The so-called Pharma Bro has been sentenced to seven years in prison.

Martin Scarelli convicted of defrauding investors.

Corporate big wigs inflated in runs earnings by several hundred million dollars.

A New York Times investigation claims the president was involved in multiple instances of tax fraud.

Bank executives wrecked the global economy.

Only one Wall Street banker was jailed.

White collar criminals differ from other types of criminals in one important way.

They're much worse.

From the offices of Civic Ventures in downtown Seattle, this is Pitch Fork Economics with

Nick Hanauer, where we explore everything you wished you'd learn in Econ 101.

Hey, it's Zach, I'm the president of Civic Ventures, and I have the pleasure today of talking to Michael Hobbs.

Michael is one of my favorite journalists.

He does some of the most incredible writing and thinking about current American life and the podcast he hosts digs into some of the

most interesting stories. Today Michael and I are going to talk about the golden age of

white collar crime his most recent piece in Huffpo. This is about

elite law breaking and how out of control it is. And the subhead here is this is the grotesque story of an existential threat to American society.

So Michael and I are going to discuss his peace.

And really the general gist of it is the rich are enjoying a golden age of impunity that's

unprecedented in modern history.

He uses a term called elite deviance. And elite deviance is all the legal and illegal social harms that are caused by the wealthy.

So for example, one year of white collar crime is equal to two decades of street crime.

That's one of the statistics he points out,

...