Setting the conditions of competition: Repositioning the neoliberal state in the fraud debate

Drawing on data collected in interviews with those convicted for the perpetration of high yield fraudulent investment (Ponzi) schemes, this chapter seeks to extend the analysis of the state's responsibility in the creation of harm and criminality by examining the way in which the conditions present within the formal economy also facilitate more individualistic acts of economic predation further down the social scale, primarily through their role in setting the conditions for competition. It offers insight into the ways in which these criminogenic currents in our contemporary arrangements facilitate, incentivise and motivate criminality among powerful economic actors, but also those operating further down the economic food chain. The ascendancy of neoliberal thought within the political and economic realm can, in part, be attributed to the careful planning of a particular group of economists and philosophers who comprised the Mont Pelerin Society