Law Commons^™

Dozens Of Groups Brought To Market Via Spacs To Enter Key Russell Index, Usha Rodrigues

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Dozens of companies that entered US markets through deals with blank-cheque vehicles in the past year are set to graduate into the Russell 3000 index on Friday evening, giving a potential boost to the fortunes of electric vehicle developers and other speculative ventures.

FTSE Russell, which maintains the popular benchmark, is conducting the annual refresh of its indices this month, adding and removing companies based on their market capitalisations and other factors.

Index Funds And Millennial Assets, Christopher Bruner

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This piece is a review of a forthcoming article titled “Shareholder Value(s): Index Fund ESG Activism and the New Millennial Corporate Governance” (in the Southern California Law Review by M. Barzuza, Q. Curtis and D. Webber). Bruner is a contributing editor to JOTWELL’s Corporate Law section.

Elizabeth Warren’S New Housing Proposal Is Actually A Brilliant Plan To Close The Racial Wealth Gap, Mehrsa Baradaran, Darrick Hamilton

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Last month, Sen. Elizabeth Warren released a $450 billion housing plan called the American Housing and Economic Mobility Act. The proposal is a comprehensive and bold step toward providing affordable housing for the most vulnerable Americans. The bill is the first since the Fair Housing Act with the explicit intent of redressing the iterative effects of our nation’s sordid history of housing discrimination. Critically, it has the potential to make a substantive dent in closing our enormous and persistent racial wealth gap.

Commentary: Why We Need To Stop Fining Big Banks Like Wells Fargo, Mehrsa Baradaran

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When big banks behave badly, they know that the worst thing they’ll get is a fine; no one is going to end up in jail. Instead, shareholders end up paying the cost, not the bank employees responsible. Shareholders are a diffuse group of investors, many of whom hold shares as a part of a diverse portfolio. They are not the ones who commit such fraud, nor do they have much power to change the bank’s day-to-day operations.

Clearly fines don’t work to prevent misconduct. We should instead rely on the constitutional method of dealing with wrongdoing: the criminal justice system.

Payday Lending Isn’T Helping The Poor. Here’S What Might, Mehrsa Baradaran

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This article appearing in the Washington Post on June 28, 2016 by Mehrsa Baradaran, J. Alton Hosch Associate Professor of Law at the University of Georgia School of Law explores how postal banking could benefit the poor and reduce their reliance on payday lending.

Credit Is A Double Edge Sword, Mehrsa Baradaran

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This commentary, which appeared in the Atlantic on April 26, 2016 discusses the Marquette decision by the Supreme Court and how it de-stigmatized the practice of usury.

Postal Banking Worked—Let’S Bring It Back, Mehrsa Baradaran

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This article appearing in The Nation on January 9, 2016 examines how Postal Banking could assist low-income individuals.

Why The Poor Face A Higher Cost Of Banking, Mehrsa Baradaran

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Professor Baradaran appeared on PBS Newshour to discuss inequality in the banking system on January 6, 2016.

It's Time For A Public Option In Banking, Mehrsa Baradaran

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Associate Professor Mehrsa Baradaran published this article in The Harvard Law Record on November 16, 2015. It discusses how post offices can provide ordinary citizens with banking services.

How The Us Post Office Can Save America—And Itself, Matt Phillips

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Professor Mehrsa Baradaran is interviewed by Quartz on her thoughts about postal banking.

If The U.S. Government Treated Poor People As Well As It Treats Banks, Mehrsa Baradaran

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One of the great ironies in modern America is that the less money you have, the more you pay to use it. The country’s “unbanked” must pay high fees to fringe banks to turn their paychecks into cash, pay their monthly bills, or send money to a spouse or a child. The unbanked pay much of their income—up to 10 percent—just to use their money. For these families, the total price of simple financial services each month is more than they spend on food. Indeed, it is very expensive to be poor. This article makes a proposal, transform underused post …

Postal Banking: A Lifesaver For America's Poor, Mehrsa Baradaran

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If banks are not providing credit to the poor, the state should provide it directly.The existing post office framework represents the most promising path toward effectuating such a public option. American banks long ago deserted their most impoverished communities, but post offices, even two centuries later, have remained — still rooted in an egalitarian mission. There have never been barriers to entry at post offices, and their services have been available to all, regardless of income.

Hold The Champagne On Ge Capital's Breakup, Mehrsa Baradaran

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General Electric announced last week plans to sell off the bulk of its financing arm, GE Capital. Some have claimed that this move is a win for regulators trying to curb "too big to fail" conglomerates and suggested it's a sign that financial reform is working. I'm not so sure. I think it just means that the conglomerates left standing are now even more homogeneous and risk-prone.

Maggie Walker's Bank, Mehrsa Baradaran

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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 …

The Shrews That Tame Wall Street?, Mehrsa Baradaran

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Although plenty of men are whistleblowers and financial reformers, too, the ones making the most noise are women. Women are significantly underrepresented in Wall Street firms as well as in Congress and the regulatory agencies.

A Short History Of Postal Banking, Mehrsa Baradaran

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Every other developed country in the world has postal banking, and we actually did too. It is important to remember this forgotten history as we begin to talk seriously about reviving postal banking because the system worked and it worked well. Postal banking, which existed in the United States from 1911 to 1966, was in fact so central to our banking system that it was almost the alternative to federal deposit insurance, and served as such from 1911 until 1933. The system prevented many bank runs during a turbulent time in the nation’s banking history—essentially performing central banking functions before …

The Post Office Banks On The Poor, Mehrsa Baradaran

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Approximately 88 million people in the United States, or 28 percent of the population, have no bank account at all, or do have a bank account, but primarily rely on check-cashing storefronts, payday lenders, title lenders, or even pawnshops to meet their financial needs. And these lenders charge much more for their services than traditional banks. The average annual income for an “unbanked” family is $25,500, and about 10 percent of that income, or $2,412, goes to fees and interest for gaining access to credit or other financial services. But a possible solution has appeared, in the unlikely guise of …