Law Commons^™

Is Our Economy Safe? A Proposal For Assessing The Success Of Swaps Regulation Under The Dodd-Frank Act, Michael Greenberger

Michael Greenberger

On July 21, 2010, President Barack Obama signed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act into law. The central goal of the Dodd-Frank Act is to ensure that all standardized derivates products are regulated. The Act requires these trades be fully transparent and backed by adequate capital. The central question for evaluating the success of the Dodd-Frank Act is simple but profound: Has the Dodd-Frank Act made the economy any safer from the threat of another economic meltdown? This paper introduces a number of metrics that can be used to assess the success of the Dodd-Frank Act.

The Role Of Derivatives In The Financial Crisis – Testimony Before The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, June 30, 2010, Michael Greenberger

Michael Greenberger

It is now almost universally accepted that the unregulated multi-trillion dollar OTC CDS market helped foment a mortgage crisis, then a credit crisis, and finally a ―once-in-a-century systemic financial crisis that, but for huge U.S. taxpayer interventions, would have in the fall of 2008 led the world economy into a devastating Depression. Before explaining below the manner in which credit default swaps fomented this crisis, it worth citing in the margin those many economists, regulators, market observers, and financial columnists who have described the central role unregulated CDS played in the crisis. Even those once skeptical of arguments about the …

Testimony Before The U.S. House Committee On Agriculture On The “Discussion Draft: The Derivatives Market Transparency And Accountability Act Of 2009.”, Michael Greenberger

Michael Greenberger

Testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Agriculture. 111th Congress, 1st Session (2009).

Testimony Of Michael Greenberger Before The Commodity Futures Trading Commission On “Excessive Speculation: Position Limits And Exemptions.”, Michael Greenberger

Michael Greenberger

Testimony before the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (August 5, 2009).

Risk-Taking, Karl Okamoto, Douglas Edwards

Karl Okamoto

“First, kill all the bankers.”

With this phrase, the Wall Street Journal recently captured the sentiment driving the movement to regulate bankers’ pay. While we agree that financial industry executives made poor decisions, we take issue with the recent suggestion that, to prevent the excessive risk-taking that led to the recent financial crisis, we must only correct certain “perverse” compensation-related incentives. This logic, unfortunately, underpins a worldwide call to reform executive compensation in the finance industry. The precise prescriptions differ, but a common view has prevailed - if we can dampen the incentives to take risk, we can achieve greater …

Where Do We Come From? Innovation And Regulatory Response In The Banking Industry Before The Crisis, Bruno Meyerhof Salama

Bruno Meyerhof Salama