[josho]

I agree. Our society tolerates white collar crime far more than we should.

We've got a good handle on things like punishing criminals that rob someone at gunpoint. However, we struggle with seeing the CEO making short term loan to his company as theft from investors (the short term loan hid the fact that the company wasn't meeting its presumably publicly announced growth targets).

The issue is that white collar crime needs to show criminal intent. But, in this case the CEO didn't have criminal intent to steal, rather his intent was simply to boost his business (with the consequence of misleading investors).

[rhizome]

I view white-collar crime as primarily an individual act. Corporate crime, such as we saw with HSBC, Dow Chemical, and even Mitchell Jessen, escapes significant punishment, only very rarely rising to criminal conduct. That the conduct is legal, or considered legal, is a policy and legislative outcome.

As for intent, the law has centuries of precedent to incorporate into criminal statutes that affect corporate activities. It's just that the standards are artificially high and don't take into account the diffuse nature of the enterprise. But we have several decades of even that which could be applied, but isn't.