Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Chapter 1 Accusations: Between the Innuendo and the Illegal
- Chapter 2 Red Flags: How to Assemble an Accusation
- Chapter 3 Fighting Words and Key Phrases
- Chapter 4 Market Exchanges Gone Sour: Six Fields of Action
- Chapter 5 Finger Pointing and Three Themes: Lying, Cheating, Stealing
- Chapter 6 The Ecology of Greed: Hot Spots for Accusations
- Chapter 7 The Repertoires of Wrongdoing
- Appendix A Notes on Statistical Analysis and Coding Principal Themes, Keywords, and Key Phrases in the Accusations
- Appendix B A Sample of United States Corporations and Counts of Public Announcements of Alleged Economic Crime – 1994 (fourth quarter) to 2006 (first quarter)
- Tables
- References
- Index
Chapter 1 - Accusations: Between the Innuendo and the Illegal
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 March 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Chapter 1 Accusations: Between the Innuendo and the Illegal
- Chapter 2 Red Flags: How to Assemble an Accusation
- Chapter 3 Fighting Words and Key Phrases
- Chapter 4 Market Exchanges Gone Sour: Six Fields of Action
- Chapter 5 Finger Pointing and Three Themes: Lying, Cheating, Stealing
- Chapter 6 The Ecology of Greed: Hot Spots for Accusations
- Chapter 7 The Repertoires of Wrongdoing
- Appendix A Notes on Statistical Analysis and Coding Principal Themes, Keywords, and Key Phrases in the Accusations
- Appendix B A Sample of United States Corporations and Counts of Public Announcements of Alleged Economic Crime – 1994 (fourth quarter) to 2006 (first quarter)
- Tables
- References
- Index
Summary
C'est plus qu'un crime, c'est une faute.
Trust, honesty, and integrity are the principles upon which our financial markets function. Americans don't hate large corporations and rich executives, but they do despise those who behave as if the principles don't apply to them. The ferocity of this reaction should not surprise us.
Public accusations of misconduct are indications of how much antipathy there is towards miscreant manufacturers, bankers and other executives who don't play fair, and large, publicly traded corporations that violate the code of conduct that is supposed to guide economic behavior. The devious and underhanded violation of this code raises red flags of warning, throws an unwanted public spotlight on managers and management, leads to increased railing against bad corporate practices, reveals the negative sentiments of accusers about specific market exchanges in goods, services, and investments, and undermines the confidence of American citizens in the integrity of the market.
Accusations of wrongdoing and railing against bad corporate management and managers occur well before the law is invoked, before criminal indictments are handed down, and before people are sentenced. The techniques used by rating agencies, the fancy dressing up of quarterly financial statements by banks, bogus balance sheets, misappropriation of investor capital, and, generally, outright fraud and deception by top-level corporate management, normally relegated to the shadows of finance, can also include creative accounting techniques, which mislead rating agencies, dupe suppliers, buyers, and regulators, mask deteriorating finances – overall, artful combinations of lying, stealing, cheating, and concealing.
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- Chapter
- Information
- Corporate Wrongdoing and the Art of the Accusation , pp. 1 - 28Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2011