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Finance and capital markets
Ponzi schemes
Ponzi Schemes. Created by Sal Khan.
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- how is the investor supposed to convince people that he doubled their money?(38 votes)
- Probably with legitimate, professional looking income statements and tax return forms. Probably similar to the same type of forms you would get at the end of the year from your financial advisor or mutual fund manager.(29 votes)
- Understanding this and how the money system work (creation of money by the debt), is it fair to say our money system is a Ponzi-scheme?
If we all went to our respective banks to claim our money back, surely she would not be able to satisfy all of us, would she...?
Thanks(30 votes)- It is not fair, for a simple reason: Banks and legitimate financial institutions are supposed to invest the money they receive from depositors and increase it, thus being able to repay later on. The problem is that most of the funds a bank has are not in the form of hard, cold cash -- they are tied into investments. When a bank run occurs, what happens is that the bank runs out of cash to give to those who want to withdraw their funds. BUT, that doesn't (or shouldn't) mean that the bank has run out of money! That money is there, only, tied into investments that are not immediately liquidable. However, this will destroy whatever confidence the depositors have in their bank; more and more deposits will be taken out at the first opportunity, and the bank will be destroyed. N.B.: Please observe that I am assuming that the bank is well run! If the bank is in the hands of crooks, the money may well have been embezzled or something; if in the hands of incompetents, it may have been put into very bad investments. Nonetheless, the principle remains: A well-run bank is not a Ponzi scheme because a well-run bank will have the means to repay its depositors at some point, even if no new depositors come along.(45 votes)
- What's the difference between a Ponzi scheme and a Pyramid scheme?(7 votes)
- The difference is that in a Ponzi scheme, one person (i.e. "Bernie Madoff") acts as a hub. They receive and handle all the transactions, and make all the profits. In a pyramid scheme, one person starts it in much the same way, with some sort of made up investment, and then convinces other people (who may or may not know about the scheme) to sell the product/investment. The second "tier" of people (that is, the first few buyers) then do the same thing, enlisting more and more people at an exponential rate. The first few "tiers" of a pyramid scheme usually receive a decent payout if they exit at the right time, but everyone that stays in the scheme will lose their money when the bubble bursts (either when people stop buying, or ask for their investments back all at the same time), just like in a ponzi scheme.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponzi_scheme#Similar_schemes(19 votes)
- How similar is a Multi-level Marketing Scheme (network marketing) to a Ponzi scheme?(7 votes)
- It's not really similar, because the essence of a Ponzi scheme is that money from new investors is being used to pay the previous investors. In multi-level marketing, the upper level salespeople only get a cut of what the lower level sales people ACTUALLY sell. If the low level people don't sell, the high level people don't get paid.
It has the flavor of a Ponzi scheme, though, because an incentive to join it is that eventually you will have people below you, and that may be true for the high level people but eventually it cannot be true for all the low level people.(7 votes)
- What about 'investing' in a ponzi scheme and withdrawing in the early days before it busts?(5 votes)
- Why dont the investors start getting suspicous and asking questions about all the secrecy? After all, cant they say, were shareholders, we have a right to know?(5 votes)
- So you could,Theoretically make profit by investing in a ponzi scheme?(4 votes)
- Yes. Early investors who withdraw their money usually make a profit (this profit is from other people's money, so it is illegitimate). The fact that a couple of the first investors can withdraw successfully entices others to fall for the Ponzi Scheme. :)(4 votes)
- for so many years, no one knew about his core business? If he did nothing, then how would his company's financial statements and annual reports appear? auditing revealed nothing wrong? how he made investors get convinced is really a skill that needs to study....(4 votes)
- Yup. Basically, he just lied really well. He was so charismatic and appeared so smart, that nobody thought to question him.(2 votes)
- How does the ponzi scheme runner manage to hide that he hasnt invested what they gave the leader of the ponzi schene? and wouldnt the federal reserve or the treasury find out about this, they are monitoring big coorprations after all? And what if the economy takes a downturn, and investors pull their money out?(2 votes)
- Here's how it would work: Daniel, give me $1000 and in a month I will give you $2000 back. I can't tell you how I am going to invest the money because my strategy is top secret. I know this sounds fishy but I can introduce you to lots of people who have given me money and made a lot of money back. Ok?
Now, if you trust me, you don't know what I am doing with your money, or whether I have invested it at all. The Federal Reserve does not know or care that you gave me $1000. Neither does the treasury.
When the economy takes a downturn, and investors pull their money out, that's when everyone finds out that it was a Ponzi scheme and their money is gone.(5 votes)
- I can name the ultimate ponzi scheme, its called Social Security, heard of it? =P(2 votes)
- Cain is not who you should consider. He is a federal reserve thug who supports you working till death. Vote Ron Paul and you actually have hope.(3 votes)
Video transcript
You've probably heard the term
Ponzi scheme before, let me write it down, and what we're
going to do in this video is explain what it really is. You might have a sense it's some
type of scam, that you're taking one person's money and
giving it to another, but we're going to do a tangible
example of how it actually works. And right here, I have two
pictures of the probably the two most famous perpetrators
of Ponzi schemes, this is Charles Ponzi right here. It was obviously named after him
and then, more recently, this is Bernie Madoff, who
pulled off probably the longest-lasting and largest
Ponzi scheme of all time. Who knows, maybe there's a
longer-lasting and larger one out there that we have still
haven't figured out yet, but this is the largest
one to date. And Ponzi wasn't the first
person to come up with the Ponzi scheme, but they decided
to name it after him because he was the first person to
really make it famous. This mugshot was taken in the
early 1900s when he was finally caught for perpetrating
his scheme. So how does it work? So let's start with some
investors here. We could get rid of pictures
of these two gentlemen. So let's say that I've got a
scheme, and what I'm going to do is I'm going to set
up my investors, so these are my investors. And then, let's say, we have
several time periods. So we can see why the investors
think, at least initially, that my scheme
is legitimate. So, let's say, that this is the
time period, so we have period one, maybe this is years,
year one, year two, year three, year four,
year five. What I'm going to do is I'm
going to write each investor-- I'm going to write down how
much money they think they have with me, the person
operating the Ponzi scheme and then I'll show you exactly how
much money I have and how I can even get away with having
the first investors think that I'm legitimate. So let's say I have
investor A. So this is going to be their
investor's perceived-- let me do this in a different color--
investor's perceived holdings or perceived value. And over here, I'm going to
write total actual value. So you can imagine, this is the
actual amount of cash that I have. So we have the investor
A in blue, and let's say in year one, he
gives me $10,000. And I say I I've got a surefire
way of doubling his money in the second year. So in the second year, I
actually do nothing with the money and you know, I might
actually be spending it on my own yachts and you know, fancy
suits and whatnot. But let's just say I'm just
keeping it in a bank account so you know, he gives it to me,
$10,000 and I do nothing with that money. I don't even get
interest on it. It's not even in a
bank account, I stuff it into my mattress. So the reality is, after a year,
it's still only $10,000, but I promised him that I had
some type of a genius scheme that could double his money
in a year, so I send him a statement that says that his
$10,000 is now $20,000. And I feel good about it because
I know that he's going to be so excited that his money
doubled that he's going to want to keep his money with
me, because he'll hope that it can double again. And not only is he going to do
that, but he's going to go to the country club and show off
to all of his other friends how he was able to do way better
than they did with their investments. So he's going to essentially
convince other people to join in. So let's say he convinces
investor B to join in. Investor B looks at the
statement says, hey, this guy running this-- well he doesn't
know it's a scheme, let's say he says , Sal seems to know what
he's doing, he doubled investor A's money in a year. I'm going to give him a bunch of
money, let's say I'm going to give him $15,000
in year two. So how much total actual value
do I have in year two now? I have the $10,000 from investor
A plus this $15,000, so I have a total of $25,000. This is the actual amount that
I have in my bank account, assuming that I'm not
spending it on my yacht or my fancy suits. But the total perceived value,
let me write that down another line, if everyone actually
wanted the amount of money that they thought they
had back, I would have to pay out $35,000. But we know that's not going
to happen, because people think I'm such a good investor,
they want their money to ride as long
as possible. So you already see
this discrepancy. There's only $25,000 in this
little pile of money that I'm collecting, but people think
that there should be $35,000. This is their perceived value,
because the this guy thought his money doubled, although it
didn't, it just sat there. Now, let's say that the next
year I sent them statements that say, look, I made
super-awesome investments again, the money
doubled again. So this guy's money, his
perceived value, he gets a statement that says you
now have $40,000. This guy down here, investor B,
gets a statement that says you now have $30,000. And then they go back to the
country club, and they get investor C onboard. They're like, look, both of us
have tried out this guy, he's doubled our money two years in
a row for both of us, you probably want in on
this as well. And investor C is like yeah,
well you know, my two buddies, they look like legitimate
guys, let me put my money there. Let's say it gets bigger every
time because that's usually how these things go, you know,
you normally don't don't have just three investors, you'll
have hundreds of investors. And the more fake positive
returns you get, the more people that want to put
their money in. So investor C, let's
say he comes in and he puts in $20,000. So what's the reality? Let's focus on it. So there's a perception
on year 3, this guy just put his $20,000. A think he's got $40,000, B
thinks he has $30,000, so the perceived value here's $40,000
plus $30,000, $70,000 plus $20,000 is $90,000. That's the perceived value. But the actual value is just
going to be this $25,000 we had in period two, assuming we
didn't spend the money or do anything with it plus
the $20,000 that this guy just deposited. So the reality is $45,000. Now let's say that as we go from
period three to period four, or let's say right when
this guy gets his statement for $40,000, and it's the exact
same time period that this guy had put
in his $20,000. Let's say person A, he says, you
know what, I felt like my ride has gone long enough, I
don't want to test fate, let me take my money out and you
might say, oh you the scheme will be ruined, but it's going
to work because enough money is coming in from new investors
to pay this guy off. We now have $45,000 actual
value, even though the people think there's $90,000. So if this guy withdraws all
of his money, so if he withdraws all of his money so
it goes to zero, I have the cash to pay them. I have $40,000 even though
people think there's $90,000. So I subtract out $40,000 right
here, and there's only $5,000 dollars left in the bank
account and since this guy withdrew his money, the
perceived value-- this $40,000 is no longer there, I gave the
guy the cash-- the perceived value now is $50,000. So I essentially owe people
$50,000, investors B and C think that they have $50,000
invested with me, but the reality is that I only have
$5,000 in my bank account. And probably a more realistic
reality is I was probably spending a lot of this money on
my own little luxuries the whole time. But let's continue another way,
once again this guy, not only did he double his money for
two years, they're all the same country club. This guy doubled his money
again, this guy just invested his money. And now this guy says, look,
the scheme is legitimate. This legitimized the scheme
This is legit. Because, look, I doubled my
money for two years and I was able to withdraw the money. So he was able to withdraw his
money, so when he goes back to the country club, he gives this
guy and that guy more conviction that this is
all on the up and up. And then investor D will
probably jump in too and say, wow, now that he's doubled money
two years in a row, I see it's legitimate. Investor A was able to withdraw
his money, I'll give even more money, I'll
give $100,000. Maybe this is a ton of
people who are now going to put in a $100,000. And then the next year, I
double the money again. And obviously, I won't make it
exactly double, I'll make it, you know 40% one year and 30%
percent the next year so doesn't look too suspicious. I want to make it look like real
returns, but for the sake of our math, let's say
I double it again. So now and we're in year four. And this guy withdrew all of his
money, but investor B now thinks he has $60,000. Investor C thinks
he has $40,000. And investor D thinks
he has $200,000. Oh, and I forgot to put investor
D's deposit here. So when he put a $100,000, I
only had $5,000 in my bank account, but then if I add
$100,000 I'll now have $105,000 in my bank account
after this guy comes in at, you know, at the end of period
three, we can imagine. And, with the perceived amount,
I owe is $150,000. So the green is what happens
after D comes in, so these are no longer valid. But you can see that as more
money comes in, I have more and more money to pay
out, even though I'm not doing anything. Even though all of these
returns are fake. So now I actually have $105,000
even though people think, well that's at the end of
period three, at the end of period four, what
do people think? People think that I have
$300,000 of holdings. Let me write that down. But the reality is I still only have $105,000 of holdings. This is the total
actual value. But notice, if this guy or this
guy, some of the early investors, wanted to pull out
some of their money, although they probably don't want to,
because where else can you double your money every year
and this guy already showed that I'm good for paying
back the money. But even if this guy or this guy
wanted to pull out their money, I would be able to give
it to them because I have at least enough for those
withdrawals. Now, everything would be
ruined if everyone gets freaked out or scared and if I
have mass withdrawals or if more people withdraw money than
there is in the bank plus the amount of money
that comes in. So in order for a Ponzi scheme
to keep going, and Bernie Madoff was able to do this for
very long time, you have to have good, believable,
legitimate returns. Although they're not legitimate,
they just need to look legitimate. So that you have more money
coming in that out. And the whole point of the doing
this Ponzi scheme, if you're a stylish criminal, isn't
just to keep the cash there, you know, the $10,000
from one period to the next. The whole point of it is to
take a lot of that for yourself, for you to live off
of and put into some Swiss bank account to be able
to escape the country at some point. Anyway, hopefully you found
that enjoyable.