Maggie Walker's Bank,
2015
University of Georgia School of Law
Maggie Walker's Bank, Mehrsa Baradaran
Popular Media
Maggie Walker was the first woman of any race to own a bank. What makes this achievement remarkable is that she was born in 1867 to a former slave in Richmond, Va. Her mother was widowed and left destitute when her father was murdered. She and her mother survived by doing laundry for whites families in the area, an experience that shaped her understanding of wealth and race inequality. But Maggie was a brilliant student and finished high school at 16. She became a teacher, but was forced to quit when she married as it was unlawful for married women …
Buying Time In Spain: The Spanish Law Of Installment Sales,
2015
District of Columbia Court of Appeals
Buying Time In Spain: The Spanish Law Of Installment Sales, John M. Steadman
Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law
No abstract provided.
Securities Regulations Investigations - United States-Swiss Treaty Attempts To Increase Cooperation In Releasing Names Of Swiss-Based Account Holders Involved In United States Securities And Exchange Commission Investigations,
2015
University of Georgia School of Law
Securities Regulations Investigations - United States-Swiss Treaty Attempts To Increase Cooperation In Releasing Names Of Swiss-Based Account Holders Involved In United States Securities And Exchange Commission Investigations, Daniel B. Simon Iii
Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law
No abstract provided.
Globalization In Financial Services - What Role For Gats?,
2015
Cornell Law School
Globalization In Financial Services - What Role For Gats?, Chantal Thomas
Chantal Thomas
No abstract provided.
International Debt Forgiveness And Global Poverty Reduction,
2015
Cornell Law School
International Debt Forgiveness And Global Poverty Reduction, Chantal Thomas
Chantal Thomas
No abstract provided.
Creditors And Debt Governance,
2015
Cornell Law School
Creditors And Debt Governance, Charles K. Whitehead
Charles K Whitehead
This chapter from the book Research Handbook on the Economics of Corporate Law (Claire Hill & Brett McDonnell, eds.), provides an introduction to the law and economic theory relating to creditors and debt governance. The chapter begins with a look at the traditional role of debt, focusing on the impact of debt on corporate governance and, in particular, the effect of an illiquid credit market on creditors’ reliance on covenants and monitoring. It then turns to changes in the private credit market and their effect on lending structure. Greater liquidity raises its own set of agency costs. In response, loans …
What's Your Sign? -- International Norms, Signals, And Compliance,
2015
Cornell Law School
What's Your Sign? -- International Norms, Signals, And Compliance, Charles K. Whitehead
Charles K Whitehead
This Article proposes a new approach to analyzing state compliance with international obligations, positing that increased interaction among the world's regulators has reinforced norms within cross-border regulatory networks, influencing the actions of senior regulators who are network members and, in turn, affecting levels of state compliance. Network norms help define what state actions constitute signals and the meanings of those signals. Certain actions, such as implementing a substantive network standard, may be considered a concrete expression of an abstract network norm. States that fail to implement that standard risk failing to send the right signal, potentially incurring significant network sanctions. …
The Volcker Rule And Evolving Financial Markets,
2015
Cornell Law School
The Volcker Rule And Evolving Financial Markets, Charles K. Whitehead
Charles K Whitehead
The Volcker Rule prohibits proprietary trading by banking entities - in effect, reintroducing to the financial markets a substantial portion of the Glass-Steagall Act’s static divide between banks and securities firms. This Article argues that the Glass-Steagall model is a fixture of the past - a financial Maginot Line within an evolving financial system. To be effective, new financial regulation must reflect new relationships in the marketplace. For the Volcker Rule, those relationships include a growing reliance by banks on new market participants to conduct traditional banking functions. Proprietary trading has moved to less-regulated businesses, in many cases, to hedge …
The Evolution Of Debt: Covenants, The Credit Market, And Corporate Governance,
2015
Cornell Law School
The Evolution Of Debt: Covenants, The Credit Market, And Corporate Governance, Charles K. Whitehead
Charles K Whitehead
No abstract provided.
How Deregulating Derivatives Led To Disaster, And Why Re-Regulating Them Can Prevent Another,
2015
Cornell Law School
How Deregulating Derivatives Led To Disaster, And Why Re-Regulating Them Can Prevent Another, Lynn A. Stout
Lynn A. Stout
When credit markets froze up in the fall of 2008, many economists pronounced the crisis both inexplicable and unforeseeable. That’s because they were economists, not lawyers. Lawyers who specialize in financial regulation, and especially the small cadre who specialize in derivatives regulation, understood what went wrong. (Some even predicted it.) That’s because the roots of the catastrophe lay not in changes in the markets, but changes in the law. Perhaps the most important of those changes was the U.S. Congress’s decision to deregulate financial derivatives with the Commodity Futures Modernization Act (CFMA) of 2000. Prior to 2000, off-exchange derivatives contracts …
Derivatives And The Legal Origin Of The 2008 Credit Crisis,
2015
Cornell Law School
Derivatives And The Legal Origin Of The 2008 Credit Crisis, Lynn A. Stout
Lynn A. Stout
Experts still debate what caused the credit crisis of 2008. This Article argues that dubious honor belongs, first and foremost, to a little-known statute called the Commodities Futures Modernization Act of 2000 (CFMA). Put simply, the credit crisis was not primarily due to changes in the markets; it was due to changes in the law. In particular, the crisis was the direct and foreseeable (and in fact foreseen by the author and others) consequence of the CFMA’s sudden and wholesale removal of centuries-old legal constraints on speculative trading in over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives. Derivative contracts are probabilistic bets on future events. …
On The Rise Of Shareholder Primacy, Signs Of Its Fall, And The Return Of Managerialism (In The Closet),
2015
Selected Works
On The Rise Of Shareholder Primacy, Signs Of Its Fall, And The Return Of Managerialism (In The Closet), Lynn Stout
Lynn A. Stout
In their 1932 opus "The Modern Corporation and Public Property," Adolf Berle and Gardiner Means famously documented the evolution of a new economic entity—the public corporation. What made the public corporation “public,” of course, was that it had thousands or even hundreds of thousands of shareholders, none of whom owned more than a small fraction of outstanding shares. As a result, the public firm’s shareholders had little individual incentive to pay close attention to what was going on inside the firm, or even to vote. Dispersed shareholders were rationally apathetic. If they voted at all, they usually voted to approve …
Regulate Otc Derivatives By Deregulating Them,
2015
Cornell Law School
Regulate Otc Derivatives By Deregulating Them, Lynn A. Stout
Lynn A. Stout
When credit markets froze up in the fall of 2008, many economists pronounced the crisis inexplicable and unforeseeable. Lawyers who specialize in financial regulation, and especially the small cadre who specialize in derivatives regulation, knew better.That's because the roots of the catastrophe lay not in changes in the markets, but changes in the law. In particular, the credit crisis can be traced to Congress's 2000 passage of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which radically altered the traditional legal approach to financial derivatives. This shift in the legal treatment of financial derivatives has brought the banking system to its knees. The …
How Efficient Markets Undervalue Stocks: Capm And Ecmh Under Conditions Of Uncertainty And Disagreement,
2015
Cornell Law School
How Efficient Markets Undervalue Stocks: Capm And Ecmh Under Conditions Of Uncertainty And Disagreement, Lynn A. Stout
Lynn A. Stout
No abstract provided.
Betting The Bank: How Derivatives Trading Under Conditions Of Uncertainty Can Increase Risks And Erode Returns In Financial Markets,
2015
Cornell Law School
Betting The Bank: How Derivatives Trading Under Conditions Of Uncertainty Can Increase Risks And Erode Returns In Financial Markets, Lynn A. Stout
Lynn A. Stout
On April 12, 1994, Procter & Gamble Co. announced that it had incurred pre-tax losses of $157 million from trading in leveraged interest rate swaps, a form of financial derivative. At the time that figure seemed enormous. Yet within a year, Procter & Gamble's misfortune had been overshadowed by that of Orange County, a wealthy California enclave that lost an estimated $2.5 billion of its investment fund as a result of dealings in reverse-repurchase agreements, inverse floaters, and other arcane instruments. Recent months have seen further losses by investment funds, government entities, and even colleges and Native American tribes. Perhaps …
The Mechanisms Of Market Inefficiency: An Introduction To The New Finance,
2015
Cornell Law School
The Mechanisms Of Market Inefficiency: An Introduction To The New Finance, Lynn A. Stout
Lynn A. Stout
During the 1970s and early 1980s, the Efficient Capital Market Hypothesis (ECMH) became one of the most widely-accepted and influential ideas in finance economics. More recently, however, the idea of market efficiency has fallen into disrepute as a result of market events and growing empirical evidence of inefficiencies. This essay argues that the weaknesses of the efficient market theory are, and were, apparent from a careful inspection of its initial premises, including the presumptions of homogeneous investor expectations, effective arbitrage, and investor rationality. By the same token, a wide range of market phenomena inconsistent with the ECHM can be explained …
Regulate Otc Derivatives By Deregulating Them: Response To Comments,
2015
Cornell Law School
Regulate Otc Derivatives By Deregulating Them: Response To Comments, Lynn A. Stout
Lynn A. Stout
Response to comments by Jean Helwege, Peter Wallison, and Craig Pirrong on the author's article, "Regulate OTC Derivatives By Deregulating Them." Article predates the author's affiliation with Cornell Law School.
A Whole New World: Income Tax Considerations Of The Bitcoin Economy,
2015
Georgia Gwinnett College
A Whole New World: Income Tax Considerations Of The Bitcoin Economy, Benjamin W. Akins Jd, Llm, Jennifer L. Chapman Jd, Cpa, Jason M. Gordon Jd, Mba
Benjamin W. Akins
Bitcoin is a virtual, cryptocurrency growing rapidly in influence throughout the world. Numerous characteristics associated with the bitcoin system, including low transaction costs and greater user privacy, make it appealing as a medium of electronic payment. The number of users of bitcoin, including merchants accepting the currency as a form of payment, has grown considerably in recent years. Estimates indicate that there are more than 60,000 active bitcoin users as of September 2012, with nearly 11 million bitcoins in existence. According to the latest estimates, bitcoin market capitalization is roughly $9 billion. The growth of bitcoin as an accepted currency …
Law And Finance In The Chinese Shadow Banking System,
2015
Cornell University Law School
Law And Finance In The Chinese Shadow Banking System, Dan Awrey
Cornell International Law Journal
No abstract provided.
Incorporating Legal Claims,
2015
University of Iowa College of Law
Incorporating Legal Claims, Maya Steinitz
Notre Dame Law Review
Recent years have seen an explosion of interest in commercial litigation funding. Whereas the judicial, legislative, and scholarly treatment of litigation finance has regarded litigation finance first and foremost as a form of champerty and sought to regulate it through rules of legal professional responsibility (hereinafter, the “legal ethics paradigm”), this Article suggests that the problems created by litigation finance are all facets of the classic problems created by “the separation of ownership and control” that have been a focus of business law since the advent of the corporate form. Therefore, an “incorporation paradigm,” offered here, is more appropriate. “Incorporating …
