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Full-Text Articles in Law

Financial Armageddon Routs Law Again, Nicholas L. Georgakopoulos Aug 2013

Financial Armageddon Routs Law Again, Nicholas L. Georgakopoulos

Nicholas L Georgakopoulos

This essay, after highlighting the unique aspects of financial markets, offers a mostly rational account for financial crises, centering on the 2008 crisis as an example. The thesis is that market participants overestimate the duration of high productivity growth due to new technologies and produce occasional—and likely unavoidable—bubbles. Considering potential changes in the regulation of financial markets, the conclusion is grim. Regulators appear to have exhausted the effective legal levers against overestimations of continued high growth. The legislative responses to the last few crises were likely unproductive. The sole (but still unrealistic) effective protection would be the constitutional development of …


• The Credit Crisis And Subprime Litigation: How Fraud Without Motive ‘Makes Little Economic Sense’, Peter Hamner Jan 2010

• The Credit Crisis And Subprime Litigation: How Fraud Without Motive ‘Makes Little Economic Sense’, Peter Hamner

Peter Hamner

The recent collapse of the financial markets spurred numerous lawsuits seeking a faulty party. Many plaintiffs argue that market participants committed securities fraud. They claim that deficient subprime loans caused the financial crisis. These risky loans were allegedly originated by banks to be sold off to third parties. The subprime loans were securitized and spread throughout the financial markets. The risk these loans presented was allegedly not disclosed to the buyers of the loans and securities on the loans. As these deficient loans and securities began to default the financial markets came to a halt. This article argues that securities …


Morals In A Market Bubble, Robert T. Miller Jan 2009

Morals In A Market Bubble, Robert T. Miller

Robert T Miller

In this short piece, I respond to the idea that the financial crisis of 2007-2008 was caused by a frenzy of immoral practices in the real estate and financial markets. I argue that such a theory is fundamentally misguided. In reality, the Federal Reserve’s unduly accommodating monetary policy in 2002-2006 and certain structural features of the relevant financial markets (especially subprime loans) combined to produce the bubble in the residential real estate market in the United States. This happened not because of moral wrongdoing by market participants but as a result of individuals rationally pursuing their economic self-interest (a) in …