I. Does anybody know what the 5 Cs are? No, I'm not talking about my grades this semester, but what is commonly known as the "Singaporean dream".
a. Cash, credit card, car, country club membership and condominium. (Overy, 2015)
b. The 5 Cs are the hallmark of success in Singapore.
II. Singaporeans are often known for being competitive, materialistic.
III. Many people sell their time, body and souls in order to earn more money quickly so that they can buy a nicer bag, a nicer car, and a nicer house.
IV. But does such a social construct, which prioritises money over everything else, have its consequences?
V. I became curious and decided to read websites, news articles and scientific papers to find out more.
VI. In my speech, I will be expounding on the causes of materialism, the
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II. Materialism is both socially and self-destructive.
a. It creates a materialistic, consumerist and superficial society.
i. People are buying things they cannot afford to appear rich, landing themselves in debt. ii. Some unscrupulous people go to great lengths to earn more money, at the expense of the majority.
1. A case in point is the Wells Fargo Scandal
a. In September, Wells Fargo was charged for opening more than 2 million bank accounts or credit cards without customers' knowledge or permission in order to meet unrealistic sales quotas. (Blake, 2016)
b. 5,300 low-level employees were dismissed while the CEO, John Stumpf, who accumulated $137.1 million in company stock while the scam was ongoing, left the bank and walked away scot-free. (Merie, 2016)
2. The subprime mortgage crisis was caused by the private sector’s drive for short-term profit (Denning, 2011).
b. Moreover, we will never be satisfied with what we have.
i. There will always be someone richer than you ii. There will always be something else you want to buy in an attempt to fill the emptiness in your
Money has been a life objective since they introduced it back in early 5,000 BC. People are so focused in acquiring materialistic things in order for them to feel special or overall happy. In most cases people focus on becoming rich to feel important and start to lose morality. In the play “A Raisin in the Sun” by Lorraine Hansberry, there is a specific character named Walter Lee. In the play Walter is concerned about money and has some morality because he was willing to let his future baby die from abortion, risk his family’s money for selfish needs, and thinks money is life. But deep down inside him he cares for his family more than money.
Money is the life force of all of society. In every aspect, money determines the value of good, services, and even people’s lives. As we breathe air to function, society relies on finances to function. And if society, the unity of humanity, relies on money, than the leaders of society want to limit and control it to withhold their power over humanity. They do this by limiting what can be bought and sold, while also controlling how much different things cost. These limitations allow our leaders to control our money and, through that, our value and influence to society.
We have become captivated with gifts and assets, with the expectation of finding happiness, but we cannot forget the fact that money can only buy material things, it cannot replace people or life experiences. The more we buy the more affluenza digs deeper into our society and future and we need to put an end to this starting with
The financial crisis emerged because of an excessive deregulation of business operation of financial institutions and of abusing the securitization mechanism in the absence of clearly defined rules to regulate this area in the American mortgage market (Krstić, Jemović, & Radojičić, 2013). Deregulation gives larger banks the opportunity to loosen underwriting lender guidelines and generate increase opportunity for homeownership (Kroszner & Strahan, 2013). After deregulation, banks utilized many versions of mortgage loans. Mortgage loans such as subprime and Alternative-A paper loans became available for borrowers challenged to find mortgage lenders before deregulation (Elbarouki, 2016; Palmer, 2015). The housing market has been severely affected by fluctuating interest rates and the requirement of large down payment (Follain, & Giertz, 2013). The subprime lending crisis has taken a toll on the nation’s economy since 2007. Individuals who lacked sufficient credit ratings or down payments resorted to subprime mortgages to finance their homes Defaults on subprime and other mortgages precipitated the foreclosure crisis, which contributed to the recent recession and national financial crisis (Odetunde, 2015). Subprime mortgages were appropriate for borrowers with substandard credit and Alternate-A paper loans were
Wells Fargo has been penalized and has been fined 185 million dollars because they were opening fake accounts.
We are all aware of the facts – that materiality is unsustainable; that consumption is overwhelming; that economic gain is all pervasive. Yet we favour ignorance. Time has caught up with us and the self-interested ideals that once held our society together are no longer durable. This has produced a gap, but nothing palpable to replace it with. Hence individuals like you and I must resort to other avenues of fulfilment.
Michael Lewis, The Big Short, film strategically provided three separate but parallel stories of the U.S mortgage housing of 2008. The movie demonstrated how Wall Street, in a desperate search for profits, lunched “bonds” products with riskier mortgages. As a result, lenders were no longer interested in if a borrower could pay them back. In disbelieved, I noticed deceitful tactics that lenders used, throughout the movie, to convince Americans to take out mortgages they could not afford. Chronologically, Americans’ saving levels dropped while countries ' savings tripled. Once the Recession was in full effect, the US government rescued Wall Street, passing an unimaginably large bill, the bill we are still paying off. To most Americans’ surprise, nearly all of the rescue money went into Wall Street executives’ pockets.
Now let look at the Wells Fargo case. You, the consumer should realize that Complaints against Wells Fargo are actually lower than thoes number filed against Citigroup or Bank of America. That is a fact that can be verified by the
(2)Since 2011, Wells Fargo’s employees have been secretly creating millions of unauthorized bank and credit card accounts, and some Wells Fargo employees even created fake Personal Identification Numbers (PIN) as well as fake email addresses to give the illusion of a growing customer base. The fake accounts earned the bank unwarranted excess fees, which led to increased sales figures. Everyone who had a legit account with Wells Fargo and the people who owned stocks in Wells Fargo were affected. Richard Cordray, director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said, “Wells Fargo employees secretly opened unauthorized accounts to hit sales targets and receive bonuses" (Cordray, 2016). The unethical behavior led to the termination of about 5,300 employees, and eventually Wells Fargo had to pay over $185 million dollars in fines, plus an additional $5 million to each affected customer.
On September 8 2016, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFBP) announced that it was taking an enforcement action against Wells Fargo Bank . Wells Fargo is a Fortune 100 company and one of the "Big Four Banks" of the United States. Investigations conducted by the Bureau revealed that employees of the bank created unauthorized deposit and credit card accounts across the country to meet sales goals. Over the years, the bank’s employees opened over 1.5 million fraudulent bank accounts and 0.5 million fake credit card accounts for customers, to meet sales targets and obtain bonuses. The affected consumers, were being harmed by the associated charges and fees for these accounts. The fees include insufficient funds or overdraft fees for the deposit accounts and annual fees for credit card accounts.
In 2016, federal regulators caught Wells Fargo creating millions of fake bank and credit card accounts; over 1.5 million bank accounts were created. Furthermore, federal regulators also said that 565,443 credit cards were created, and 1400 of those accounts had been charged over 400,000 dollars in fees. Wells Fargo employees broke many ethical and legal boundaries and engaged in counterproductive work behavior.
In September of 2016, it was revealed that there was alleged misconduct at one of the largest and safest banking institutions in the United States. Wells Fargo Bank was ranked among the nation’s safest financial institutions according to an analysis done by Global Financial, (Inside Tucson Business, 2009). Alleging that between May 2011 and July 2015, there were more than 2 million bank accounts or credit cards opened for customers without their knowledge or permission (Blake, 2016). Clients started complaining the they were receiving debit/credit cards from the bank that they had not ordered. Wells Fargo employees also started complaining that about the unethical behaviors they witnessed or were asked to participate in to the Human Resource Departments, the bank’s internal ethics hotline, branch’s individual managers and supervisors. All which led to the discovery of the fraud scandal.
It’s not very uncommon to see headlines of money hunger CEO’s or even a small group of decision making conducting unethical behaviors in their best interests. Generally, those conducting the unethical behaviors have the opportunity to gain from their actions. In the Wells Fargo scandal, this is not the case. This scandal was not acted out at the top, but yet through the front line employees. This scandal was also unusual due to the amount of
One of the first indications of the late 2000 financial crisis that led to downward spiral known as the “Recession” was the subprime mortgages; known as the “mortgage mess”. A few years earlier the substantial boom of the housing market led to the uprising of mortgage loans. Because interest rates were low, investors took advantage of the low rates to buy homes that they could in return ‘flip’ (reselling) and homeowners bought homes that they typically wouldn’t have been able to afford. High interest rates usually keep people from borrowing money because it limits the amount available to use for an investment. But the creation of the subprime mortgage
According to Michael Sandel there are only a few things that money cannot buy. He claims that in the past three decades it has been a quite transition, from a market economy to a market society. Market economy leads the society towards an organized path whereas, the market society puts everything up for sale, such as luxury prison cell where you can pay for a better, quitter and equipped place to pass your sentenced period, education cash incentive for getting good grades or reading books, private military which can be contracted by governments and sent to war, wealthy people can hire top ranking solicitors to decrease their sentenced time or to get away from charge whereas a poor man has to rely on government paid advocates and so on. this can be worrying for the society as it teaches the wrong lesson, putting price on everything brings a huge gap between the people, while everybody lives, shop, study and play in different places. Money shapes inequality all over the world i,e debt in china. (The Open University, 2017)