value or on a client's industry conditions. (Investment Banking: Job Options)

eferences

Businesses. etrieved at http://www.lehman.com/business/. Accessed on 30 August, 2005

Corporate Finance: Salaries. etrieved at http://www.careers-in-finance.com/cfsal.htm. Accessed on 31…

"

This is significant because it shows how some critics of contrarian investing will often point to the various instances of speculation and assume that it is contrarian investing. In some cases the psychology of consumers can become so extreme, that the definition of what is speculative expands greatly. As a result, using contrarian investing in conjunction with other indicators / tools can help prudent investors and traders, be able to identify when the market condition are becoming more extreme.

Contrarian Indicators and Tools

When using the different contrarian indicators / tools in conjunction with one another, you can begin to see how this strategy can be used, to effectively determine if the market conditions are overbought or oversold. There are number of different tools that can be utilized to indentify major changes that are occurring in the trend of a stock or the market averages. These would include: headlines…

Frankfurter landed on the Harvard law faculty, thanks to a financial contribution to Harvard by Felix Warburg and Paul Warburg..." (Viereck, 1932; as cited by Mullins, 1984)

In the "Federal Reserve Directors: A Study of Corporate and anking Influence" as cited by The World Newsstand publication is that chart one "...reveals the linear connection between the Rothschilds and the ank of England, and the London banking houses which ultimately control the Federal Reserve anks through their stockholdings of bank stock and their subsidiary firms in New York. The two principal Rothschild representatives in New York, J.P. Morgan Co., and Kuhn, Loeb & Co. were the firms which set up the Jekyll Island Conference at which the Federal Reserve Act was drafted, who directed the subsequent successful campaign to have the plan enacted into law by Congress, and who purchased the controlling amounts of stock in the Federal Reserve ank of…

Thus it was confidence ebbed that had ebbed actual income. The Hiscox Wealth eview of 2009 found: "The recession has left its mark on the psyche of the Working Wealthy with a lack of confidence impacting their perceptions of wealth and appetite for risk. Whilst two in five (41%) say the recession has not had an impact on the amount of money they have to spend, almost an equal number (44%) say they are fearful of the future" (PN Newswire, 2009). But, observed Vanity Fair reporter tartly: "Most 60-year-old ex-Lehman Brothers bankers likely squirreled away enough to at least scrape by on a couple of million a year" (Shnayerson 2009, p.3). If they did cut back, it was in relatively minor ways: "Why should I pay $250,000 for a private plane," said one man to the magazine "when I can pay $20,000 to fly commercial first class" (Shnayerson 2009, p.1).…

Big to Fail by Andrew Ross Sorkin

Andrew Ross Sorkin's book Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System -- and Themselves (Viking, 2009) presents a dramatic and informative account of the disastrous collapse of some of the nation's largest, wealthiest, and oldest financial firms on Wall Street. The book details the complex negotiations involving the heads of Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs, and officials in the federal government, some of whom had long previous relationships with those firms before assuming public-sector positions of trust. In some respects, that aspect of the story told by Sorkin may be the most significant as well as the least thoroughly investigated.

Specifically, U.S. Treasury Secretary at the time was Henry "Hank" Paulson, previously the CEO at Goldman Sachs was legally obligated to limit any involvement with his old firm after taking office in…

Sorkin's book does a good job of giving the details on what happened among Lehman Brothers, Barclays, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, the Fed, and Big Gov following the collapse. Essentially, everyone had egg on his face -- but some of the bigger powers had the muscle to save face -- and sink competitors at the same time: which is exactly what Goldman Sachs did to Lehman. Goldman had been placing its cronies in the hite House for years -- and it would now go through the hite House to see who got bailed out and who did not. AIG got one -- because it owed a large chunk to Goldman (who had figured out the game ahead of time and started betting against itself by buying insurance through AIG). Sorkin's work is a work full of the kind of details that other writer's like Taibbi and Lewis do not take…

Since, this one lacks structure means that many employees can become confused about their responsibilities. Once this occurs, it can often lead to employee issues, where this confusion can become an issue of contention between the staff and management. As management is telling them to engage in particular activity, yet they don't understand why they are doing such tasks. Over time, this can cause moral to drop as those employees who do not thrive under such a system, begin to lower the overall positive attitude in the work environment. ("Contingency Theory," 2010)

Despite some of the obvious weaknesses, the contingency theory is effective for those organizations that are small. This is because the in formalized structure allows managers / owners the opportunity to adapt to changes that are occurring in real time. Where, they can use their experience and common sense to adjust to various business conditions. As a result,…

" To that end, the Treasury Department would limit executive compensation for institutions receiving "exceptional assistance" (Geithner and Summers, 2009).

Troubles continued in the financial sector -- both Citigroup and the Bank of America needed second rounds of capital infusions, and federal guarantees against losses totaling tens of billions more -- while Ben S. Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, warned that more capital injections might be needed to further stabilize the financial system. On Jan. 16, the Senate voted 52-42 to release the second round of funds (Gerth, 2009).

THE GEITHNER PLANS -on Feb. 10, Mr. Geither presented the rough outlines of the Obama administration's plan. A central piece of the proposal would create one or more so-called bad banks that would rely on taxpayer and private money to purchase and hold banks' bad assets. Another centerpiece of the plan would stretch the last $350 billion that the Treasury has…

fr). 2005).

FSB's holdings in Hansabank were 98% (Swedbank 2005). In 2007, Hansabank controlled 62% of the entire Baltic (Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia) card market which is located in a small, but quickly developing market which has a high amount of savings and low credit card usage. The 2006-year, as predicted was a particularly good year for Hansabank. They were first among banks in the credit card market in the Baltic and had the largest sector of the deposit market at 32% to back things up (Hansabank/Swedbank 2007 13).

Needless to say, the market research before entering potential markets is critical in predicting how much of a gamble is involved in that market penetration. The market research prior to the entry into the Nordic and Baltic markets was extensive and meticulous and paid off nicely the next year in 2006.

E. Performance During the ecession

Even good companies have their…

Despite the fact that it also required heroic efforts on the part of Congress and the President, Time even gives credit to Bernanke for the $700 billion Troubled Asset elief Program (TAP) (Grunwald 2009, p.4).

Many, if not most of these decisions were profoundly unpopular and cost both the Obama and Bush Administration as well as Congress a great deal of political collateral. The relatively isolated Bernanke did not have to suffer such a risk in the court of public opinion, and even today critics of these policies ask: what of moral hazard? Supporters of the TAP and other aggressive government measures would counter that worshipping at the altar of moral hazard, caused the fall of Lehman Brothers and the freezing up of the microcredit market in the first place. But once the expectation of bailouts are created, one bailout tends to lead to another -- the bailout of Bear…

.." The Federal Reserve continues to keep a watch on both "current and potential exposures..." And are in the process of a review of the collateral valuation methods of the banking industry." (Kohn, 2008)

Kohn states that disruptions in liquidity in some financial markets have resulted in banking organizations facing challenges and specifically at present "significant liquidity demands can emanate from both the asset and liability of the bank's balance sheet." (Kohn, 2008) Kohn relates that when liquidity is reduced in the markets specifically for "certain structured credit products the creation of challenges and concerns relating to valuating spreads into other sectors and "illiquidity in some credit markets may make it difficult for some market participants, including banking organizations, to hedge positions effectively." (Kohn, 2008) Kohn states that the banking industry in the U.S. is up against some very serious challenges however, the Federal Reserve in cooperation with banking agencies…

The article that was written by Conley (2011) discusses the impact that collateralized debt obligations (CDO's) would have upon the subprime loans. These were created in 1987, by the Wall Street firm Drexel urnham. In this product, the investment bankers would take a number of different articles and combine them together as one investment. The various assets that were used included: junk bonds, mortgages and other high yielding investments from the debt. The idea with these different products is that the investment bank could offer customers a stated return on their investment. The way it worked is the brokerage firm would distribute each investor, the stated amount of returns that they would make off of the tranche (the CDO investment). This was derived using a complex mathematical formula that would divide the total amount of interest that was received, from the various high yielding products that were inside the CDO.…

The U.S. is a property owning civilization and a number of the people wanted land and housing. Americans however scarcely ever create savings. "The country itself lives on other countries' savings by issuing bonds to finance its excessive consumption. The current crisis began with cheap housing loans offered by banks. Banks provided loans but instead of holding the loan in their books, they packaged them into collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) and sold them to other agencies. These agencies passed them on to others and spread them globally as assets" (the Current Economic Crisis, its causes, its impact and possible alternatives, 2009).

Interest rates were lowered and housing loans went up with construction activities leading to land prices increasing. The real estate was booming, generating employment and incomes. But as the rate of interest on housing loans came down, banks started to compete to get more business. Because of low interest…

Williams - Case Analysis

Williams -- Case Analysis

Why is Williams considering a $900 million one-year loan from Warren Buffett and Lehman Brothers?

Williams is a company based in Tulsa whose business operations are energy related, including exploration and production, energy trading, pipelines and telecommunications. In the present, the company is suffering from deterioration in the energy markets as a result of the crash and decline of Enron, in addition to pressure on profit margins in the telecommunications business sector due to oversupply and investigations by regulators with regard to suspected financial indecencies. Williams is considering a $900 million one-year loan from Warren Buffett and Lehman Brothers because of a number of reasons.

To begin with, an oversupply in the telecommunications business sector has resulted in deterioration in the profits generated as well as margins generated within the industry, which in turn, has instigated several players within the industry to…

Big Fail" title a recent book a movie HBO. It refers bailout major financial institutions began 2008, time concern,, United States fall a depression aid. For purpose discussion I include bailout General Motors Chrysler.

Too big to fail

In the second half of 2007, the real estate sector in the United States of America showed the first signs of weakness. Devaluations were gradually observed and the investments made in the field came to lose value. The problem was mainly represented by the fact that the population did not afford the properties, but the financial institutions had traded in money as it had already been reimbursed. The bubble eventually burst and the financial institutions were the first to suffer the major hit.

In Too big to fail, the focus falls on the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, based on the recurrent assumption that it was this bankruptcy which onset the unfolding of…

Hansel & Krahnen (2007) conducted a study that noted the equity beta of banks engaged in the marketing of CDOs increased relative to banks that did not market CDOs. This again highlights the risk associated with CDOs, especially given that the impact on the firm's beta was more pronounced in smaller, less well-capitalized banks.

hile CDOs introduced more risk into the banking system, they also encourage more risk in the credit markets. CDOs accomplished this by providing a secondary market for credit assets. There was only a limited secondary market for low-grade corporate debt and for subprime mortgages prior to the rise of CDOs (Deng, Gabriel & Sanders, 2008). The increase in the amount of subprime loans granted in the U.S. correlates with an increase in the availability of a secondary market for such debt in the form of CDOs. In turn, this encourage the adding of more subprime debt…

Economists call this 'moral hazard,' where individuals have an incentive to behave recklessly because they know they will not be punished for their mistakes" (Interview, Der Spiegel, 2009).

The obvious response to such allegations is that the failure of Lehman Brothers which precipitated the collapse of the world's markets indicates what can transpire when something that people expected to be backed by a government is allowed to flounder. Lehman felt certain that the U.S. government would and could bail it out, just as it had similar companies in the past. Now the government is afraid NOT to extend aid to failing institutions, given what transpired post-Lehman.

So the cycle continues -- assurance of no need to suffer moral hazard results in a collapse of an industry (or government), the institution is shored up because it is too dangerous to let it fail, which results in the revivification of a dangerously…

Today, even the local gas station and supermarket use computer technology and applications that are much more advanced in their capability than the computer systems used to launch and recover the first generation of spacecraft (Evans, 2004; Kaku, 1997).

Modern computer applications perform calculations and allow analyses of very high volumes of information that far exceed the capacity of direct monitoring by human operators (Larsen, 2007; Nocera, 2009). That is not necessarily inherently problematic; in fact, it is incredibly beneficial in too many ways to count. Today, international manufacturers and shippers can pinpoint the location of goods thousands of miles away in real time; supply chain managers in one office can monitor stock throughout hundreds of retail and wholesale outlets electronically and automatically adjust output and shipping schedules to match their rates of sale at the local level (Evans, 2004; Larsen, 2007). However, the interdependence of modern life in general…

ite Aid Fraud

Over the years, there have been numerous cases of financial fraud perpetuated within the organizational mainstream of major companies. Financial fraud is often a well-coordinated sort of white-collar crime that often -- but not always - requires complicity and collusion amongst financial accountants, top management and auditors. ite Aid came to the limelight after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission announced that it would be filing accounting fraud charges against the company in 2002

Meanwhile, the United States Attorney for the Middle District of Pennsylvania leveled similar criminal charges accusing former CFO Frank Bergonzi, former CEO Martin Grass and former Vice Chairman Franklin Brown of perpetuating an immense accounting fraud scheme

. Compounding the crisis, according to former ite Aid COO, Timothy Noonan, were years of legal coaching amongst staff and mid-level employees. As investigations ensued, evidence of fraudulent manipulation of accounts, corporate malfeasance, and financial overstatement…

As banks faltered and default rates rose, rates of consumption and demand plummeted. Unemployment began to increase, and in a predictable Keynesian fashion, as individuals grew more insecure about their job prospects they began to spend less money. The United States has a particularly consumer-driven economy -- Americans are known for having historically low rates of savings and to engage in high rates of spending -- so this was particularly disruptive to the usual rhythms of the economy.

Young people graduating from college suffered some of the worst effects of the recession. "Unemployment rates for individuals younger than 25 are currently 21% in the euro area and 19% in the U.S." (Branchflower 2010). They were competing with older, more experienced workers who had recently lost their jobs. The fear is that today's low starting salaries create a class of permanently low-earning graduates, many of whom have high levels of college…

Collateralized loans will have demonstrably greater security than uncollateralized loans.

While these measures seem sound and will hopefully ensure that no institution will be penalized for making the types of loans that are necessary for the international economy to remain functional, much still needs to be done in exercising oversight over the practices that lead to the failure of Lehman Brothers in the first place. A lack of transparency in financial dealings remains a concern, and there are still a variety of financial instruments that are poorly regulated -- moreover, the precipitous drop in interest rates orchestrated by the Fed to stimulate the economy could give rise to yet another crisis of over-borrowing and widespread consumer debt. Greater regulation and oversight is necessary as well as greater insurance of debt.

eference

Press release. (2008, December 18). The Federal eserve. etrieved November 18, 2009

http://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/press/other/20081219a.htm

Toward the end of the decade, Wall Street investment firms began hiring PhDs in mathematics and physics to create incredibly complex algorithms capable of modeling elements of the stock and futures markets. In most cases, the creators of these algorithms knew next to nothing about the financial industry, and the executives who employed them knew (literally) nothing about the mechanisms their firms had begun to rely on for their trading strategy. Destabilization of the Home Mortgage Industry:

In the early 1970s, stock analysts at Salomon Brothers, another Wall Street investment firm, developed a new kind of security based on home mortgages, called mortgage-backed securities. In principle, this allowed the conversion of illiquid (i.e. non- tradable) assets like the debt represented by home mortgages to be converted into a tradable commodity for profit. This new form of commercial transaction evolved into incredible levels of complexity after the widespread incorporation of mathematical…

On the other hand, the need to promote productivity exerts pressure in favor of incentive schemes that have the foreseen consequence of material inequality (Ibid., 8). Yet, none of these policies exist in a vacuum -- instead, the synthesis of economic tendrils and market fluctuations act in congruence to a larger paradigm of causality -- one that takes on an almost philosophical regimine.

his ideology would be little more than rhetoric for Secretary Paulson and the Bush Administration, who would operate with a much clearer intent to benefit the irresponsibility of bank owners and administrators. his would be initiated during Paulson's tenure with Goldman-Sachs, when he would help to broker the conditions by which America's banks could lend frivolously to high-risk loan candidates. Simultaneously, banks were being allowed to voluntarily abide or resist reasury oversight requiring such firms to demonstrate the reserve funds to back up these loans. (ong, 1)…

This was able to guarantee the company a steady and sustainable growth, encouraging a constant profitability over this period of time.

Further more, the company is well-known for its principles of improving its performances and attempting to be more efficient in everything it does. Throughout its existence, the American retailer has focused on implementing information technology techniques in almost all its activities as the common belief was that automatization drives lower costs, lower prices, lower inventory, shorter delivery time and so on. Following these principles religiously, Wal-Mart has become one of the most efficient players in the entire American market, not just in its industry. Efficiency then was logically driving higher productivity rates and increased profitability for the shareholders.

Part D Company Report

The American retail market is dominated by 3 major players: Wal-Mart, Target and Kmart (see table 2). In 2005, the WalMart's market share was 8.82% increasing 0.2%…

1-6 Summary

The accounting convergence project of the FASB and IASB has proceeded slowly, despite a new deadline of 2014 from the SEC. There remain several key issues that are bogging down the conversion process. This dissertation will outline where American public companies stand on this issue. It will attempt to ascertain how much they understand about the convergence process and how prepared they are for full conversion to international financial reporting standards.

orks Cited:

AICPA. (2010). IFRS primer for audit committees. AICPA. In possession of the author.

American Bar Association (2010) Program: International financial reporting standards: Implications of accounting convergence for business lawyers. American Bar Association. Retrieved November 2, 2011 from http://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/publishing/business_law_today/buslaw_blt_content_2010_11_0005.pdf.

Barth, M., Landsman, ., Lang, M. & illiams, C. (2011). Are IFRS-based and U.S. GAAP-based accounting amounts comparable? Stanford University orking Paper No. 78.

Bratton, . (2011). Heedless globalism: The SEC's roadmap to accounting convergence. University of…

Economic Behavior

Berkshire Hathaway

It will be fun to follow Bershire Hathaway because Warren Buffett is a mastermind at selecting companies in which to invest and I have never had the time to really learn about his holdings.

Berkshire Hathaway, Inc. is a publicly owned investment manager in the property and casualty industry of the finance sector (Yahoo Finance, 2011). Essentially, the firm is a holding company with a variety of businesses across the globe (Yahoo Finance, 2011). In the beginning, the company was just a group of textile mills, but Warren Buffett got the controlling shares in the mid1960s and began to divert cash flows (float) from the core businesses and invest the money in other types of businesses (Yahoo Finance, 2011). Berkshire Hathaway's subsidiaries engage in the business of insurance and reinsurance of property and casualty risks (Yahoo Finance, 2011).. The firm was founded in 1889 and is…

Iceland's Economic Crisis

Web

Iceland's bankruptcy

The purpose of banking in Iceland: speculation and hedging

The central issue: too much too soon

Iceland's Transition

eplicating Wall Street

Taking on foreign "assets" at a ratio to GDP of 10:1

Is debt an asset?

Easy credit and the role of the Housing Financing Fund

Low interest rates

f. Inflation

g. The end of short-term financing in the wake of Lehman's collapse

h. The bubble bursts

The plight of the average citizen

j. Aliber's speech

k. Left holding the bag

The effects of financial deregulation

A prime opportunity for shorting

Iceland and Nationalization

Not Bailing out the Banks

Introduction: Statement of Purpose

The bankruptcy of Iceland in 2008 can be explained in one line from Michael Lewis's Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World. The line is stated by a representative of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) who is tasked with assessing whether…

What the world needs today is an effective global banking system and a strong and sustainable trade relationship. The recent world recession reflects the collapse of the global banking system. This was the result of heavy advancement of loans and cumulative rates of interest that were collected on those loans, which led to economic growth in the short-term but economic collapse in the long-run. It is the time for the global powers to take the world economists and political leaders on board and make an effective decision on the creation of a banking system that offers loans to nations which are in urgent need of financial assistance such as Nigeria, Uganda and other African countries. The authority that looks after such banking system should ensure a balance between the First world and the third world in order to ensure that the world economy grows smoothly.

Cutting down public spending is…

Conclusions -- Was TAP Necessary -- A five member Congressional committee echoed a number of criticisms regarding TAP that many consumers, academics, and fiscal analysts were considering. What exactly was the Treasury's strategy with the $700 billion dollars for the supposed bail out? How can Treasury explain the significant gaps in their ability to find hundreds of billions of taxpayer money? In a nutshell, it appears that the departments that control the money given by the Congress (from the American people) have no ability to ensure that the bailed out banks will do what was needed and lend money; have no real standards of measuring success of failure of the program; and for ignoring pointed and specific questions from Congress about their performance (M. Crittenden).

The fact that many of the institutions bailed out with TAP funds, funds from the American taxpayer, did not distribute these funds back into the…

The reality was that a company which aspired to be "the No. 1 stock on all Street" was instead steadily bleeding money while claim growth in the billions.

The pressure placed upon accountants at ordCom was reflective of the pressure facing accountants throughout the economy during this period of widely absence securities oversight. Indeed, the relationship between regulation and accounting is essential, and this diminished link would have catastrophic implications for the profession as a whole. Such is shown by the Scott text, which tells that "efficient securities market theory has major implications for financial accounting. One of these is that supplementary information in financial statement notes or elsewhere is just as useful as information in the financial statements proper. Another is that efficiency is defined relative to a stock of publicly known information. Financial reporting has a role to play in improving the amount, timing, and accuracy of this…

Cultures of greed, corruption and misrepresentation helped to facilitate a massive transfer of wealth, substantial enough to suggest that a denial of awareness on the part of personnel at such organizations is nothing short of implausible. Therefore, we can presume that an absence or real protections for would-be whistleblowers in private enterprises would help to accommodate a wave of corruption every bit as destructive to the public as any government indiscretion such as the histleblower Protection Act was designed to address.

Beyond this, there are indications that the federal legislation lacks the proper mechanisms even to serve as a template for that which might address the failures in private regulation. The article by Fischer (1991) provides myriad examples in which exceptions and clauses relating to the histleblower Protection Act have made it essentially toothless. Specifications such as that which denotes that only certain 'covered employees' qualify for the protections afforded…

George W. Bush

George Walker Bush is the second man in the history of the United States to have followed in his father footsteps and become the President. Bush served two consecutive terms as President, starting with January 2001. He was born in 1946 in New Haven, Connecticut, but most of his childhood, he spent in Midland, and then his teenage years in Huston, Texas. George W. Bush was the first child born in George and Barbara Bush's family. At the time of his birth, his father was an undergraduate at Yale (Bush, A Charge to Keep, 15). George W. Bush enrolled at the same university where his father studied and received a BA in history there. ater, he graduated from Harvard, receiving a MBA at Harvard Business School, in 1975. Between his studies at Yale and Harvard, Bush activated as a pilot in the Texas Air National Guard (The…

EU nations have blamed deregulation in the U.S. sector for the credit crisis and subsequent recession, specifically the complex risk exposures not fully understood and assessed by banks and investors; poor and fraudulent underwriting standards; lack of investor and agency due diligence; a failure of transparency; and the structure of compensation schemes and incentives in the U.S. banking industry (Griffin 2008). The failure of the U.S. capital adequacy standards was apparent when even U.S. banks that possessed what would, under normal circumstances be adequate capital reserves were taxed in the subsequent panic, after Lehman Brothers was not 'bailed out' by the U.S. government and many lenders demanded a return on their investments.

The EU has always had more stringent liquidity risk management system. The current system requires all banks to have liquid assets that cover 100% of potential outflows over am eight-day period and 90% of potential outflows over a…

The second purpose of the $700 purchase of troubled assets is to create a market for the securitized versions of these assets. As a result of the crisis, the market for these assets became illiquid. The value of securitized debt obligations became near zero, which severely impacted the balance sheet of all banks that held these assets. By creating a secondary market for these products, the government hopes to increase their value. This will improve the balance sheets of the banks.

The second key clause in TARP is that banks selling troubled assets to the government are required to give the government warrants. This, in theory, protects the government from losses. The theory is that the banks will see an increase in value as a result of the government's efforts, allowing the government to profit from the warrants.

Ancillary to TARP was the FDIC's excusing of troubled assets in its…

2009).

Engle (2009) also notes that the costs of compliance in both monetary and human terms are greatly reduced by a willingness to embrace the regulation as a tool rather than shunning it as a "necessary evil." Though stating the obvious, he says what many in the business world simply couldn't bring themselves to hear just over a year ago, namely that "smart managers approach compliance before there is a problem that impacts the company and its stakeholders" (Engle 2009, p. 18). The issues at Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers could have been prevented with regulation, but those at Enron and WorldCom were exacerbated by outright fraud, and the regulations provided by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act would have prevented such egregious mistreatment and mis-management of the company and its shareholders.

Strangely, the detection and prevention of fraud is not a benefit often perceived in the regulations of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act by…

High CEO salaries and bonuses reinforce that sense of specialness.

hat is emotional intelligence? How is it related to leadership? How is emotional intelligence related to different leadership traits? hat leadership traits might prevent corruption, or promote it? How might training and development in the area of emotional intelligence and leadership prevent corruption and unethical behavior from developing in organizations?

Emotional intelligence is often called 'people smarts,' or the ability to motivate individuals, to make them want to do what they must do, rather than to merely order them to 'do it.' A lack of emotional intelligence or empathy can lead to ham-fisted management, and to the bullying of employees. A good manager is interested in collaboration, and believes in the value of employee involvement in the company's decision-making processes. A lack of emotional intelligence generates hostility between different organizational branches and levels, and discourages suggestions and valuable input from…

At the core of the economic argument is Schumpeter's theory of creative destruction. In his seminal economic work, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, Schumpeter (1942) argued that innovation is the process by which economic growth occurs. At times, this means that old, established technologies and companies must be destroyed, but that the net effect will be beneficial. This sentiment runs counter to the theory that the economy would be better off if GM were saved. The economic costs might be high today -- the $150 billion or more figure is not disputed -- but that in the long-run the benefits would outweigh these costs.

In a later elaboration, it was demonstrated that big business turnover specifically resulted in smaller government, stronger rule of law, less bank dependence, stronger shareholder rights and greater transparency (Fogel et al., 2008). Bailing out General Motors therefore harms the economy because it stifles growth and innovation,…

At the same time, one also needs to consider that after the economic depression of 1929, it wasn't until 1945 that the economy could be considered as having resumed the same levels as before.

The authors point out that a slower growth (and a slow recovery) may be what the world economy actually needs, because it would be a more sustainable growth and it would allow the developing countries to correlate the macroeconomic mechanisms with this economic growth. Nevertheless, in my opinion, a slower recovery in the U.S. will have a negative impact on all the countries that use the U.S. As their main commercial partner.

ibliography

1. The Great American Slowdown. Economist.com. On the Internet at http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11016333.Lastretrieved on March 20, 2009

The Great American Slowdown. Economist.com. On the Internet at http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11016333.Lastretrieved on March 20, 2009

Conclusion
If AIG would not have been helped by the Federal eserve, it is more
than obvious that the financial group would have declared bankruptcy.
Although the bailout reached an enormous sum, the action was justified.
Given the current market conditions, an eventual collapse of AIG would
contribute even more to the fragility of the financial market. Also, it
would have led to a reduction of public wealth, and it would have reduced
economic performance.
The opinion of U.S. taxpayers is that the AIG bailout was not
justified. For them, it did not seem fair that they should pay for the
mistakes made by financial corporations' CEOs and by the defective policies
and strategies practiced by financial groups.
There are two sides to this issue, one opposing the other. U.S.
citizens have strongly declared themselves against the bailout. Their
pressure determined the country's officials to reject financial saving
plans initially.…

This makes using the Internet much more desirable for advertisers, who may soon be unwilling to advertise in newspapers at all, especially as the current age demographic of news readers begins to taper off with the inevitable consequences of aging.

Of course, it could be argued that people have always had access to free content in the form of libraries, which did not result in the demise of paid, print media. The convenience of reading a book, however, has become less of a factor as laptops grow more streamlined and because of innovations like Amazon's Kindle, which enables users to access printed content on a small, easily transported computer device. In fact, even libraries themselves are becoming more digitally-based, as college students can research journals online from their dorm bedrooms, and many academic journals, facing small subscription pools and high costs of production, are shifting to an online format.

The…