This Week’s Report: Financial Misconduct

In the aftermath of the worst financial meltdown since the Great Depression, many Americans are pressing for stronger regulation of the financial industry and harsh punishment for banks and other institutions they say created the crisis.

But as Associate Editor Kenneth Jost writes in this week’s report, four years after the financial crisis began, no prominent financial executives have been prosecuted for central roles in the crisis. In one case, a federal judge rejected a proposed settlement with a major bank as too lenient. But some legal experts say that many of the practices that helped trigger the economic crisis were not necessarily illegal.

This is a strong report for classes and papers dealing with the economy, government regulation, economic history and institutional misconduct.

--Thomas J. Billitteri, Managing Editor