Adhesion Contract

  

Your dog Rover is setting up a partnership with Godzilla. Given their massively different statures in power, adhesion contract rules will likely apply.

That is, as a rule of law, Rover will be protected from Godzilla using his full heft, and that fire-breathing thingy, to bring leverage against Rover in signing this partnership contract, which details the lemonade stand they wish to open together.

In more practical application, insurance companies with massive power over individuals fall under this rubric. It exists via an early 20th century set of laws, which viewed large corporations as unwieldy beasts that had to be controlled, such that they played by basic rules that put the small actor on equal footing with the big. Were these rules not in place, nearly infinite leverage could have been applied by corporate America, virtually stifling the rights of the little guy.

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Finance: What is an Accredited Investor?9 Views

00:00

Finance a la Shmoop. What is an accredited investor. Well the difference

00:07

between an accredited college and an unaccredited college, can be like you

00:13

know the difference between Princeton, and the school of Feel Good Energy, that

00:17

your great Aunt Bertha, set up in her garage last year. Yeah different kind of [woman dancing in garage with disco ball]

00:22

college. Well accredited investors work on a

00:24

similar idea. A bunch of someone's have come along and agreed that accredited

00:29

investors, have a bunch of qualifications. In other words they're legit. So

00:34

accredited investors are simply investors, who qualify to do a certain

00:39

investment. Usually accredited means, that they have credit, or assets, or wampum, or

00:45

knowledge, like intellectual capital, instead of financial capital, or along with

00:49

both. Which means that they're big boys and big girls, who are able to invest a

00:53

large amount of money, in a risky venture. Officially they're investors who have an

00:57

income of at least $200,000 for the past two years, three hundred thousand for [checklist for investors on chalkboard]

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joint accredited investors, like married people or partners, or have a net worth

01:07

of at least a million bucks individually, or jointly, or our executives, partners, or

01:12

directors of the entity issuing those securities. Meaning raising the dough

01:17

itself. Institutional investors, such as mutual funds, hedge funds, and pension

01:22

funds, also fit the bill. Additionally entities can be considered

01:26

accredited, but their threshold is 5 million bucks in assets. By the way if [man talking on lawn]

01:32

all the owners of an entity, like a law firm or something like that, are

01:35

accredited, well then the entity is considered accredited

01:39

as well. So yeah they're accredited investors. Not to be confused with a

01:44

credited investor, who is really excited to have a small part in a movie. [guy in movie theater]

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