Fraud: An American History from Barnum to Madoff

Abstract

Economic duplicity has bedeviled American markets from the founding of the Republic. This wide-ranging history emphasizes the enduring connections between capitalist innovation and business fraud, as well as the vexed efforts by private organizations and state agencies to curb the worst economic deceptions. Placing recent fraud scandals in long-term context, the book argues that we rely solely on a policy of caveat emptor at our peril; and that a mixture of public education, sensible disclosure rules, and targeted enforcement campaigns can contain the problem of business fraud.