Freddie Mac
Essay Preview: Freddie Mac
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Freddie Mac is in the home mortgage business. It is their jobs to help low income families find affordable housing. Freddie Mac has been in business since 1970. They were created in order to get more American families in to their own homes. Their mission statement says, “Our statutory mission is to provide liquidity, stability and affordability to the U.S. housing market” (FreddieMac.com, 2014). Despite this honorable mission statement, Freddie Mac was involved in a case of accounting fraud that went on from 1998 to 2002. The lack of ethics at this company started with top brass setting the tone, and the rest of the company following suit.
Rather than being sticklers for following GAAP accounting principles and internal controls, this company took unethical behavior to a whole new level. They lied when the truth would have been easier to tell. It is almost as if they had no comprehension that the meaning of the word ethics is “the principles of conduct governing an individual or a group (professional ethics); the discipline dealing with what is good and bad and with moral duty and Historical Overview
Caveat emptor, is Latin for “let the buyer beware,” which according to Merriam-Webster’s on-line dictionary (n.d.), was first known to be used in 1523 (Merriam-Webster, n.d.a). From this historical context it is clear that ethical behavior in the realm of business has been a point of contention for society at large for nearly five centuries. America too has had a storied history in dealing with ethics and ethical practices relating to business practices and consumer affairs. In 1962, what came to be known as the Consumer’s Bill of Rights would afford consumers a certain assurance that their safety would take precedence over corporate profits, but more importantly it provided consumers with a voice to express concerns about the wares purveyed to them? In the 1970’s, the concept of corporate social responsibility emerged, which saw