Banking and Finance Law Commons^™

After The Great Recession: Regulating Financial Services For Low- And Middle-Income Communities, Ronald J. Mann

Faculty Scholarship

This paper, prepared as a speech at Washington and Lee Law School, discusses regulatory strategies for lending to LMI households after the Great Recession. It argues that the CFPB's emphasis on behavioral economics is likely to lead it astray, especially if it relies on assumptions drawn from experience with middle-class behavior to interfere with the choices made by LMI households that face a different set of opportunities than the middle-class households more familiar to regulators. More generally, the paper suggests that most of the financial distress faced by LMI households is a result of broader social and institutional problems, and …

Stock Unloading And Banker Incentives, Robert J. Jackson Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

Congress has directed federal regulators to oversee banker pay. For the first time, these regulators are now scrutinizing the incentives of risk-takers beyond the bank's top executives. Like most public company managers, these bankers are increasingly paid in stock rather than cash. The ostensible reason is that stock-based pay aligns manager and shareholder interests. But portfolio theory predicts that managers will diversify away, or "unload," stock-based pay unless they are restricted from doing so. One way to deter unloading may be to require managers to disclose it, as investors and colleagues will assume that managers are unloading because they are …

The Political Economy Of Dodd-Frank: Why Financial Reform Tends To Be Frustrated And Systemic Risk Perpetuated, John C. Coffee Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

A good crisis should never go to waste. In the world of financial regulation, experience has shown – since at least the time of the South Sea Bubble three hundred years ago – that only after a catastrophic market collapse can legislators and regulators overcome the resistance of the financial community and adopt comprehensive "re-form" legislation. U.S. financial history both confirms and conforms to this generalization. The Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 were the product of the 1929 stock-market crash and the Great Depression, with their enactment following the inauguration of President Franklin Roosevelt …

Institutionalization, Investment Adviser Regulation, And The Hedge Fund Problem, Anita Krug

All Faculty Scholarship

This Article contends that more effective regulation of investment advisers could be achieved by recognizing that the growth of hedge funds, private equity funds, and other private funds in recent decades is a manifestation of institutionalization in the investment advisory context. That is, investment advisers today commonly advise these “institutions,” which have supplanted other, smaller investors as advisory clients. However, the federal securities statute governing investment advisers, the Investment Advisers Act of 1940, does not address the role of private funds as institutions that now intermediate those smaller investors’ relationships to investment advisers. Consistent with that failure, investment adviser regulation …

Memo To The Sec On The Proposed Rule On Disclosure Of Payments By Resource Extraction Issuers, Perrine Toledano

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

CCSI strongly supports the transparency of contracts and tax flows. CCSI shares the belief of many stakeholders that transparency is essential to leverage extractive industries for sustainable development and is in the mutual interest of all stakeholders. However, some industry players continue to voice the concern that increased transparency would be harmful for their business. Therefore, CCSI is working to also establish the business case for transparency.

In one such case, some industry players have been lobbying against the regulations developed by the Security and Exchange Commission to implement the mandatory disclosure provisions of the Dodd Frank Wall Street Reform …

An Industry-Specific Vat In Michigan - Objective Valuation In The Retail Gasoline Trade, Richard Thompson Ainsworth

Faculty Scholarship

New York adopted an industry-specific value added tax (VAT) to solve problems with virtual intermediaries (room remarketers) under its hotel accommodations tax. The New York VAT resembles the VAT used in the European Union (EU). It is a credit-invoice VAT that subjectively values supplies.

Michigan has also adopted an industry-specific credit-invoice VAT, however the targeted industry is the retail gasoline trade. The valuation method is objective, rather than subjective. In valuing supplies objectively rather than subjectively, the Michigan VAT resembles the exception provisions that are found in most VATs around the globe. Objective valuations are used in VATs when dealing …

New York Adopts A Vat, Richard Thompson Ainsworth

Faculty Scholarship

On August 13, 2010 the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance, Office of Tax Policy Analysis, Taxpayer Guidance Division released Amendments Affecting the Application of Sales Tax to Rent Received for Hotel Occupancy by Room Remarketers. The legislative revision it considers (Chapter 57 of the Laws of 2010) was effective September 1, 2010. The changes brought in by this Chapter effectively converted New York’s Hotel Room Occupancy Tax from a single-stage retail sales tax to multi-stage European-style VAT. This paper considers the New York VAT in hotel accommodations in three sections. The first defines a European-style credit-invoice VAT …

Complex Financial Institutions And Systemic Risk, Manuel A. Utset

Scholarly Publications

No abstract provided.

Bubbles, Busts, And Blame, Robert C. Hockett

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

I argue that financial asset price bubbles and busts, such as those we have recently experienced in the mortgage and securities markets, are compatible with market efficiency, individual rationality, and even ethically unobjectionable behavior. The reason is that they constitute classic recursively self-amplifying collective action problems, the hallmark of which is the efficient aggregation of individually rational behaviors into collectively calamitous outcomes. In the present case, individuals rationally "legged the spread" between cheap borrowing costs and credit-fueled capital gains rates, neither of which market actors could affect in their individual capacities even when knowing that credit would have eventually to …

A Comparative Legal And Economic Approach To Third-Party Litigation Funding, Marco De Morpurgo

Cardozo Journal of International and Comparative Law

This article represents the first attempt to apply a comparative legal and economic approach to the study of third-party litigation funding (TPLF) - one of the most innovative trends in civil litigation financing today. TPLF consists of the practice where a third party offers financial support to a claimant in order to cover his litigation expenses, in return for a share of damages if the claim is successful. The third party receives no compensation if the claimant loses the suit. While such practice has been rapidly developing in the common law world (Australia, United States, and United Kingdom), in the …

The Dangerous Illusion Of International Financial Standards And The Legacy Of The Financial Stability Forum, Cally Jordan

San Diego International Law Journal

In the aftermath of the Asian Financial Crisis, and the criticism directed towards the International Monetary Fund, in particular, for not having seen it coming, the Financial Stability Forum (FSF) was created in 1999 under a mandate from the G7 ministers of finance and central bank governors. The Asian Financial Crisis arose suddenly, spread rapidly, and spared neither developed nor developing economies in the region, although some fared much better than others. In retrospect, the causes of the crisis were obvious and the consequences predictable. Contagion entered the financial lexicon. Thus, the role of the FSF was to promote financial …

A Test Case In International Bankruptcy Protocols: The Lehman Brothers Insolvency, Jamie Altman

San Diego International Law Journal

Part II of this Article, explains the competing theories underlying bankruptcy systems: universalism and territorialism. Part III details various statutory solutions to international bankruptcy problems. Next, Part IV analyzes the provisions of the Lehman Protocol in depth. Part V then examines the precedent upon which the Lehman Protocol relies. Part VI assesses potential threats to the Protocol?s success. This leads to Part VII, which contains suggestions for future protocols. Finally, Part VIII concludes.

Will Cutting The Payroll Tax Increase Jobs In The U.S.? Empirical Evidence From The Eu Vat, Richard Thompson Ainsworth

Faculty Scholarship

Red Ink Rising, the Peterson–Pew Commission on Budget Reform’s report presents the country with a fiscal/employment dilemma – Congress must act immediately to stem the federal debt, but it must move carefully lest it harm employment in the fragile economy. In short, we must act fast and slow – we must decrease the debt and increase employment. This is a difficult task.

The Peterson-Pew dilemma (notably its jobs-creation aspect) was taken to heart by both of the reform commissions that issued reports soon thereafter (National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, The Moment of Truth and The Debt Reduction Task …

Review Of Seeds Of Destruction: Why The Path To Economic Ruin Runs Through Washington, And How To Reclaim American Prosperity, Michael S. Barr

Reviews

The United States has just gone through the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. Our financial system came to brink of collapse, saved only by a massive intervention by the federal government. Although officially the Great Recession is now over, high unemployment and slow growth persist. Deficits that were ballooning in the 2000s with the weight of tax cuts, increased health care expenditures, and defense spending related to Iraq and Afghanistan, even before the financial crisis, have continued to climb, as lower tax receipts, automatic stabilizers, and fiscal stimulus kicked into gear.

Dodd-Frank For Bankruptcy Lawyers, Douglas G. Baird, Edward R. Morrison

Faculty Scholarship

The Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation creates an “Orderly Liquidation Authority” (OLA) that shares many features in common with the Bankruptcy Code. This is easy to overlook because the legislation uses a language and employs a decision-maker (both borrowed from bank regulation) that will seem foreign to bankruptcy lawyers. Our task in this essay is to identify the core congruities between OLA and the Code. In doing so, we highlight important differences and assess both their constitutionality and policy objectives. We conclude with a few thoughts on the likelihood that OLA will contribute to market stability.

Economic Crisis And Share Price Unpredictability: Reasons And Implications, Edward G. Fox, Merritt B. Fox, Ronald J. Gilson

Faculty Scholarship

The volatility of share returns for individual companies increased sharply during the recent financial crisis. The larger part of this increase was due to a dramatic rise – five fold as measured by variance – in idiosyncratic risk. We find that this pattern repeats itself during each major economic reversal going back 85 years. Because idiosyncratic risk is what is involved, this increase cannot be explained by changes in predictions concerning the future course of the economy as a whole.

Our first goal is to explain why difficult economic times, which are defined in terms of market wide phenomena, make …

Incentivizing Economic Development: An Empirical Examination Of The Use Of Grants And Loans, Robert T. Greenbaum, Daniele Bondonio

South Carolina Journal of International Law and Business

No abstract provided.

Lyondell: A Note Of Approbation, William W. Bratton

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Credit Derivatives, Leverage, And Financial Regulation's Missing Macroeconomic Dimension, Erik F. Gerding

Publications

Of all OTC derivatives, credit derivatives pose particular concerns because of their ability to generate leverage that can increase liquidity - or the effective money supply - throughout the financial system. Credit derivatives and the leverage they create thus do much more than increase the fragility of financial institutions and increase counterparty risk. By increasing leverage and liquidity, credit derivatives can fuel rises in asset prices and even asset price bubbles. Rising asset prices can then mask mistakes in the pricing of credit derivatives and in assessments of overall leverage in the financial system. Furthermore, the use of credit derivatives …

Those Who Ignore The Successes Of The Past Suffer Recurrent, Intensifying Crises, William K. Black

Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Meaningful Good Faith: Managerial Motives And The Duty To Obey The Law, Peter C. Kostant

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Director Liability For Corporate Crimes: Lawyers As Safe Haven?, John A. Humbach

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Duty Of Obedience: The Forgotten Duty, Alan R. Palmiter

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Role Of Good Faith In Delaware: How Open-Ended Standards Help Delaware Preserve Its Edge, Renee M. Jones

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

What Directors Do (And Fail To Do): Some Comparative Notes On Board Structure And Corporate Governance, Simon Deakin

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Short, But Interesting Life Of Good Faith As An Independent Liability Rule, Robert B. Thompson

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Good Faith In Revlon-Land, Christopher M. Bruner

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Producing Corporate Text: Courtrooms, Conference Rooms, And Classrooms, Mae Kuykendall

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Deconstructing Lyondell: Reconstructing Revlon, Lawrence Lederman

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Good Faith After Disney: Justice Berger’S Closing Discussion, Carolyn Berger

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.