{"title":"Seeing Like an Anti-Fraud State","authors":"S. Blumenthal","doi":"10.1017/S0738248022000712","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"“They look upon fraud as a greater crime than theft, and therefore seldom fail to punish it with death,” Jonathan Swift famously wrote of the fictional island of Lilliput in Gulliver's Travels. Appearing as an epigraph of Edward Balleisen's Fraud: An American History from Barnum to Madoff, it invites comparison of Lilliput with the United States, not least because it is paired with a 2007 quotation from the former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, who was rather more philosophical about fraud. As the world teetered on the edge of economic crisis, he wrote it off as a regrettable but inevitable part of “the way human nature functions,” suggesting that “what successful economies do is keep it to a minimum.” Looking backward, Balleisen finds greater ambivalence in the historical record, as a matter of both human psychology and American law. From the nation's founding, he observes, “the country's lionization of entrepreneurial freedom has given aid and comfort to the perpetrators of duplicitous schemes.” But this is not to say that they have been allowed to act with impunity. To the contrary, their creative deceptions have inspired a wide array of anti-fraud initiatives, operating “at the leading edge of regulatory innovation.” In chronicling these conflicting and conflicted pursuits of profit and justice over the course of two centuries of American history, Balleisen brilliantly elucidates an enduring dilemma of governance: how to promote ingenuity without undermining “‘the capital of confidence upon which all progress depends.’”","PeriodicalId":17960,"journal":{"name":"Law and History Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8000,"publicationDate":"2022-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Law and History Review","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0738248022000712","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"HISTORY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
“They look upon fraud as a greater crime than theft, and therefore seldom fail to punish it with death,” Jonathan Swift famously wrote of the fictional island of Lilliput in Gulliver's Travels. Appearing as an epigraph of Edward Balleisen's Fraud: An American History from Barnum to Madoff, it invites comparison of Lilliput with the United States, not least because it is paired with a 2007 quotation from the former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, who was rather more philosophical about fraud. As the world teetered on the edge of economic crisis, he wrote it off as a regrettable but inevitable part of “the way human nature functions,” suggesting that “what successful economies do is keep it to a minimum.” Looking backward, Balleisen finds greater ambivalence in the historical record, as a matter of both human psychology and American law. From the nation's founding, he observes, “the country's lionization of entrepreneurial freedom has given aid and comfort to the perpetrators of duplicitous schemes.” But this is not to say that they have been allowed to act with impunity. To the contrary, their creative deceptions have inspired a wide array of anti-fraud initiatives, operating “at the leading edge of regulatory innovation.” In chronicling these conflicting and conflicted pursuits of profit and justice over the course of two centuries of American history, Balleisen brilliantly elucidates an enduring dilemma of governance: how to promote ingenuity without undermining “‘the capital of confidence upon which all progress depends.’”
乔纳森·斯威夫特(Jonathan Swift)在《格列佛游记》(Gulliver’s Travels)中谈到虚构的小人国岛时写道:“他们认为欺诈比盗窃更严重,因此很少不处以死刑。”。作为爱德华·巴列森(Edward Balleisen)的《欺诈:从巴纳姆到麦道夫的美国历史》(Fraud:an American History from Barnum to Madoff)的题词出现,它邀请人们将小人国与美国进行比较,尤其是因为它与前美联储主席艾伦·格林斯潘(Alan Greenspan)2007年的一句话相结合,后者对欺诈更具哲理。当世界在经济危机的边缘摇摇欲坠时,他认为这是“人性运作方式”中令人遗憾但不可避免的一部分,并暗示“成功的经济体所做的就是将其保持在最低限度。”回顾过去,Balleisen在历史记录中发现,无论是人类心理还是美国法律,都存在更大的矛盾心理。他指出,从建国之初,“国家对创业自由的推崇就为口是心非的计划的实施者提供了帮助和安慰。”但这并不是说他们被允许逍遥法外。相反,他们的创造性欺骗激发了一系列反欺诈举措,“处于监管创新的前沿”,Balleisen精彩地阐述了治理的一个长期困境:如何在不破坏“所有进步所依赖的信心资本”的情况下促进独创性
期刊介绍:
Law and History Review (LHR), America"s leading legal history journal, encompasses American, European, and ancient legal history issues. The journal"s purpose is to further research in the fields of the social history of law and the history of legal ideas and institutions. LHR features articles, essays, commentaries by international authorities, and reviews of important books on legal history. American Society for Legal History