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Big Dirty Money

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Big Dirty Money

The Shocking Injustice and Unseen Cost of White Collar Crime

Viking,

15 دقيقة قراءة
9 الوجبات السريعة
الصوت والنص

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For wealthy fraudsters in the United States, impunity often rules.

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Editorial Rating

8

getAbstract Rating

  • Eye Opening
  • Concrete Examples
  • Engaging

Recommendation

Not so long ago, bad actors in corner offices could expect to go to prison. Jeff Skilling of Enron and Bernie Ebbers of WorldCom served long prison sentences,  but such tough consequences for corporate criminals have now all but disappeared, reports law professor Jennifer Taub in this 2020 bestseller. After the global financial crisis of 2008, US prosecutors took down just one participant in the mortgage meltdown. Contrast that with the 1,000-plus bankers convicted after the 1980s savings-and-loan crisis. Although the book has become a bit dated, Taub’s reporting and advocacy remain informative and vivid. She delves into white-collar convictions, and calls for more aggressive prosecution of wealthy criminals.  

Summary

Corporate criminals get rich at the expense of everyone else.

Corporate criminals have a long record of raking in money and harming the public. Examples of high-profile larceny abound in the early years of this century.

In one prominent example, the Sackler family made billions marketing OxyContin as a mild painkiller with no risk of addiction. While the Sacklers grew wealthier on the success of Purdue Pharma’s blockbuster drug, more than 230,000 Americans perished from overdoses of prescription drugs from 1999 to 2018.

Pacific Gas & Electric neglected maintenance of aging power lines as it doled out billions in dividends to shareholders. PG&E’s negligence led to 2018’s Camp Fire, a California blaze that destroyed thousands of homes and killed 85 people. PG&E, which eventually had to file for bankruptcy, set up a $13.5 billion fund to reimburse victims of the Camp Fire.

WeWork co-founder Adam Neumann collected a $1.7 billion golden parachute as thousands of his former employees were left jobless. In 2010, hedge fund manager Leon Cooperman collected $4 million in illicit profits thanks to illegally obtained insider information...

About the Author

Jennifer Taub, a professor of law at Wayne State University and former associate general counsel at Fidelity Investments, is an expert on corporate governance and financial reform. She is also the author of Other People’s Houses: How Decades of Bailouts, Captive Regulators, and Toxic Bankers Made Home Mortgages a Thrilling Business (2014) and the co-author with Katherine F. Brickey of Corporate and White Collar Crime: Cases and Materials.

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