One cannot grasp the world of corporate raiders, of the information technology bubble, of control fraud, of the bizarre symbiosis that presently exists between post-capitalist America and post-communist China, nor especially of the big government, big corporation, Beltway-boom Republicanism of George Bush, through an optic of free and competitive markets.
But economists, as a group, proved that they did not "know better" and that their problem was not that they were "unaware of the concept" of looting "control frauds" (frauds led by the leaders of seemingly legitimate entities).
Note that even after the crisis made the scope and consequences of the epidemics of control fraud clear to any competent regulator no financial regulatory agency hired the people with a track record of success as examiners, supervisors, and investigators.
Over the past decade, Camilleri has had Montalbano comment on or investigate Silvio Berlusconi's control of Italian media; fraud and money laundering; the abuse of clandestini (undocumented immigrants) from Africa; and police brutality at the 2001 Group of 8 summit meeting in Genoa.
Under the Clinton Administration, the Justice Department has beefed up control of health care fraud as part of a broader effort to reduce medical inflation.
Given this confirmation that the banks engaged in one form of control fraud in the sale of fraudulent mortgages (false representations about second liens), there is no reason to believe that their senior officers had moral qualms that prevented them from becoming even wealthier through the endemic frauds of liar's loans and inflated appraisals.
The PSW 2013 study confirmed one form of control fraud and provided suggestive evidence of two other forms that I will discuss in a future column.
Head of fraud control, Katy Worobec, said: "These latest fraud figures are good news, but we know there's no room for complacency".
"In a lot of cases they may wear them on their belt, and most people don't know what they are looking at," said Skeet Rolling, director of fraud control services for TSYS, a global payment processor based in Columbus, Ga.
"Do a quick and dirty assessment of fraud control," Edwards says.
And they're gone, $5,000 or $10,000 ahead". Jim Goode, the manager of fraud control at LA Cellular, said the cellular phone carriers in North America project a 1995 loss of more than $500 million because of fraud involving cloned phones and stolen access numbers.
