The history of Italian Mobsters Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

The history of Italian Mobsters - Essay Example Why is this so? Where does this image of the gangster come from? Why as a "monster" type are we both attracted and repulsed by his (or less often her) screen presence?† (Florida State University, 2011). Indeed, the Mob's heroic reputation was a major part of the censorship of the early Hays Code (Florida State University, 2011). The Italian mob were complex social agents: They were both ruthless social parasites and community guards, representatives of Italian communities and their secret shame, successful businessmen and criminals. The Italian mafia were far from alone: In The Ethnic Myth, Steinberg (1991) points out that at one point one sixth of the organized crime in New York was Jewish! But it is true that the Italians were powerful in New Jersey, New York, Chicago and Las Vegas. La Cosa Nostra was a Sicilian institution, but in America, its start and success had to do with one factor: Prohibition. â€Å"The Prohibition era of the 1920s gave rise to the organized crime sy ndicate in the United States. Federal efforts to enforce prohibition, including raids on speakeasies, were countered by well-organized bootlegging operations with national and international connections. A particularly notorious gang of the times was Al Capone's mob in Chicago. There were also gangs in Detroit, New York and other cities. Wars among gangs, producing grisly killings, frequently made headlines† (US History, 2011). The FBI traces the history of La Cosa Nostra from Sicily: â€Å"These enterprises evolved over the course of 3,000 years during numerous periods of invasion and exploitation by numerous conquering armies in Italy. Over the millennia, Sicilians became more clannish and began to rely on familial ties for safety, protection, justice, and survival. An underground secret society formed initially as resistance fighters against the invaders and to exact frontier vigilante justice against oppression. A member was known as a â€Å"Man Of Honor,† respected and admired because he protected his family and friends and kept silent even unto death. Sicilians weren’t concerned if the group profited from its actions because it came at the expense of the oppressive authorities. These secret societies eventually grew into the Mafia† (2011). It is important to note, though, that not all of the people in La Cosa Nostra in America were native mobsters in Sicily. Rather, the social form was transplanted because of new conditions. It was difficult for immigrants to eke out a living in the America of the early 1900s. Prohibition made an obvious opportunity emerge: The distribution, production and consumption of alcohol would be the business model. As the Nevada Observer (1987) put it in their comprehensive time line of La Cosa Nostra (LCN), â€Å"Although organized crime had existed in the United States prior to this time, it was the bonanza of Prohibition which enabled the small, but powerful, LCN to capitalize upon its international contacts, its reputation for ruthlessness, and--above all--its rigidly disciplined structure of cooperating gangs to establish the position of unrivaled eminence it holds in the American underworld today†. But La Cosa Nostra didn't end with Prohibition. Once the organizations were created, it was too easy to use them for all sorts of other enterprises.

An overview of the concept of cosmetic accounting Essay

An overview of the concept of cosmetic accounting - Essay Example From this research it is clear that cosmetic or creative accounting is a process where accountant use their knowledge about accounting rules to change or manipulate the reported figures of the company’s business accounts. Cosmetic accounting can be describe in different ways like it is referred as the terms of income smoothing , earning management , earning smoothing or somewhere as financial engineering. The term cosmetic accounting is used when ,accepted accounting techniques those are not allow to use as to report financial results of a company, and with the help of creative accounting those prohibited techniques are used to manipulate accurate picture of the company. The methods of creative accounting are noteworthy because they remain in use as generally accepted accounting principal. As an author every company is fiddling its profit, every sets of published accounts are based on books which have been gently cooked or completely roasted. This deception is all in perfectly good taste. It is creative accounting. Creative accounting also based on some unethical elements like as accounting details of a restaurant can be anything (true and fair). The creativity in such details is like showing a half glass of water as half-full instead of presenting it as half-empty. Both statements are correct but both can paint different pictures and create different images in user’s mind. Sometimes, creativity accounting can be described as accounting manipulation.... This way, the management can reduce the net income’s fluctuations from one period to another. An explanation why cosmetic accounting is considered as blessing or curse: Cosmetic accounting can be considered as blessing when it contributes to clear or maintain the existing accounting system. And it can become a curse when it is used un-ethically to treat unfairly a specific group of users of financial statements. Most of the accountants believe that cosmetic accounting can be used as both of blessing and curse. According to a survey only 10% respondent think that this technique could be a blessing and 21% think that it is a curse. Cosmetic accounting can be used in two ways Positive Negative Simply the positive one can treat as blessing as to represent the true and fair position of the company. It can use to polish the account interests, but also as an accounting engineering consist on agreed accounting policies. As according to International Accounting Standard 1, â€Å"Compa nies can chose any procedure for maintaining their accounting records from the set of procedure those are declared true and fair† Negative form of cosmetic accounting is when this technique is used unethically to damage a specific group of users of financial statements. For example Companies can use a technique to include capital profits as operating Profits from the sale of properties and shares. Companies can record unrealized capital gains as operating profit. Companies can include the profits of their associated companies as their own profits to make the better financial position. In short the Positive one recognizes genuine changes in the business accounting practices while the Negative one reflects undesirable