Social Harm and the Vagaries of Financial Regulation in the UK

Abstract

The premise of this article is that financial crises, whether they occur as a result of legitimate of illegitimate conduct, cause social harm and victimisation. The 2008 bank crisis is a clear indication of this, as some of the financial operations determining it possessed a criminal nature while some did not. This article is concerned with both typologies, namely with illicit and licit harmful behaviour adopted by financial actors. After some general introductory notes, the first section of the paper focuses on the measures proposed or adopted in response to the 2008 crisis in the UK. This is followed by the presentation of a number of recent cases proving that, despite recent regulatory efforts, large loopholes are still present which allow forms of financial crime to thrive. Some final observations on the difficulties encountered by regulatory attempts complete the paper.

Dynamics of Social Harms in an Algorithmic Context

“…The flash crash case, in turn, illustrated how algorithmic systems might accelerate the social harms produced inside the financial system and financial crashes (Ruggiero 2015;Snider 2014). The scalability, speed and interconnectedness of algorithmic systems have added new layers of complexity to market structures, increasing their systemic fragility and vulnerability to malfunctions.…”

“…The flash crash could have triggered a new financial crisis, further increasing the burden of austerity packages unleashed in response to the 2008 global financial crisis (Ruggiero 2015). However, it did not, leaving limited losses in its wake.…”

For Pragmatism and Politics: Crime, Social Harm and Zemiology

“…The latter is increasingly signalled by the use of the phrase 'crime and harm' (Corteen et al 2016; Quality Assurance Agency 2014). Somewhat differently, it involves substituting the term 'social harm' for crime completely to encompass the legal and illegal (Ruggiero 2015), or via an implicit or explicit reference to immorality, that is, that which is self-evidently harmful if not proscribed by law (Monaghan and Prideaux 2016). The general aim of such efforts is to render invisible crimes visible (typified in Davies, Francis, and Wyatt 2014), or to name 'new' forms of crime -notable examples here being the emergence of hate- (Jenness and Grattet 2004) and eco- (Ellefsen, Sollund, and Larsen 2012) crimes.…”