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New at Reason: Brian Doherty on Ivar Kreuger, the Father of Modern Financial Fraud
As America is
stunned and battered by turmoil in financial markets, University of
San Diego law and finance professor Frank Partnoy takes a look back
at a mighty industrialist and financier, Ivar Kreuger, and his rise
and fall in the new book The Match King: Ivar Kreuger, the
Financial Genius Behind a Century of Wall Street Scandals.
Partnoy convincingly frames Kreuger as the fountainhead of modern financial shenanigans and crimes, and the proximate cause of "the securities laws that govern today's markets."
Yet as Senior Editor Brian Doherty writes, contemplating Kreuger's story shows not that government can successfully stop financial fraud, but that certain of Kreuger's crimes were both enmeshed in government and rooted in recurring aspects of human nature. Together, these factors ensure the eternal recurrence of figures like Ivar Kreuger, master industrialist and master financial criminal.
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