William K. Black writes, The mediocre financial CEO who engages in accounting control fraud because it is a ‘sure thing’ [George Akerlof and Paul Romer 1993] causes the bank to report record (albeit fictional) profits and becomes wealthy and politically powerful. He uses his wealth to make charitable and political contributions that make him far harder to sanction. He claims that any crackdown on him is ‘class warfare’ by ‘neo-Bolsheviks.’ Incredibly, the Wall Street Journal continues to serve as the cheerleader and apologist for those who become wealthy by breaking windows, communities, and economies." "[James Q.] Wilson warned of blue collar ‘super predators.’ He called them ‘feral’ – wild animals. These criminals are in fact dangerous, but they are odd candidates for the title of ‘super predators.’ Wilson noted that they were disproportionately black and that they were confined almost entirely to the poorest neighborhoods in America where their pickings are poor. Accounting control frauds occupy Wall Street and other financial centers – the richest neighborhoods in the world. Their ‘take’ from fraud is extraordinary. The blue collar criminals that occupied Wilson’s attention late in his career were politically and socially powerless. The fraudulent CEOs that drive our recurrent, intensifying financial crises are wealthy and socially and politically dominant. Wilson had a fabulous career and added greatly to the policy debate about how to respond to blue collar crime. Our most fitting tribute to him and contribution to his legacy would be to apply his ‘broken window’ theory to the elite white collar crimes and criminals that drive our financial crises. The troubling paradox is that the strongest proponents of “broken windows” theory and policies in the blue collar crime context are the strongest opponents of applying analogous policies in the elite white collar crime context. The Wall Street Journal is the most prominent example of this class-based incoherence.” Felix Salmon clck.ru/8hmca
Posted on: Sun, 23 Jun 2013 15:36:30 +0000
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