Many who follow the depredations of large corporations share a feeling that U.S. criminal law and its enforcers too often fail to hold these institutions accountable. Writers ranging from U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff in New York to muckraking journalist Matt Taibbi have complained of the paucity of convictions for financial crime.

Now comes Samuel Buell, a law professor at Duke University, whose new book, Capital Offenses: Business Crime and Punishment in America’s Corporate Age, explains why the white-collar criminal justice system comes up short. Despite being thin on proposed reforms, this new offering deserves attention from anyone concerned with the topic.

The author brings two excellent credentials to his task: a breezy writing style and deep prosecutorial experience. He led the U.S. Justice Department’s Enron Corp. Task Force and earlier worked on the prosecution of notorious Boston gangster James “Whitey” Bulger. When it comes to errant corporations, Buell writes, the government runs into a structural problem: As a…

The amount of money stashed overseas by U.S. multinationals has exploded in recent years, doubling between 2008 and 2014 to more than $2 trillion.

For some perspective on the numbers, cost-estimating website HowMuch.net crunched the most recent data and created a telling interactive chart.

Topping the list: Apple AAPL, +1.52% and its massive $181.1 billion overseas stash, a $70 billion increase from the prior year. That total corresponds to $59.2 billion in deferred taxes, which is enough to cover more than two-thirds of the federal budget for education, training and employment, according to the 2014 numbers compiled by Citizens for Tax Justice last October.

Elsewhere, General Electric’s GE, +0.35%  taxes could take care of almost 5% of our Social Security costs, while taxes from Microsoft MSFT, +0.99% had it kept its money in the U.S., could have covered a fifth of all federal spending on veteran’s benefits.

Read:Dodging tax…