Law Commons^™

How To Sue An Asue? Closing The Racial Wealth Gap Through The Transplantation Of A Cultural Institution, Cyril A.L. Heron

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Asues, academically known as Rotating Savings and Credit Associations (or ROSCAs for short), are informal cultural institutions that are prominent in developing countries across the globe. Their utilization in those countries provide rural and ostracized communities with a means to save money and invest in the community simultaneously. Adoption of the asue into the United States could serve as the foundation by which to close the racial wealth gap. Notwithstanding the benefits, wholesale adoption of any asue model runs the risk of cultural rejection because the institution is foreign to the African American community.

Drawing upon principles of cultural and …

Grants, Nicholson Price Ii

Articles

Innovation is a primary source of economic growth and is accordingly the target of substantial academic and government attention. Grants are a key tool in the government’s arsenal to promote innovation, but legal academic studies of that arsenal have given them short shrift. Although patents, prizes, and regulator-enforced exclusivity are each the subject of substantial literature, grants are typically addressed briefly, if at all. According to the conventional story, grants may be the only feasible tool to drive basic research, as opposed to applied research, but they are a blunt tool for that task. Three critiques of grants underlie this …

Remembering Financial Crises: The Risk Implications Of The Rise Of Institutional Investors In Project Finance, David J. Park

Michigan Law Review

Barely a decade ago, a cascading sequence of market failures threatened to topple the global financial system. Public responses to the recent Financial Crisis were immediate and drastic to resuscitate the global economy while attempting to make the markets safer. Many financial services sectors have since recovered to pre-crisis levels. One such industry is project finance, which comprises various financing arrangements often used to fund long-term infrastructure or industrial projects. Curiously, significant post-crisis banking regulations and other global credit enhancement initiatives are pushing banks out of project finance and giving rise to institutional investors. This Comment argues that animated institutional …

Finance And Growth: The Legal And Regulatory Implications Of The Role Of The Public Equity Market In The United States, Ezra Wasserman Mitchell

Michigan Business & Entrepreneurial Law Review

The important study of the relationship between finance and economic growth has exploded over the past two decades. One of the most significant open questions is the role of the public equity market in stimulating growth and the channels it follows if it does. This paper examines that question from an economic, legal, and historical perspective, especially with regard to its regulatory and corporate governance implications. The US market is my focus.

In contrast to most studies, I follow both economic history and the actual flow of funds in addition to empirics and theory to conclude that the public equity …

Financial Reform: Making The System Safer And Fairer, Michael S. Barr

Articles

In the fall of 2008, the financial crisis crushed the U.S. economy and plunged the country into the Great Recession. The crisis shuttered American businesses, cost millions of Americans their jobs, and wiped out home values and household savings. The macro effects hit hardest and were the longest lasting for those least able to bear the brunt of the crisis. It was devastating to middle-income families and perhaps even more so to low- and moderate-income households, who had little financial buffer (Barr 2012a). Financial stability, never robust for these families, dropped precipitously (Barr and Schaffa 2016). Both in the United …

The Systematic Risk Of Private Funds After The Dodd-Frank Act, Wulf A. Kaal

Michigan Business & Entrepreneurial Law Review

The Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) was created under the Dodd-Frank Act with the primary mandate of guarding against systemic risk and correcting perceived regulatory weaknesses that may have contributed to the financial crisis of 2008-2009. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) collects data pertaining to private fund advisers in order to facilitate FSOC’s assessment of non-bank financial institutions’ potential systemic risks. Evidence that the SEC’s data collection encounters accuracy and consistency problems might hamper FSOC’s ability to evaluate the systemic risk of private fund advisers. The author shows that while the SEC’s data plays a crucial role in all …

Private Equity Investments In Microfinance In India, Hugh Manahan

Michigan Business & Entrepreneurial Law Review

A trail connects a skyscraper in Manhattan’s Financial District to a tiny food stand in a village in the southeast Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Initially wild and overgrown, the trail now resembles a well-developed road, cleared and shaped. The trail does not connect customers to call centers or raw materials to laborers; the path connects lenders seeking abnormal returns on their investments to borrowers living in poverty. This is the path of private equity investments in microfinance. Microfinance is a powerful financial innovation that has changed personal finance in many parts of the world. While microfinance began as non-profit …

Trust And Control: The Value Effect Of Venture Capital Term Sheet Provisions As Risk Allocation Tools, Jason M. Gordon, David Orozco

Michigan Business & Entrepreneurial Law Review

The parties to a venture funding agreement are in a state of coopetition. The parties account for perceived risk in the entrepreneur-investor relationship through varying levels of control demanded from and trust afforded to the other party. The level of risk perceived by each party may differ along individual aspects of the prospective equity deal. The provisions of the term sheet delineate the subjective risk perceptions of each party to the transaction by allocating control or trusting a party with decision-making rights. When negotiating term sheet provisions, a party should seek to understand and recognize the risk perceived by the …

The Basel Iii Liquidity Coverage Ratio And Financial Stability, Andrew W. Hartlage

Michigan Law Review

Banks and other financial institutions may increase the amount of credit available in the financial system by borrowing for short terms and lending for long terms. Though this "maturity transformation" is a useful and productive function of banks, it gives rise to the possibility that even prudently managed banks could fail due to a lack of liquid assets. The financial crisis of 2007-2008 revealed the extent to which the U.S. financial system is exposed to the risk of a system-wide failure from insufficient liquidity. Financial regulators from economies around the world have responded to the crisis by proposing new, internationally …

The Federal Reserve As Last Resort, Colleen Baker

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The Federal Reserve, the central bank of the United States, is one of the most important and powerful institutions in the world. Surprisingly, legal scholarship hardly pays any attention to the Federal Reserve or to the law structuring and governing its legal authority. This is especially curious given the amount of legal scholarship focused on administrative agencies that do not have anywhere near as critical a domestic and international role as that of the Federal Reserve. At the core of what the Federal Reserve does and should do is to conduct monetary policy so as to safeguard pricing, including that …

The Meaning Of The Market Myth, Benjamin Means

Michigan Business & Entrepreneurial Law Review

This Book Review contends that the perfectly rational market may be a myth, not just in the sense of a false or over-simplified account of reality, but also in the deeper, anthropological sense of cultural explanation. Part I describes how rational-market theories were developed by financial economists and applied to Wall Street, sometimes without adequate appreciation for the difference between simplified economic models and real-world behavior. Part II contends that if the rational-market theory has met with acceptance that outstrips its empirical support, the favorable reception may be explained in part by the theory’s congruence with broader normative views about …

International Investment And The Prudent Investor Rule: The Trustee's Duty To Consider International Investment Vehicles, Stephen M. Penner

Michigan Journal of International Law

Part I of this note will begin with a background of trust and trustees, focusing on the historical development of the trust and the present role of the trustee. Part II presents the Prudent Investor Rule. The problems in trust management which lead to the necessity of the Rule will be explored, as will the evolution of the Rule up to the recent adoption by the American Law Institute of the Third Restatement of Trusts, which is devoted solely to the Prudent Investor Rule. In Part III, the various investment opportunities available to the modern investor will be presented, first …

Modern Investment Management And The Prudent Man Rule, Creighton R. Meland Jr.

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Modern Investment Management and the Prudent Man Rule by Bevis Longstreth

The Propriety Of Benefit-Spreading Regulations Under The 10% Lending Limit Of The National Bank Act, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

This Note examines whether the ten percent lending limit of the National Bank Act should be used to promote benefit-spreading. Section I evaluates the legislative and judicial history of the lending limit and concludes that Congress never intended the Comptroller to issue regulations to foster benefit-spreading. Section II examines the practical ramifications of the benefit-spreading regulations. It concludes that the lending limit cannot effectively foster benefit-spreading without undermining the risk-reducing function of the statute; that compliance with the benefit-spreading regulations is costly while the penalties for noncompliance are inappropriate and unfair; and that existing statutes better promote benefit-spreading while avoiding …

Bills And Notes - Domiciled Note As A Check - Incidence Of Loss From The Failure Of The Bank Of Domicile After Maturity, Charles H. Haines Jr.

Michigan Law Review

Bonds of D County gave the holder the option of demanding payment at the office of the county treasurer or at a designated New York bank. At maturity, funds were available at the bank for payment, but the holder, P, made no presentment until eighteen days later, five days after the bank had failed, when demand was made on the county treasurer and payment refused. P sued. Held, the holder should recover the face of the bond regardless of the loss through the failure of the bank of domicile. Employers Mutual Insurance Co. v. Board of County Commissioners …

Banks And Banking - Incidence Of Loss Resulting From Payments By Drawee Bank Not In Accordance With Depositor's Orders

Michigan Law Review

The ordinary commercial deposit normally results in a debtor-creditor relationship between bank and depositor. It is familiar doctrine that in this situation a duty rests upon the bank to honor its creditor's properly drawn orders to the extent of the depositor's balance. Payments by the bank, ostensibly according to such orders, but which are in truth not in accordance therewith, are the bank's loss at least so far as the supposed drawer is concerned. In bookkeeping terms this means that payments by the bank not strictly in pursuance of genuine orders ordinarily cannot be charged against the account of the …

Suretyship - Release Of Surety

Michigan Law Review

Defendant was the surety on a fidelity bond of the treasurer of plaintiff corporation. The principal wrongfully deposited money in X Bank. This bank was about to be closed by the state, but Y Bank proposed to take over the assets and liabilities of X Bank if plaintiff would leave on deposit with them $200,000 for four years without interest. Plaintiff notified two of defendant's officers, but they lacked authority to act, and, prompt action being necessary, the arrangement was concluded without defendant's concurrence. At the end of the four years plaintiff sued defendant for the interest lost by reason …