Download Capital Offenses: Business Crime and Punishment in America's Corporate Age AudioBook Free
From the lead prosecutor on the Enron exploration, an eye-opening study of the explosion of American white-collar crime. If "corporations are people, too", why isn't anyone in prison? A serious defect in a GM car triggers accidents; Enron scams shareholders out with their money; banks wager on the housing marketplace crash and earn. In the race to maximize earnings, corporations can react in ways that are morally outrageous but technically legal. In Capital Offenses, Samuel Buell attracts on the unique pairing of his knowledge as a Duke School law teacher and his personal experience leading the exploration into Enron - the largest white-collar crime case in US record - to present an in-depth study of business crime today. At the heart of it rests the limited liability corporation, concurrently the bedrock of American success and the reason that white-collar crime is difficult to prosecute - an excellent legal technology that, in its modern form, can seem impossible to regulate or even manage. By shielding employees from responsibility, the corporation promotes the chance taking that drives monetary development. But its special legal position and its own ever-expanding size place daunting barriers in the way of federal and local investigators. Detailing the complex legal frameworks that govern both firms and folks who carry out their missions, Buell implies that deciphering business crime is rarely dark-colored or white. In lucid, thought-provoking prose, he illuminates the depths of the legalities on the line - delving into deceptive procedures like Ponzi techniques, bad accounting, insider trading, and the artwork of "loopholing" - displaying how every major case and each issue of rules further exposes the ambivalence and instability at the core of America's relationship with its firms. An expert in criminal rules, Buell masterfully examines the limitations of too permissive or overzealous prosecution of business crimes. Capital Offenses invites us to take a fresh look at our legal construction and understand how it can be used to effectively discipline firms for wrongdoing, without dismantling the firms.
