Financial crime, near crime, and chicanery in the wall street meltdown

摘要

The 2000s experienced a financial crime wave that ranges from legally actionable criminal offenses to near crime to chicanery. The US had early warnings from the FBI that the financial crimes in mortgages risked a 1980s Savings and Loan style collapse of banking but ignored those warnings. Many of the decisions behind the financial crime wave are closely associated with the huge incentives that were available to those at the top of finance and many corporations. Those incentives are themselves linked to the rise of inequality in the period. As is usual in social science, we need more evidence on the causes and consequences of what was probably the greatest financial crime wave in our history.