New at Reason: Brian Doherty on Ivar Kreuger, the Father of Modern Financial Fraud

June 19, 2009

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.

Read all about it here.