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.

"Barak constructs a grand narrative which attests to the pervasiveness of corporate crime, the state routinization of the crimes of the powerful, and the unsustainability of multinational capitalism. Traversing the globe, and incorporating financial, health, safety and environmental crimes, financialisation and the commodification of the commons, this empirically and historically rich, theoretically sophisticated tour de force at the same time holds out the promise of effective challenge to unchecked corporate power."Steve Tombs, Professor and Head of the Department of Social Policy and Criminology and Co-Director of the International Centre for Comparative Criminological Research, Open University, UK"Gregg Barak advances a chastening indictment of contemporary capitalism. Both liberal capitalism and the growing strength of authoritarian capitalism in societies like China afflict profound domination upon citizens. Gregg Barak enriches the conversation about options for strategic regulation and strategic socialist innovation to temper if not tame their power."John Braithwaite, Distinguished Professor, RegNet School of Regulation and Global Governance, Australian National University, Australia"Unchecked Corporate Power is a thoughtful and thought-provoking examination of contemporary corporate harms, how economic, political and media elites have made them appear to be the unavoidable collateral damage of honorable profit-seeking, and how the regulatory system tasked with controlling these harms has not only turned them into non-crimes, but has often facilitated their perpetration. More than a critique of corporate harms, Unchecked Corporate Power offers both a call and a model for fundamental restructuring of the political relationships between corporations, the public, and government. It is a must read for both scholars and citizens concerned with the rising power of corporations and the declining power of average citizens."Raymond J. Michalowski, Arizona Regents Professor, Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Northern Arizona University, USA"In this pathbreaking book, Barak critically examines the roles of multi-national corporations and the state in both routinizing and trivializing major crimes and massive global harms. Using case studies he effectively exposes both the inherent contradictions and the need for change in current regulatory policies. The work not only offers a number of potential solutions, but is a major addition to the sociological and criminological understanding of global white-collar and corporate criminality. I highly recommend it."Henry N. Pontell, Distinguished Professor and Chair of the Department of Sociology, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and Professor Emeritus, Department of Criminology, Law and Society, University of California, Irvine, USA

• PrefacePart I: Routinizing the Crimes of the PowerfulIntroduction: On the State Routinization of Unchecked Corporate Power1. Capitalism, Corporations, and Criminality1.1 Globalizing Capital and Crime1.2 Studying Multinational Corporate Crime and the Public’s Right to Know1.3 From Felonies to Torts: Constrained and Unconstrained Corporations1.4 Power, Growth, and Inequality in Early 21st Century Capitalism1.5 Capitalism and the Contradictory Nature of Capital Accumulation, Capitalist Crisis, and Corporate Criminality1.6 State Routinized Crime Control and the Capitalist Apparatus2. Why Capitalist States “Fail” to Control the Crimes of the Powerful2.1 State-Routinized Crime2.2 State-Routinized Crime Control, Regulation, and Accountability 2.3 Police Use and Misuse of Force, Militarizing U.S. Law Enforcement, and Privatizing the Security Industry2.4 U.S. Counter-Terrorist Torture and the Outsourcing of Harsh Interrogation Techniques2.5 Wall Street and the Routinization of Securities Fraud2.6 A Recapitulation of State Routinized Crime and Crime ControlPart II: Violating the Commons3. Financial Crimes: Violations of Trusted Securities3.1 Decriminalization, Fraudulent Libor Rates, and Victimization3.2 The Contradictory Forces of Free-Market Capitalism and Securities Law Failures to Curb Wall Street Frauds Before and After the Financial Implosion3.3 Treating High-Risk Securities Fraud as Noncriminal Matters3.4 Criminal and Civil Prosecutions3.5 Structured Finance Products, Investment Banking Fraud and the Case Against Goldman Sachs3.6 Conciliatory Collusion, Goldman Sachs, and the Costs of Doing High Finance3.7 The Big Banks, SEC Waivers, and State Financial Resources3.8 Update: “Short Sellers Sold Short By Goldman”4. Environmental Crimes: Violations of Health and Safety4.1 Green Criminology, Environmental Crimes, and Structural Harms4.2 Exposing West Virginians to Toxic Substances: DuPont, Cover-Up, Litigation and Decades of Chemical Pollution4.3 Dow Chemical Company: A Trailblazer in Multinational Criminality4.4 Monsanto Corporation: Masters of Fraud, Deception, and Public Relations4.5 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 Community5.1 Routinizing Collusion Between and Within Nations: The Neutralization of Crime and the Rise of Securitization5.2 Transparency, Surveillance, Whistleblowing, and Drone Warfare5.3 Crimmigration and Privatization: Cashing in on Refugee Desperation5.4 For Profit Charter Schools and the Privatization of Education: Looting the Public Purse at the Expense of the Public Interest Part III: Halting Corporate Harm6. Checking Corporate Power and State-Routinized Crime in an Age of Global Capitalism6.1 Educational Debt and the Need for Collective Bargaining not Collective Punishment: Implications for Resisting State-Routinized Debtors6.2 Reclaiming the Older and Newer Commons6.3 The Sustainable Paradigm and Changing the Political Culture6.4 From Manufacturing to Postindustrialism and Services: Building a Sustainable Global EconomyConclusion: Democratic Capitalism, State Owned Multinationals, and Sustainable PragmatismIndex