Always Low Prices, Essay Example

Wal-Mart used the number one brand of pickles to establish a point regarding their ability to control prices and dominate their competition with their ability to control the prices all the way through the supply chain.  Wal-Mart uses its existence as a monopsony to establish price control.  A monopsony is when there are many sellers but yet one buyer.  Since there is not a large demand for gallon sized jars of pickles Wal-Mart in essence has created a state of monopsony in the gallon jar of pickle market.

Ponzi, Making Investment Fraud Infamous

Back in 1920, Charles Ponzi utilized a fraudulent financial investment scheme that later became named after his namesake.  A Ponzi scheme is a financial agreement between investors.  The investors are promised large returns for their funding and vague or fictitious financial tools were supposedly used to garner these hefty returns.  Ponzi promised these returns from arbitrage of overseas postage stamps.  In reality the returns are never really invested but the first investors receive their returns from future investors.  The returns on investment are never truly from the profit of the investment.

In the movie Madoff: The Scamming of America, Madoff was able to scam people for so long because he made the investment seem as if were an exclusive club and people wanted to be part of that entourage.  This group of investors would not want to believe they were being bilked out of their hard earned money so they in essence turned a blind eye.  He was also able to keep it up for a decade because he took a different approach to the Ponzi scheme. He did not make it feel like a get rich quick scheme.