Thread by @doctorow

If you only read one longread this week - this month! - make it @RottenInDenmark's "We're In A Golden Age Of White Collar Crime," a top-to-bottom, soup-to-nuts explanation of the rise and rise of oligarchic corruption and impunity in America.

huffpost.com/highline/artic…

You could subtitle it "The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison" (a book cited in the piece) or "bias accumulates throughout the system."

Call it what you like, but it's abundantly clear that this IS the golden age of corporate crime.

Last month, white collar crime prosecutions hit their lowest level in recorded history. Most prosecutions that do take place aim at small-time fraudsters, not CEOs. Penalties for white collar crime in 2019 were $110 million. In 2015, that figure was $3.6 BILLION.

Fighting white-collar crime is incredibly cost effective. Every hour the IRS spends investigating millionaires yields $4,545 In 2017, the IRS investigated 3% of millionaires' tax returns.

"US law is incapable of prosecuting crimes in which elites use power for nefarious ends"

Every year, tax evasion takes 10,000 times more money out of the US economy then do bank robberies. Most of that fraud is committed by millionaires, who dodge their taxes for the same reason Willie Sutton robbed banks: "That's where the money is."

It's a myth that Americans don't understand white collar crime: "as if chemical companies toxifying rivers or insurance executives gouging their customers fail to stimulate our moral intuitions"

Surveys show Americans think white-collar crime is more harmful than street crime

And yet, investigators gather with the enablers of white-collar crime every year at a fancy Miami conference, "Offshore Alert": "Imagine a yearly picnic where sheriffs give drug dealers tips on hiding baggies from pat-downs and leave with a new set of endorsements on LinkedIn."

The IRS - depleted by massive cuts from Dems but especially Republicans - wants you to think it's on the job, so agents preferentially tackle B-list celebs and grifters like Shkreli and Billy McFarland.

But criminal convictions for top corporate criminals all all but unheard of and those who do get time - like Enron's Jeff Skilling - still work the system. In 2013, the DoJ took 10 years off his sentence to avoid the expense of litigating his flurry of appeals.

Skilling stole billions. He served less than half his time. He's a free man today.

In Florida, doctors who steal from Medicaid "are 98.7 percent less likely to receive prison terms than welfare fraudsters."

A 2006 court decision cleared the way for corporations to pay the legal bills of their C-suite execs, "effectively giving every defendant the same deep pockets as their corporate employer."

Execs who claim they were part of a corrupt culture and shouldn't be held individually liable get lighter sentences. Gang kids who were influenced by gang culture get HARSHER sentences: "stealing money for yourself is bad; stealing money for a criminal org is worse"

Consistency is the key to deterrence: "That’s because criminologists have consistently found that increasing the likelihood of punishment works better than increasing its severity."

But US fraud law uses high theoretical penalties (never handed down), rather than fully staffed corporate law enforcement agencies to deter crime.