“Pass the trash”: The mortgage default crisis as state-corporate crime

The concept of state-corporate crime developed during the late 1980s and early 1990s in a series of papers authored by Michalowski and Kramer (Kramer, 1990; Kramer & Michalowski, 1990; Michalowski & Kramer, 1987). They specifically define state-corporate crime as:Illegal or socially injurious actions that result from a mutually reinforcing interaction between (1) policies and/or practices in pursuit of goals of one or more institutions of political governance and (2) policies and/or practices in pursuit of goals of one or more institutions of economic production and distribution. (Michalowski & Kramer, 2006a, 2006b, p. 15)