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Full-Text Articles in Law
Democratizing Startups, Seth C. Oranburg
Democratizing Startups, Seth C. Oranburg
Seth C Oranburg
The Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act of 2012 intends to “help entrepreneurs raise the capital they need to put Americans back to work and create an economy that’s built to last.” The goal is to “democratize startups” by making capital available to diverse entrepreneurs in new geographies. Yet the net effect of securities regulations and market conditions is the opposite. Startup companies are encouraged to stay private so capital is consolidating in large, mature firms instead of recycling into new startups. Evidence of consolidation is that once-rare “Unicorns” (billion-dollar startups) now number over 111. More money is going into huge …
The New Wild West: Preventing Money Laundering In The Bitcoin Network, Kavid Singh
The New Wild West: Preventing Money Laundering In The Bitcoin Network, Kavid Singh
Kavid Singh
Bitcoin is the most popular online decentralized currency in the world. Created by an enigmatic figure, Satoshi Nakamoto, in 2009, its propagation and use has caused heated controversy. On the legal side of its use, businesses both large and small have started to accept bitcoins as a form of payment. On the illegal side of its use, large quantities of bitcoins worth hundreds of millions of dollars have been stolen from businesses and large Bitcoin currency exchanges. The aim of this article is to introduce workable federal regulation that will help deter money laundering, a pervasive problem in the world …
Against Regulatory Displacement: An Institutional Analysis Of Financial Crises, Jonathan C. Lipson
Against Regulatory Displacement: An Institutional Analysis Of Financial Crises, Jonathan C. Lipson
Jonathan C. Lipson
This paper uses “institutional analysis”—the study of the relative capacities of markets, courts, and regulators—to make three claims about financial crises.
First, financial crises are increasingly a problem of “regulatory displacement.” Through the ad hoc rescues of 2008 and the Dodd-Frank reforms of 2010, regulators displace market and judicial processes that ordinarily prevent financial distress from becoming financial crises. Because regulators are vulnerable to capture by large financial services firms, however, they cannot address the pathologies that create crises: market concentration and complexity. Indeed, regulators may inadvertently aggravate these conditions through resolution tactics that consolidate firms, and the volume and …
Encouraging Cooperation: Harmonizing The Battle Of Association And Mortgagee Lien Priority In America’S Common Interest Communities, Christian J. Bromley
Encouraging Cooperation: Harmonizing The Battle Of Association And Mortgagee Lien Priority In America’S Common Interest Communities, Christian J. Bromley
Christian J Bromley
As the United States grappled with millions of foreclosures in recent years, the delinquency of mortgage and community association payments threatened the sustainability of over 300,000 common interest communities that house 63.4 million Americans. When owners of residential property fall behind on mortgage and association assessments, a battle for lien priority emerges between the associations and mortgagees. Each respectively holds a lien on the property to secure the debt owed to them, but it is the priority of these liens that determines the amount the lienholder recovers from a foreclosure sale. There is no uniform approach to priority in the …
Has The Cftc Gone Too Far In Trying To Keep The American Economy Safe From Cross-Border Swaps?, Gabriel Lau
Has The Cftc Gone Too Far In Trying To Keep The American Economy Safe From Cross-Border Swaps?, Gabriel Lau
Gabriel Lau
With the passage of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (“Dodd-Frank”) in 2010, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (“CFTC”) received the daunting task regulating swap markets. Following two iterations of proposed guidance and comment periods, the CFTC released its finalized “Interpretive Guidance and Policy Statement Regarding Compliance with Certain Swap Regulations” (“Guidance”) on July 26, 2013. In the Guidance, the CFTC gives its interpretation and policy outlook for promulgating rules with respect to the regulation of cross-border swaps. This paper examines both the critiques of the Guidance, including issues of international comity and rule promulgation procedures, and …
Financial Institution Executive Compensation: The Problem Of Financially Motivated Excessive Risk-Taking, The Regulatory Response, And Common Sense Solutions, Jesse D. Gossett
Financial Institution Executive Compensation: The Problem Of Financially Motivated Excessive Risk-Taking, The Regulatory Response, And Common Sense Solutions, Jesse D. Gossett
Jesse D Gossett
This article addresses the issue of executive compensation at financial institutions as it relates to encouraging excessive risk-taking at these firms. First, I examine the economics of compensation and its relationship to risk-taking at financial firms. Next, I take a critical look at compensation provisions of Dodd-Frank (and to a lesser extent, Sarbanes-Oxley) and describe not only what Dodd-Frank does, but more importantly what it does not do. I then make specific recommendations for rules regulators should adopt under Dodd-Frank for the purpose of using compensation plans as a way of reducing excessive risk at financial institutions. I make these …
Federalism And Fiduciaries: A New Framework For Protecting State Benefit Funds, Richard E. Mendales
Federalism And Fiduciaries: A New Framework For Protecting State Benefit Funds, Richard E. Mendales
Richard E. Mendales
The financial crisis has underlined difficulties faced by states and their subdivisions in paying benefits to their employees. The most spectacular example is Detroit's bankruptcy, but state and local employers across the country face sharp cuts in benefits as their employers fight for solvency. A federal solution such as ERISA is precluded by considerations of federalism and the impracticability of getting major legislation through Congress. This Article proposes an alternative solution: a uniform state code, following other uniform state laws such as the Uniform Commercial Code, that states could adopt to govern both state and local plans. It would finance …
Dodd-Frank Regulators, Cost-Benefit Analysis, And Agency Capture, Paul Rose, Christopher J. Walker
Dodd-Frank Regulators, Cost-Benefit Analysis, And Agency Capture, Paul Rose, Christopher J. Walker
Christopher J. Walker
The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Dodd-Frank) has raised the stakes for financial regulation by requiring more than twenty federal agencies to promulgate nearly 400 new rules. Scholars, regulated entities, Congress, courts, and the agencies themselves have all recognized — even before Dodd-Frank — the lack of rigorous cost-benefit analysis in the context of financial rulemaking. The D.C. Circuit has struck down several financial regulations because of inadequate cost-benefit analysis, with three more challenges to be decided this summer. Members of Congress have introduced legislation to address this problem, including a call for the President to intervene …
Will Law Firms Go Public?, Roberta S. Karmel
Will Law Firms Go Public?, Roberta S. Karmel
Roberta S. Karmel
Law in the United States is a big business and big law firms are a global business. Currently, under rules of the American Bar Association (ABA) and most states law, firms are not allowed either to include non-lawyers as partners or accept equity investments from non-lawyers. This Article will argue that (even if law firms retain the form of partnerships) they eventually will accept investments from third parties, and possibly even go public, but this development could lead to a loss of professionalism, as it has with other industries, and could also lead to the end of self-regulation. Among the …
Dodd-Frank Act And Remittances To Post-Conflict Countries: The Law Of Unintended Consequences Strikes Again, Raymond Natter
Dodd-Frank Act And Remittances To Post-Conflict Countries: The Law Of Unintended Consequences Strikes Again, Raymond Natter
Raymond Natter
The Dodd-Frank Act established a new Federal framework for the regulation of international remittance payments that originate in the U.S. However, the statute and implementing regulations may have the unintended consequence of disrupting the flow of remittance funds to post-conflict nations.
Rise Of The Intercontinentalexchange And Implications Of Its Merger With Nyse Euronext, Latoya C. Brown
Rise Of The Intercontinentalexchange And Implications Of Its Merger With Nyse Euronext, Latoya C. Brown
Latoya C. Brown, Esq.
This paper examines the impending merger between the IntercontinentalExchange (ICE) and NYSE Euronext against the backdrop of the current structure of the global financial services industry. The paper concludes that the merger embodies what the financial services industry is becoming and captures the model that will allow exchanges to remain competitive in today’s marketplace: mega-exchanges with broader asset classes and electronic platforms. As technology and globalization threaten their vitality, exchanges will need to continue reinventing and adapting. Increasingly over the last decade they have done so by merging and by moving, at least a part of, their operations on screen. …
False Security: How Securitization Failed To Protect Arrangers And Investors From Borrower Claims, Kathleen C. Engel, Thomans J. Fitzpatrick
False Security: How Securitization Failed To Protect Arrangers And Investors From Borrower Claims, Kathleen C. Engel, Thomans J. Fitzpatrick
kathleen c engel
False Security: How Securitization Failed to Protect Arrangers and Investors from Borrower Claims
by Kathleen C. Engel and Thomas J. Fitzpatrick IV
The future of housing finance is in a state of flux. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two largest loan arrangers in the United States, are in conservatorship. Private sector securitization of mortgages has almost completely stopped. As a result, Fannie, Freddie and Ginnie Mae now own or guarantee almost all new residential mortgage loans. In February 2011, the Obama Administration released a proposal outlining three plans for the future of housing finance. In all three plans, Freddie …
New Governance In The Teeth Of Human Frailty: Lessons From Financial Regulation, Cristie L. Ford
New Governance In The Teeth Of Human Frailty: Lessons From Financial Regulation, Cristie L. Ford
Cristie L. Ford
New Governance scholarship has made important theoretical and practical contributions to a broad range of regulatory arenas, including securities and financial markets regulation. In the wake of the global financial crisis, question about the scope of possibilities for this scholarship are more pressing than ever. Is new governance a full-blown alternative to existing legal structures, or is it a useful complement? Are there essential preconditions to making it work, or can a new governance strategy improve any decision making structure? If there are essential preconditions, what are they? Is new governance “modular” – that is, does it still confer benefits …
Principles-Based Securities Regulation In The Wake Of The Global Financial Crisis, Cristie L. Ford
Principles-Based Securities Regulation In The Wake Of The Global Financial Crisis, Cristie L. Ford
Cristie L. Ford
This paper seeks to re-examine, and ultimately to restate the case for, principles-based securities regulation in light of the global financial crisis and related developments. Prior to the onset of the crisis, the concept of more principles-based financial regulation was gaining traction in regulatory practice and policy circles, particularly in the United Kingdom and Canada. The crisis of course cast financial regulatory systems internationally, including more principles-based approaches, into severe doubt. This paper argues that principles-based securities regulation as properly understood remains a viable and even necessary policy option, which offers solutions to the real-life and theoretical challenge that the …