Business Research Ethics RES/351 May 28, 2012 Negussie Nega, M.A., DM What unethical research behavior was involved? In 2002 Citigroup Inc. was part of a lawsuit where analyst released biased information concerning stocks to the investors causing many individuals to lose money. The memo stated the analyst was reluctant to release the information because they fear a backlash from the investment bankers. The unethical behavior in the article was that several securities firm violated a basic ethics code when the research department doctored number that misleads the investors. The investors purchased stock based on tainted research.
401(K) has become ineffective because of the corruption of big business, the misunderstanding of and as a result a mishandling of the 401(K) accounts, and its correlating dependency on the market’s success. Making profit is important to people. Most of all, improving the bottom line is the primary objective for major companies. “For Robert Shively, learned that his employer, Occidental Petroleum Corporation, or also-known-as Oxy Pete,” wanted to forgo the guaranteed-employer pension plans for the less demanding 401(K) system where it is based on contributions from employee’s pay rather than from the employer’s profit. This forces the employee to save without any effort but, due to this, workers began to neglect the social security and entirely dropped the use of the original pension plan.
However, when the stock market crashed in 1929, President Hoover was faced with the challenges of helping the United States recover from a severe economic depression. The Great Depression served as a turning point in Hoover’s presidency because his policies are what made him infamous. Hoover was a believer that the federal government should not provide direct relief to citizens in order to avoid people relying of government money to get by. As a result, Hoover stated in a statement to the press that private, state and local government are responsible for providing relief to the public (Doc C). Hoover’s assertions accurately portray the conservative ideals of the federal government adopting a laissez faire policy towards the economy.
One reason is because of margin trading. When one does this one borrow money from a broker who borrows money from a bank. If the stock goes up everyone makes money, but if it goes down then everyone loses and eventually the owner has to sell his stock. Thus depressing the market even more. In addition to that, the stock market crashed because of a weak-banking system and because of the fact that the Government allowed businesses to make decisions even if it hurt everyone else.
There was a panic of 1873 from corruption in Ulysess S. Grant’s administration (Doc. C). Because Grant was trying to find people that was corrupting hid administration. He focused on corruption, in doing so he unwillingly turned away from Reconstruction. Just like the Ku-Klux-Klansmen and other racist people wanted him to.
He took his business into the commercial field. What have we done to ourselves? As a class we talked about greed and how greed often motivates our financial decisions. We also discussed ethical responsibility in business. I think the best step forward would be to, on a national scale, adjust living standards downward.
Only six months after Hoover took office, the economy collapsed and the Great Depression began. Many factors caused and contributed to the Great Depression of 1929. One factor would be the overproductions of many goods in the 1920s led to worker layoffs Another factor was that easy credit led to people spending more than they had, and it led to a rapid inflation that eventually caused people to stop buying. The Federal Reserve Bank, created in 1913, did a poor job which also led to the great depression. It did not monitor interest rates to help regulate the economy when overproduction and inflation had started to cause unemployment in 1928-29 and the economy seemed likely headed toward collapse.
Looking Backward In Looking Backward, Edward Bellamy argues that monopolies running the American economy was one of the most significant problems in 1887. It was Bellamy’s belief that small independent businesses would not have the ability to succeed due in part to corporate monopolies running them out of business, or just buying them out. He gave an example of the railroads being slowly brought up until,“a few great syndicates controlled every rail in the land.” Bellamy’s opinion was that the monopolies were able to take advantage of their customers and small business owners because they had too much control of the markets. (34-38) Edward Bellamy criticizes the American government system because of the corruption present behind their curtains.
The big financial-center banks that erivatives may have won a Nobel, but are they really a sell derivatives, moreover, may have an incentive to push a good idea? Companies have suffered huge losses trading product without clearly explaining the risks to a customer. in the type of derivative financial products whose invention was “You see a gap between the sophistication of Wall Street firms facilitated by the work of Fischer Black and the Nobelists. and the client firms,” notes Suresh M. Sundaresan of the Options and other derivatives—including futures, forwards Columbia University Graduate School of Business. “Because and swaps—are instruments for speculation as well as hedges bonuses on Wall Street are tied to transaction volume, this creagainst a drop in an asset’s value.
In 1873 the Wall Street Journal article noted that cotton prices had not been this high since the 1870. Since this Wall Street Journal article was published, cotton prices have continued to approach US$2/lb. The historical context of the painting is not encouraging, so there may be an unintended irony in using this painting to illustrate historical analogies to the present time. An additional irony of the portrait is that around the time of its completion, the family business dissolved, likely because of the dislocations in finance at the time. The family business was already fragile because of important changes in competitiveness that resulted from various communications improvements.