Jeff Preston Bezos is an American businessman and investor. Bezos is the founder and executive chairman of Amazon, having previously been the chairman, president and CEO of the company. With a net worth of more than $200 billion as of June 2021, he is the richest person in the world according to both Forbes and Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index. He was born on 12th January 1964 in New Mexico and raised in Miami, Bezos graduated from Princeton University in 1986. He has a degree in electrical engineering and computer science. Bezos founded Amazon in 1994, on a cross-country road trip from New York City to Seattle. The company began as an online bookstore and has since expanded to a wide variety of other e-commerce products and services, including video and audio streaming, artificial intelligence, and cloud computing. It is currently the world’s largest online sales company, the largest Internet company by revenue, and the world’s largest provider of virtual assistants and cloud infrastructure services through its Amazon Web Services branch. He also purchased the major American newspaper The Washington Post in 2013 for $250 million, and manages many other investments through his venture capital firm, Bezos Expeditions. Bezos founded the aerospace manufacturer and sub-orbital spaceflight services company Blue Origin in 2000. Blue Origin’s New Shepard vehicle reached space in 2015, and afterwards successfully landed back on Earth. The company has upcoming plans to begin commercial human spaceflight.

He is the first centi billionaire on the Forbes wealth index and was named the “richest man in modern history” after his net worth increased to $150 billion in July 2018. In August 2020, according to Forbes, he had a net worth exceeding $200 billion. In 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, Bezos’s wealth grew by approximately $24 billion. On February 2, 2021, Bezos announced that he would step down as the CEO of Amazon sometime in the third quarter of 2021 and transition into the role of executive chairman, officially stepping down on July 5, 2021. Andy Jassy has become the new CEO of Amazon.

Bezos has also invested very sizable sums in giving back through multiple charitable donations. In addition to the Bezos Family Foundation that funds several education projects, Bezos has made individual multimillion-dollar charitable contributions to the Seattle Museum of History & Industry as well as to his alma mater, Princeton University. In January 2018, Bezos and his ex-wife, MacKenzie, announced a $33 million donation to TheDreamUS, an organization working to improve college access for immigrant youths who were brought to the United States as children. The grant will provide college scholarships to 1,000 U.S. high school graduates with Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) status.

Two of Bezos’ investments that engender a lot of discussion and are considered a bit off-the-wall are the 10,000-year clock and the now-complete F-1 engine retrieval project. The 10,000-year clock project is an effort to build a clock into the side of the Sierra Diablo mountain range in Texas, a clock that literally keeps ticking for 10,000 years. The F-1 engine retrieval project was an effort to salvage from the ocean floor the engines that powered the Apollo 11 flight to the moon. Enough artifacts were recovered to fashion displays out of two F-1 engines. Bezos is truly a great business mogul is this day and age.

Social Responsibility is a form of responsibility that we owe to society being members of the same and partaking in activities that alter its natural flow. For example, by being a part of the natural environment, we owe the environment the restoration to offset the degradation conducted by mankind. In such a way, social responsibility is the accountability that we face towards society in all its aspects, to all its stakeholders. Indeed there exist various forms of social responsibility but two prominent ones are an individual and corporate social responsibility. It can be understood that much of the social responsibility activities can be considered under the same labels: one where the volunteers bring physical changes by cleaning the neighbourhood, distributing food and other necessities, securing funds and such for the needy, while the other where people advocate for the change and instil civic morals. While each indicates its own form of responsibility, the combination of both is what the present world needs to be ensured of sustainable development.

Corporate Social Responsibility is one of the keywords that underline an organisation’s social standpoint among various economic actors such as the government, consumers and certain types of investors. A responsible organization is bound to be more reliable because of its forward-thinking and ethical nature. Although the term was coined in the mid-1900s by Henry Bowen (the father of Corporate Social Responsibility) in his paper, the concept existed long before that. A few of the pioneers in the field of corporate social responsibility are Johnson & Johnson and Hershey’s. These responsibilities include:-

Economic Responsibility: This includes maintaining the satisficing amount of profits so that the business can
sustain enough to pay off their lenders, investors, creditors and employees. Legal Responsibility: The legal responsibility of a business includes complying with all the corporate bylaws, contracts with either another company or the government. An example of legal responsibility would be to adhere to the accounting compliance standards in reporting financial information. Ethical Responsibility: This consists of responsibilities outside the legal framework but matching the
company’s philosophy. For example, ensuring employees have a healthy work-life balance beyond the government-mandated levels.

Individual responsibility stems from the philosophy that holds each individual accountable for every action they take, which may have intended or unintended consequences for society. Hence, every individual has a responsibility towards the society that deems them ideal members of their community. Not only do we have the duties of controlling the negative spillover effects of our actions but we are required to step further and teach those ignorant of
these ideas the sense of responsibility. The UN suggests a list of actions that any and every individual could accomplish that can bring minor changes to the environment, called the “The lazy person’s guide to save the world”. The list is generated according to the individual’s willingness to pave the way for a sustainable future. Some of the individual responsibilities are using biodegradeable bags, donation to various charities, Use recyclable goods, segregation of trash, using renewable sources of energy etc. In this day and age it has become very important to uphold our social responsibilities.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is a global organization that promotes financial stability, economic growth and international trade. It also aims to reduce poverty around the world. The IMF describes its mission as “to foster global monetary cooperation, secure financial stability, facilitate international trade, promote high employment and sustainable economic growth, and reduce poverty around the world.”

The IMF was originally founded in 1945 to support expansion of trade and economic growth, discouraging policies that hampered international relations and promoting international monetary cooperation. From the 1970s the IMF has promoted floating exchange rates, meaning that market forces determine the currency value relative to one another. It is based in Washington, D.C and started with just 40 member countries. Today, it has 189 member countries. Each of the member countries have a representation proportional to its financial power on the IMF’s executive board. Quotas of member countries are a key determinant of the voting power in IMF decisions. They are based on something called special drawing right (SDR). SDRs are an international type of monetary reserve currency created by the IMF as a supplement to the existing money reserves of member countries. Votes comprise one vote per 100,000 special drawing right (SDR) of quota plus basic votes.

The IMF carries out 3 main operations to attain their goals. These are:

Surveillance- Large amounts of data are collected on a country’s international trade, state of global economy and provides regular economic forecasts. They also advise on how the current fiscal, monetary and trade polices will affect the country’s financial stability and its foreign relations.

Lending- The IMF often gives out loans to countries that are in serious debt or in some other economic predicament. This is so that they don’t fall into a financial crisis. Member countries pool in funds to form the loan. In 2019, the total loan amount the IMF had was $11.4 billion. However, these loans are not unsecured. It is almost always conditional on the country making some serious financial reforms to increase their potential for growth.

Capacity development- Member countries are given training, advice on policy decisions through capacity development programs. These programs include training in data collection and its analysis, which feed into the IMF’s role of monitoring national and global economies.

The IMF is accountable to its member country governments. At the top of the organization structure is the Board of Governors, consisting of one governor and one alternate governor from each member country, usually the top officials from the central bank or finance ministry. The Board of Governors meets once a year at the World Bank Annual Meetings. The executive board has 24 members and they oversee the day to day operations. The total staff in the IMF amounts to over 2,700 and they come from more than 150 different countries.