Galbraith was 96 when he wrote this book in 2004. It is a very thin book, only 62 pages. Yet in this little book, he distils his lifetime of experience in the public and private sectors; it is a scathing critique of matters as they stand today.

"How can fraud be innocent? How can innocence be fraudulent?" he asks in chapter I. He replies, "The answer is of no slight significance, for innocent, lawful fraud has an undoubted role in private life and public discourse. However, by neither those so believing nor those so guiding is there spoken recognition of that fact. There is, to emphasize, no sense of guilt or responsibility." The following are just two of the innocent frauds that Galbraith covers in the book.

• The innocent fraud. Top executives and management are selected by the board of directors and are subordinate to them. The board has a fiduciary relationship to the shareholders who have elected them.
  
  Reality. " No one should be in doubt: Shareholders - owners - and their alleged directors in any sizable enterprise are fully subordinate to the management. Though the impression of owner authority is offered, it does not in fact exist."

• The innocent fraud. It is the consumer who decides what would be produced, bought and sold. It is known as "consumer sovereignty". Here is the final authority to which the producing firm is subordinate.
  
  Reality. "Reference to the market system as a benign alternative to capitalism is a bland meaningless disguise of the deeper corporate reality-of producer power extending to influence over, even control of, consumer demand. Here enters the world of advertising and salesmanship, of television, of consumer manipulation. Thus an impairment to consumer and market sovereignty".*

In chapter X, The End To Corporate Innocence, Gailbraith discusses manage-ment thrust for power and self-enrichment. Of course he mentions Enron, WorldCom, and Tyco. These, he says "became the focus of widely publicized criticism, even outrage. … Avoided only was mention of the compelling opportunity for enrichment that had been accorded the managers of the modern corporate enterprise, and this in a world that approves of self-enrichment as the basic reward for economic merit."

I think this book is especially relevant in today's business climate, where greed is encouraged and rewarded.

* David Korten agrees with Galbraith that consumer sovereignty is a self-serving fabrication of the corporate world. "Large corporations became increasingly skillful in creating desire for their products" Korten writes in his book When Corporations Rule the World. He continues, "Eventually, marketing was born as a management speciality, and the early business schools began offering courses to meet the demand".