Video

Yale Press Book Trailer for "Other People's Houses"

August 2014


Other People's Houses: Majority Report with Sam Seder

August 2014


Professor Jennifer Taub moderating an all-star panel following Senator Elizabeth Warren's keynote address at the "Five Years On, Learning Lehman's Lessons from the Panic of 2008

September 2013


Delays, Dilutions and Delusions: Implementing the Dodd-Frank Act, delivered at Finding the Right Balance of Regulation for Economic Development: China and Western Regulatory Models

May 2013


Reflecting on the 80th Anniversary of the FDR inauguration for the Real News Network

April 2013


Huffington Post LIVE concerning Too Big to Prosecute Banks and the HSBC money laundering settlement

December 2012


Hammer Forum talk on “Corporate Power and Social Responsibility,” hosted by Ian Masters, UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA, other guest, Ellen Schultz, author of Retirement Heist

February 2012


Forum on Citizens United, including Ben & Jerry's Homemade founders Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, sponsored by Clean Yield Asset Management, Montpelier, Vermont

November 2011


Symposium on account ability postcitizens united, the brenn an cent er at Nyu, New York, NY

April 29 2011


Big Dirty Money

Big Dirty Money

There is an elite crime spree happening in America, and the privileged perps are getting away with it. Selling loose cigarettes on a city sidewalk can lead to a choke hold arrest and death. But if you’re in the 1 percent and commit mail, wire, or bank fraud; embezzle pension funds; lie to the FBI; obstruct justice; bribe a public official; launder money; or cheat on your taxes, you’re likely to get off scot-free (or even win an election). If caught and convicted, say, for bribing your kid’s way into college, you might make a brief stop in a minimum-security “Club Fed” camp. Operate the scam from the executive suite of a giant corporation, and you can prosper with impunity.

This is not victimless crime. Big Dirty Money goes beyond the headlines (of which there is no shortage—Wells Fargo, Theranos, Purdue Pharma) to detail the scandalous ways that all the rest of us suffer when the well-heeled use white collar crime to gain and sustain wealth, social status, and political influence. Profiteers caused the mortgage meltdown and the prescription opioid crisis. They’ve evaded taxes and depleted public funds for education, public health, and infrastructure. The financial cost to victims for fraud and embezzlement alone is as much as $800 billion a year.

Jennifer Taub sounds an alarm we ignore at our country’s peril. The solutions include strengthening prosecutorial muscle, protecting journalists and whistleblowers, challenging the “too big to jail” syndrome, and overturning the growing implicit immunity of the upper class. This urgent book should enrage—and engage—consumers, citizens, and everybody who believes no one is above the law.