Unchecked Corporate Power

Gregg Barak is Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Eastern Michigan University, USA. He is the editor of The Routledge International Handbook of the Crimes of the Powerful, author of Theft of a Nation: Wall Street Looting and Federal Regulatory Colluding, and recipient of the National White Collar Crime Center/White Collar Crime Research Consortium’s Outstanding Book Award for 2012.

Preface

Part I: Routinizing the Crimes of the Powerful

Introduction: On the State Routinization of Unchecked Corporate Power

1. Capitalism, Corporations, and Criminality

1.1 Globalizing Capital and Crime

1.2 Studying Multinational Corporate Crime and the Public’s Right to Know

1.3 From Felonies to Torts: Constrained and Unconstrained Corporations

1.4 Power, Growth, and Inequality in Early 21st Century Capitalism

1.5 Capitalism and the Contradictory Nature of Capital Accumulation, Capitalist Crisis, and Corporate Criminality

1.6 State Routinized Crime Control and the Capitalist Apparatus

2. Why Capitalist States “Fail” to Control the Crimes of the Powerful

2.1 State-Routinized Crime

2.2 State-Routinized Crime Control, Regulation, and Accountability

2.3 Police Use and Misuse of Force, Militarizing U.S. Law Enforcement, and Privatizing the Security Industry

2.4 U.S. Counter-Terrorist Torture and the Outsourcing of Harsh Interrogation Techniques

2.5 Wall Street and the Routinization of Securities Fraud

2.6 A Recapitulation of State Routinized Crime and Crime Control

Part II: Violating the Commons

3. Financial Crimes: Violations of Trusted Securities

3.1 Decriminalization, Fraudulent Libor Rates, and Victimization

3.2 The Contradictory Forces of Free-Market Capitalism and Securities Law Failures to Curb Wall Street Frauds Before and After the Financial Implosion

3.3 Treating High-Risk Securities Fraud as Noncriminal Matters

3.4 Criminal and Civil Prosecutions

3.5 Structured Finance Products, Investment Banking Fraud and the Case Against Goldman Sachs

3.6 Conciliatory Collusion, Goldman Sachs, and the Costs of Doing High Finance

3.7 The Big Banks, SEC Waivers, and State Financial Resources

3.8 Update: “Short Sellers Sold Short By Goldman”

4. Environmental Crimes: Violations of Health and Safety

4.1 Green Criminology, Environmental Crimes, and Structural Harms

4.2 Exposing West Virginians to Toxic Substances: DuPont, Cover-Up, Litigation and Decades of Chemical Pollution

4.3 Dow Chemical Company: A Trailblazer in Multinational Criminality

4.4 Monsanto Corporation: Masters of Fraud, Deception, and Public Relations

4.5 Unfettered Fracking and the Dangers of Hydraulic Fracturing

4.6 Climate Change, Power Plant Regulations, and the U.S. Supreme Court Stay as a Potential Unraveling of the Paris Agreement?

5. Colluding Crimes of States and Corporations: Violations of the Community

5.1 Routinizing Collusion Between and Within Nations: The Neutralization of Crime and the Rise of Securitization

5.2 Transparency, Surveillance, Whistleblowing, and Drone Warfare

5.3 Crimmigration and Privatization: Cashing in on Refugee Desperation

5.4 For Profit Charter Schools and the Privatization of Education: Looting the Public Purse at the Expense of the Public Interest

Part III: Halting Corporate Harm

6. Checking Corporate Power and State-Routinized Crime in an Age of Global Capitalism

6.1 Educational Debt and the Need for Collective Bargaining not Collective Punishment: Implications for Resisting State-Routinized Debtors

6.2 Reclaiming the Older and Newer Commons

6.3 The Sustainable Paradigm and Changing the Political Culture

6.4 From Manufacturing to Postindustrialism and Services: Building a Sustainable Global Economy

Conclusion: Democratic Capitalism, State Owned Multinationals, and Sustainable Pragmatism

Index