All Posts Tagged With: "ponzi scheme"
Regulation Will Stop Future Madoffs? It Just Ain’t So!
Bernard Madoff is a boon to financial regulation advocates. A well-known Wall Street figure, he confessed to defrauding his clients of $50 billion, an amazing number. It is now established conventional wisdom, blared across the media, that this and other financial disasters would likely not have happened had there been proper government supervision. With deregulation [...]
24Apr2009 | Chidem Kurdas | 8 comments | ContinuedMadoff is a Piker
Bernard Madoff, who stands accused of bilking sophisticated investors out of $50 billion, reportedly told two of his executives that his business was “a giant Ponzi scheme.” Perpetrators of Ponzi schemes lead clients to believe their money is invested and that their profits are the fruits of the money manager’s savvy. But in fact the [...]
1Apr2009 | John Stossel | 2 comments | ContinuedMaking Social Security More Harmful
Social Security is a fundamentally flawed system. If a private firm offered such a retirement system and made the same claims for it that the federal government makes for Social Security, that firm would quickly become a poster child for corporate fraud, and its managers would soon be convicted of criminal charges. There are two [...]
1Oct2008 | and J. R. Clark | 3 comments | ContinuedSocial Security and the Insurance Illusion
In 1937, shortly after Franklin Roosevelt threatened to destroy the independence of the Supreme Court by “packing” it with ideological cronies, the Court came to heel and handed down verdicts in three cases affirming that the Social Security Act was, unlike several structurally similar pieces of pre-intimidation New Deal legislation, in accord with the U.S. [...]
1Sep2005 | Will Wilkinson | 3 comments | ContinuedAt Least Ponzi Didn’t Threaten Violence
Suppose while perusing your annuity fund’s quarterly statement you read: “By 2038, the funds will be exhausted and the contemporary contributions will be enough to pay only about 73 percent of benefits owed.” Your emotions might run the gamut from outrage to fear. In the wake of the Enron, WorldCom, and (insert the latest name) [...]
1Mar2003 | David G. Surdam | 0 comments | ContinuedUncle Sam’s Retirement Scam
Doug Bandow, a nationally syndicated columnist, is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and the author and editor of several books. The legendary third rail of American politics, Social Security, is lighting up. The administration has proposed to move, ever so gently, toward a private system, while a bipartisan congressional coalition is determined to [...]
1Jan2002 | Doug Bandow | 0 comments | ContinuedUnhappy Returns
Harry Dolan is a writer and editor in Bowling Green, Ohio. On August 13, 1920, a confidence man named Charles Ponzi was arrested for running a pyramid scheme that had cheated investors out of millions of dollars. Ponzi had promised his investors a 50 percent return after 45 days, and he was able to deliver, [...]
1Feb1999 | Harry Dolan | 0 comments | ContinuedSocial Security Can Be Good for Your Health
Until recently I took every opportunity to inform my students about the financial fraud of Social Security. Given demographic realities and the Ponzi-scheme nature of Social Security, those about to enter the work force will receive an anemic return on their “investment,” assuming they receive any return at all. They would be far better off, [...]
1Mar1998 | Dwight R. Lee | 1 comment | ContinuedAx Business Welfare and Privatize Social Security
Doug Bandow, a nationally syndicated columnists, is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and the author and editor of several books, including Tripwire: Korea and U.S. Foreign Policy in a Changed World. The president and Congress have promised a balanced budget by 2002, but a recent poll found that just 17 percent of Americans [...]
1Mar1998 | Doug Bandow | 0 comments | ContinuedBook Review: The Social Security Fraud by Abraham Ellis
The Foundation for Economic Education • second revised edition, 1996 • 209 pages • $14.95 paperback Dr. Peterson, an adjunct scholar at the Heritage Foundation, is Lundy Professor Emeritus of Business Philosophy at Campbell University in Buies Creek, North Carolina. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis stated his opinion in Olmstead v. United States in [...]
1Jan1997 | William H. Peterson | 0 comments | ContinuedThat Taxing Time of Year Again
Mr. Bandow is a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute and the author of The Politics of Envy: Statism as Theology (Transaction). Despite their extended budget wrangling, the two major parties agree on one thing: Social Security is sacrosanct. Taxpayers are suffering as a result. Today government takes more in payroll than income taxes from [...]
1Apr1996 | Doug Bandow | 0 comments | ContinuedPonzi Was a Piker
Dr. Manion, formerly Dean of the Law School of Notre Dame, now practices law in South Bend, Indiana. Latecomers to this troubled world will not remember Charles Ponzi, who stole (among other things) a great portion of the nation’s headlines back in 1920. Ponzi claimed he could double anybody’s money in 90 days. Furthermore, he [...]
1Apr1956 | Dean Clarence E. Manion | 0 comments | Continued-
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