Fraud
An American History from Barnum to Madoff
by Edward J. Balleisen
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Pub Date Jan 26 2017 | Archive Date Dec 01 2016
Description
The United States has always proved an inviting home for boosters, sharp dealers, and outright swindlers. Worship of entrepreneurial freedom has complicated the task of distinguishing aggressive salesmanship from unacceptable deceit, especially on the frontiers of innovation. At the same time, competitive pressures have often nudged respectable firms to embrace deception. As a result, fraud has been a key feature of American business since its beginnings. In this sweeping narrative, Edward Balleisen traces the history of fraud in America—and the evolving efforts to combat it—from the age of P. T. Barnum through the eras of Charles Ponzi and Bernie Madoff.
Starting with an early nineteenth-century American legal world of “buyer beware,” this unprecedented account describes the slow, piecemeal construction of modern regulatory institutions to protect consumers and investors, from the Gilded Age through the New Deal and the Great Society. It concludes with the more recent era of deregulation, which has brought with it a spate of costly frauds, including the savings and loan crisis, corporate accounting scandals, and the recent mortgage-marketing debacle.
By tracing how Americans have struggled to foster a vibrant economy without enabling a corrosive level of fraud, this book reminds us that American capitalism rests on an uneasy foundation of social trust.
Advance Praise
"Not only is Fraud a careful and thoughtful exploration of the complicated relationship between business, the market, and policy. It is also a thought-provoking and engaging book."--Dan Ariely, author of Predictably Irrational
"In the end, capitalism is always a confidence game, so the problem of fraud is always with us. But the occurrence, perception, and regulation of fraud has a history, and Balleisen has now written the definitive account of it. A deeply researched and beautifully crafted book that follows the shape-shifting problem of deceit across the centuries, Fraud is nothing short of a new history of American capitalism."--Jon Levy, University of Chicago
"A huge achievement. This will be the authoritative history of fraud in the United States for many years to come. Edward Balleisen takes us on a fascinating and entertaining tour of the many ways that swindlers have consistently shadowed America's proudest innovations, sometimes even outdoing the originals for ingenuity and impact."--Walter A. Friedman, Harvard Business School
"Often vivid and always thoughtful, this is a very important and impressive work by a rigorous, venturesome historian at the top of his game. When so much public debate about regulation is polemical and hyperbolic, Edward Balleisen has made a major contribution by writing a book that thoroughly, comprehensively, even-handedly, and engagingly examines the history of American fraud and its regulation from the early nineteenth century to today."--Daniel R. Ernst, Georgetown University Law Center
Available Editions
| EDITION | Other Format |
| ISBN | 9780691164557 |
| PRICE | $35.00 (USD) |
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