The Financial Crisis on Trial: What Went Wrong

IF 0.7 2区 历史学 Q4 BUSINESS Enterprise & Society Pub Date : 2021-12-22 DOI:10.1017/eso.2021.31
John H. Sturc
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Abstract

Americans demanded retribution from the mortgage lenders whose subprime loans defaulted and from investment bankers whose mortgage-backed securities sharply declined in value in 2007, leading to financial panic and the Great Recession. From 2008 to 2019, the federal government extracted hundreds of billions in fines from dozens of corporations, but few individual business executives were held accountable, and no senior banker was convicted of a crime. I use the trial court record of five government enforcement cases against individuals to explain this apparently anomalous result. I conclude that, in addition to a lack of funding, the prosecution effort was hindered by the government’s erroneous selection of cases to pursue. Further, the diffused nature of decision making in the mortgage finance market made it difficult to prove that any one senior-level participant had the criminal intent necessary for a conviction or a Securities and Exchange Commission civil fine or injunction. The trial results also support the argument that the growth and consolidation of investment banks from 1990 to 2008 created incentives for misconduct within the firms.
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审判中的金融危机:哪里出了问题
美国人要求次级贷款违约的抵押贷款机构和投资银行家进行报复,他们的抵押贷款支持证券在2007年大幅贬值,导致金融恐慌和大衰退。从2008年到2019年,联邦政府从数十家公司提取了数千亿美元的罚款,但很少有个别企业高管被追究责任,也没有一名高级银行家被判有罪。我用五起政府针对个人的执法案件的庭审记录来解释这个明显反常的结果。我的结论是,除了缺乏资金外,政府错误地选择了要追查的案件,也阻碍了起诉工作。此外,抵押贷款金融市场决策的分散性使得很难证明任何一名高级参与者具有定罪或证券交易委员会民事罚款或禁令所需的犯罪意图。试验结果也支持了这样一种论点,即1990年至2008年投资银行的增长和合并为公司内部的不当行为创造了激励。
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来源期刊
CiteScore
1.20
自引率
30.00%
发文量
37
期刊介绍: Enterprise & Society offers a forum for research on the historical relations between businesses and their larger political, cultural, institutional, social, and economic contexts. The journal aims to be truly international in scope. Studies focused on individual firms and industries and grounded in a broad historical framework are welcome, as are innovative applications of economic or management theories to business and its context.
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