Thom reviewed Big Dirty Money by Jennifer Taub
Review of 'Big Dirty Money' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
A combination of depressing and angering, this book shows recent break downs in white collar laws and prosecutions, leading to growth of white collar crime.
The subtitle is "making white collar criminals pay", and most of the book it felt like there wasn't much we could do - this is all about corruption and collusion among the 1%. However, in chapter 11 (I see what you did there Jennifer) six fixes are proposed. Empowering the Justice Department and pushing to amend and clean up laws is still out of our hands, though we can reach out to our local representatives. The fifth and sixth tips are to restore funding to the IRS and improve data collection - perhaps further from our control. The third and fourth tips though - more visibility into white collar crimes, along with protecting journalists and whistleblowers is something we can more directly affect. I've got …
A combination of depressing and angering, this book shows recent break downs in white collar laws and prosecutions, leading to growth of white collar crime.
The subtitle is "making white collar criminals pay", and most of the book it felt like there wasn't much we could do - this is all about corruption and collusion among the 1%. However, in chapter 11 (I see what you did there Jennifer) six fixes are proposed. Empowering the Justice Department and pushing to amend and clean up laws is still out of our hands, though we can reach out to our local representatives. The fifth and sixth tips are to restore funding to the IRS and improve data collection - perhaps further from our control. The third and fourth tips though - more visibility into white collar crimes, along with protecting journalists and whistleblowers is something we can more directly affect. I've got some thoughts along these lines...
I've seen other reviews complain that this is too basic. I appreciated reading about the history of the designation "white collar crime". Some of these cases are in the papers, and so I can understand complaints about fatigue also. The descriptions of crimes - and more importantly impacts - is part of that visibility, but many criminals are definitely trying to play the "court of public opinion" to their favor.
Yes, the situations this book describes are maddening. I appreciate a resource and an author that is willing to point out the problems and call for solutions. The paperback version contains an epilogue that paints an additional year of results. It also contains an extensive index and more than 50 pages of notes on the sources quoted. Highly recommended.