White Collar Crimes
Paper 2: White Collar Crimes and Consequences
Financially motivated crimes, also known as white-collar crimes, are a pervasive problem that seems to not attract much attention. Unlike its counter part, blue-collar crimes, white-collar crimes are not exactly exciting or interesting. Blue-collar crimes like murder, shootings, rape and robbery are often very horrific, thus they receive a great deal of attention. Some say that the effects of these crimes tend to be exaggerated. A researcher in this field believes that the main focus on news, “is on events with high visual intrigue—eg, air crashes, homicides—and stories about deaths and injuries with lesser visual content are rarely shown. In addition, many of the causes of deaths and injuries emphasized by local television news tend to have high relationships to crime, real or inferred, and those that are de-emphasized have a much lower likelihood that a criminal act was involved”(Graham, 6). Unfortunately things like fraud and corrupt loans do not seem to appeal to society; furthermore people simply do not understand them. Blue-collar crimes frequently tend to have a direct impact on just a group of individuals whether it’s a family or a community. Although some of these crimes can be devastating, they tend to be applicable to those that it directly impacted—people in Los Angles are not interested in learning about a robbery in New York City. White-collar crimes, on the other hand, have the potential to cause a huge financial impact which can ripple throughout the world (Nobel, 2). Scandals like those caused by Bernie Madoff, Enron, Lehman Brothers and AIG are great examples. It is an unfortunate truth that the world of business has attached itself with a variety of negative connotations, one being white-collar crimes. The term white-collar crime can mean a variety of activities such as bribery, insider trading, embezzlement, and fraud just to name a few. These crimes run rampant, and these illegal activities
Financially motivated crimes, also known as white-collar crimes, are a pervasive problem that seems to not attract much attention. Unlike its counter part, blue-collar crimes, white-collar crimes are not exactly exciting or interesting. Blue-collar crimes like murder, shootings, rape and robbery are often very horrific, thus they receive a great deal of attention. Some say that the effects of these crimes tend to be exaggerated. A researcher in this field believes that the main focus on news, “is on events with high visual intrigue—eg, air crashes, homicides—and stories about deaths and injuries with lesser visual content are rarely shown. In addition, many of the causes of deaths and injuries emphasized by local television news tend to have high relationships to crime, real or inferred, and those that are de-emphasized have a much lower likelihood that a criminal act was involved”(Graham, 6). Unfortunately things like fraud and corrupt loans do not seem to appeal to society; furthermore people simply do not understand them. Blue-collar crimes frequently tend to have a direct impact on just a group of individuals whether it’s a family or a community. Although some of these crimes can be devastating, they tend to be applicable to those that it directly impacted—people in Los Angles are not interested in learning about a robbery in New York City. White-collar crimes, on the other hand, have the potential to cause a huge financial impact which can ripple throughout the world (Nobel, 2). Scandals like those caused by Bernie Madoff, Enron, Lehman Brothers and AIG are great examples. It is an unfortunate truth that the world of business has attached itself with a variety of negative connotations, one being white-collar crimes. The term white-collar crime can mean a variety of activities such as bribery, insider trading, embezzlement, and fraud just to name a few. These crimes run rampant, and these illegal activities
Cited: Hu, Jie. "The Insider Trading Debate." Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta: Economic Review. N.p., Dec. 1997. Web. 30 Mar. 2014. <http://www.frbatlanta.org/filelegacydocs/noe-hu.pdf>. Nobel, Carmen. "The Real Cost of Bribery." HBS Working Knowledge. N.p., 4 Nov. 2013. Web. 30 Mar. 2014. <http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/7325.html>. Robe, Michel. "The Impact of Illegal Insider Trading in Dealer and Specialist Markets: Evidence from a Natural Experiment." UC San Diego. N.p., Jan. 2002. Web. 30 Mar. 2014. <http://irps.ucsd.edu/assets/006/5569.pdf>. Shivdasani, Anil. "Financial Fraud, Director Reputation, and Shareholder Wealth." Olin Business School. N.p., Oct. 2005. Web. 30 Mar. 2014. <http://apps.olin.wustl.edu/jfi/pdf/financial.fraud.pdf>. Graham, Megan. "White Collar Crime and the United States ' Economy." University of New Hampshire. N.p., 1 Apr. 2012. Web. 11 May 2014. <http%3A%2F%2Fscholars.unh.edu%2Fcgi%2Fviewcontent.cgi%3Farticle%3D1048%26context%3Dhonors>. Payne, Bryan. "White Collar Crime." Sage Publication, n.d. Web. 11 May 2014. <http://www.sagepub.com/upm-data/43839_2.pdf>.