Eight more states have joined a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of various provisions of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law. The states are Alabama, Georgia, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Texas and West Virginia. As three states (Oklahoma, Michigan, and South Carolina) had already brought suit, this brings the total number of states involved in the suit […]
Archive | Financial Crisis
The Financial Crisis in the Courts
UPenn’s David Zaring comments in Dealbook: Courts are supposed to put the policies of presidents and Congress to the test of judicial review, to evaluate decisions by the executive to sanction someone for wrongdoing and to resolve disputes between private parties. But the really sweeping programs that Congress and the president put in place during […]
Did the CRA Lead to Risky Lending?
“Yes, it did,” is the conclusion of a new NBER study of bank lending behavior, “Did the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) Lead to Risky Lending?” by Sumit Agarwal, Efraim Benmelech, Nittai Bergman, Amit Seru, Here’s the abstract, which begins uncharacteristically with direct answer to the question in the paper’s title: Yes, it did. We use […]
How Dodd-Frank Benefits the Biggest Banks
Former White House counsel Boyden Gray and Adama White explain how Dodd-Frank effectively subsidizes large financial institutions at the expense of smaller institutions and “Main Street.” Gray and White are also representing some of the plaintiffs who are challenging Dodd-Frank’s constitutionality (see here and here).
Three States Join Lawsuit Against Title II of Dodd-Frank
A news release from the Competitive Enterprise Institute notes that the attorneys general of Michigan, Oklahoma, and South Carolina have joined their lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of portions of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. The original suit challenged several Dodd-Frank provisions, including creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Board. The states’ […]
Posner on Financial Industry Deregulation, Greve on Posner
Posner: “I was an advocate of the deregulation movement and I made — along with a lot of other smart people — a fundamental mistake, which is that deregulation works fine in industries which do not pervade the economy,” he said in the appearance on Spitzer’s viewpoint.” “The financial industry undergirded the entire economy and […]
NYT Room for Debate Blog on Whether the Financial Crisis Was Avoidable
The New York Times Room for Debate Blog, where various Conspirators have served as discussants one time or another, has a very interesting discussion on whether and in what respects the financial crisis might have been avoided. It’s a good short read. From the introduction: Last week, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, after reviewing thousands […]
Adam Levitin on the New Massachusetts Court Foreclosure Decision
(Update. Megan McArdle has a number of interesting comments and posts on foreclosure, modification, the effect of securitization, and the processes for recording title and other things. This blog post has very interesting comments as well.) Adam Levitin writes at the ForeclosureBlues blog about the Ibanez decision in the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts (pdf […]
David Skeel’s Excellent Book, and Comparing Discretion in the Financial Crisis and National Security
(Note: I was writing this on the plane without quite being able to see the computer screen, so I’ve gone back and corrected some grammar and spelling, and tried to make a couple of things clearer. I’ll post separately as well on the topic of national security and the financial crisis, and the role of […]
Law and Regulation of Central Banking?
I am curious as to whether any law school offers a (seminar?) course on the law and regulation of central banking, either specifically on the Fed in US domestic law or else something like “comparative central banking” in the transnational law curriculum. I’d be interested in responses as to courses, syllabi, reading, and course topics. […]
The Conglomerate Book Club on ‘All the Devils Are Here’
Over at the business law professor blog, The Conglomerate, the book club has been reading Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera’s book on the run-up to the financial crisis, All the Devils Are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis. David Zaring introduces the book, his brief take, and the book club discussion here – then […]
Derivatives Clearing Houses
Although I have a few reservations about the tone of the article being just slightly conspiratorial, Louise Story’s front page NYT story today on the evolution of derivatives clearinghouses is highly informative and very well done. The graphics showing how the bilateral trades would turn into centralized clearing are quite good and would be useful […]
Good Explanations of the Eurozone Crisis
The Wall Street Journal and New York Times each have good, comprehensible explanations of the eurozone sovereign debt crisis on the front pages today. (The Journal has a particularly useful graphic that breaks out each country.)
My One Paragraph Assessment of Dodd-Frank
While I wait for David Skeel and William Cowan’s new book on the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill to appear next month (The New Financial Deal), I have tried to make my own assessment of what the bill means in the aggregate. In order to do this, I have read the bill in its entirety twice. The […]
David Skeel on Bankruptcy for States
UPenn law professor and corporate finance and bankruptcy specialist David Skeel has an important article in this week’s Weekly Standard talking about the possibility and utility of bankruptcy for states. The article argues first that a new chapter for states in the Federal bankruptcy statute would be constitutional, and then turns to argue, second, that […]