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Markets killed by greed

economic crimes against humanity

Lourdes Benería / CARMEN Sarasu 29/03/2011

According to the International Criminal Court, crimes against humanity is "any act which causes severe suffering inhuman or threatens the physical or mental health sufferers, committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack against a civilian population. " Since World War II we have become familiar with this concept and the idea that, no matter what was its size, is possible and right to investigate these crimes and bring the guilty pay.

Situations such as that generated the economic crisis have led to the start to discuss economic crimes against humanity. The concept is not new. Already in the 1950 neoclassical economist and Nobel laureate Gary Becker introduced his "theory of crime" at the microeconomic level. The probability that an individual commits a crime depends, to Becker, the risk taken, the potential spoils and possible punishment. At the macroeconomic level, the concept was used in discussions on structural adjustment policies promoted by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank during the eighties and nineties, which led to grave social costs for people in Africa, Latin America, Asia (During the Asian crisis of 1997-98) and Eastern Europe. Many analysts said these agencies and the policies that sponsored and economists who designed them accountable, especially the IMF, which was much maligned after the Asian crisis.

In Western countries today are those who suffer the social costs of financial and employment crisis, and austerity plans that supposedly are against it. The loss of fundamental rights such as employment, housing and suffering of millions of families who are endangered their survival are frightening examples of the costs of this crisis. Households living in poverty are growing unabated. But who is responsible? The markets read and hear every day.

In an article in Businessweek on March 20, 2009 under the title "Wall Street's Economic Crimes Against Humanity", Shoshana Zuboff, a former professor of Harvard Business School, argued that those responsible for the crisis to deny the consequences of his actions demonstrated "the banality of evil" and "institutionalized narcissism" in our societies. It shows lack of accountability and "emotional distance" that sums accumulated millions who now deny any connection with the damage. Blaming only the system is not acceptable, Zuboff argued, just as it would have been blamed for Nazi crimes only ideas, not those who committed them.

Blaming markets is actually remain on the surface of the problem. There are responsible people and institutions and are specific: they are those who defended the uncontrolled liberalization of financial markets executives and companies that benefited from the excesses of the market during the boom financial , who allowed their practices and who allow them to emerge unscathed and strengthened now, with more public money for nothing. Companies like Lehman Brothers and Goldman Sachs, banks that allowed the proliferation of credit garbage supposedly guaranteed auditing the accounts of companies, and people like Alan Greenspan, chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve for the governments of Bush and Clinton, uncompromising opposition to the regulation of financial markets.

The U.S. Congressional Commission on the origins of the crisis has been illuminating in this regard. Created by President Obama in 2009 to investigate illegal or criminal actions of the financial industry, has interviewed over 700 experts. Its report, released last January, concluded that the crisis could have been avoided. Points system failures of regulation and supervision of the government and enterprises, accounting and auditing practices and transparency in business. The Commission investigated the direct role of some giants of Wall Street financial disaster, for example in the market subprimes, and the agencies responsible for ranking bond. It is important to understand the varying degrees of responsibility of each actor in this drama, but it is not permissible without the feeling of impunity "responsible."

As for the victims of economic crimes in Spain to 20% unemployment for more than two years is an enormous human and economic cost. Thousands of families suffer the consequences of having believed that wages would pay mortgages mileuristas: 90,000 foreclosures in 2009 and 180,000 in 2010. In the U.S., the unemployment rate is half English, but is about 26 million unemployed, which means a tremendous increase in poverty in one of the richest countries in the world. According to the Commission on Financial Crisis, more than four million families have lost their homes, and four million are in the process of eviction. Eleven billion dollars of "family wealth" have "disappeared" when their assets lose value, including houses, pensions and savings. Another consequence of the crisis is its effect on prices of food and other basic commodities, sectors to which speculators are diverting their capital. The result is inflation in prices and further increase poverty.

In some notorious cases of fraud like Madoff, the author is in jail and the prosecution against him because his victims still have economic power. But in general, have resulted in crisis who have not only taken up a fabulous return, but do not fear punishment. No one investigates their responsibilities and their decisions. Governments protect the judiciary and not pursued.

If we had clear notions of what is an economic crime and if there are mechanisms to investigate and prosecute could have been avoided many of the current problems. It is not utopia. Iceland offers an interesting example. Instead of bailing out the bankers who ruined the country in 2008, prosecutors opened a criminal investigation against those responsible. In 2009 the entire government had to resign and pay the bank debt was blocked. Iceland has not socialized the losses as they are doing many countries, including Spain, but has accepted that those responsible be punished and their banks from sinking.

the same way that institutions and procedures were established to prosecute crimes politicians against humanity, it is time to do the same with economics. This is a good time, given its existence hard to refute. It is urgent that the notion of "economic crime" was incorporated into the discourse a citizen and understand its importance to building the economic and political democracy. At least we will see the need to regulate markets, as Polanyi says, in the service of society, not vice versa.

Lourdes Benería is Professor of Economics at Cornell University. Carmen Sarasu is Professor of Economic History at the Autonomous University of Barcelona.