Banking and Finance Law Commons^™

Sovereign Debt Restructuring Options: An Analytical Comparison, Steven L. Schwarcz

Faculty Scholarship

The recent financial woes of Greece, Ireland, Portugal, and other nations have reinvigorated the debate over whether to bail out defaulting countries or, instead, restructure their debt. Bailouts are expensive, both for residents of the nation being bailed out and for parties providing the bailout funds. Because the IMF, which is subsidized by most nations (including the United States), is almost always involved in country debt bailouts, we all share the burden. Yet bailouts are virtually inevitable under the existing international framework; defaults are likely to have systemic consequences, whereas an orderly debt restructuring is currently impractical. This article analyzes …

The Use And Abuse Of Special-Purpose Entities In Public Finance, Steven L. Schwarcz

Faculty Scholarship

States increasingly are raising financing indirectly through special-purpose entities (SPEs), variously referred to as authorities, special authorities, or public authorities. Notwithstanding their long history and increasingly widespread use, relatively little is known or has been written about these entities. This article examines state SPEs and their functions, comparing them to SPEs used in corporate finance. States, even more than corporations, use these entities to reduce financial transparency and avoid public scrutiny, seriously threatening the integrity of public finance. The article analyzes how regulation could be designed in order to control that threat while maintaining the legitimate financing benefits provided by …

Engineering An Orderly Greek Debt Restructuring, Mitu Gulati, Jeromin Zettelmeyer

Faculty Scholarship

For some months now, discussions over how Greece will restructure its debt have been constrained by the requirement that the deal be “voluntary” – implying that Greece would continue debt service to any creditors that choose retain their old bonds rather than tender them in an exchange offer. In light of Greece’s deep solvency problems and lack of agreement with its creditors so far, the notion of a voluntary debt exchange is increasingly looking like a mirage. In this essay, we describe and compare three alternative approaches that would achieve an orderly restructuring but avoid an outright default: (1) “retrofitting” …

In-House Counsel’S Role In The Structuring Of Mortgage-Backed Securities, Steven L. Schwarcz, Shaun Barnes, Kathleen G. Cully

Faculty Scholarship

The authors introduce the financial crisis and the role played by mortgage-backed securities. Then describe the controversy at issue: whether, in order to own and enforce the mortgage loans backing those securities, a special-purpose vehicle “purchasing” mortgage loans must take physical delivery of the notes and security instruments in the precise manner specified by the sale agreement. Focusing on this controversy, the authors analyze (i) the extent, if any, that the controversy has merit; (ii) whether in-house counsel should have anticipated the controversy; and (iii) what, if anything, in-house counsel could have done to avert or, after it arose, to …

The Roberta Mitchell Lecture: Structuring Responsibility In Securitization Transactions, Steven L. Schwarcz

Faculty Scholarship

In this Lecture, Professor Schwarcz examines how complex securitization transactions may have created a “protection gap,” the conundrum that transaction parties may be unable to purchase or might not want to pay the price for full protection. As a result, they sometimes choose or are forced to assume the good faith of the other parties to the transaction and the consistency and completeness of protections provided in the transaction documents.

Regulating Shadow Banking, Steven L. Schwarcz

Faculty Scholarship

Inaugural Address for Boston University Review of Banking & Financial Law's Inaugural Symposium: “Shadow Banking” February 24, 2012.

Although shadow banking is said to be huge, estimated at over $60 trillion, it is not well defined. This short and accessible paper attempts to define shadow banking by identifying its overall scope and its basic characteristics. Based on the definition derived, the paper also conceptually examines how shadow banking can be regulated to try to maximize its efficiencies while minimizing its risks.

Controlling Financial Chaos: The Power And Limits Of Law, Steven L. Schwarcz

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay examines how law can help to control financial chaos. To that end, regulation should strive to not only maximize economic efficiency within the financial system but also protect the financial system itself. Any regulatory framework for achieving these goals, however, will be imperfect and have tradeoffs. Increasing financial complexity has created information failures that even disclosure cannot remedy, whereas law-imposed standardization would have its own flaws. Bounded human rationality limits the effectiveness of even otherwise ideal laws. Furthermore, the increasing dispersion of financial risk is undermining monitoring incentives. We also do not yet fully understand how systemic risk …

The 2011 Diane Sanger Memorial Lecture Protecting Investors In Securitization Transactions: Does Dodd–Frank Help, Or Hurt?, Steven L. Schwarcz

Faculty Scholarship

Securitization has been called into question because of its role in the recent financial crisis. Schwarcz examines the potential flaws in the securitization process and compare how the Dodd–Frank Act treats them. Although Dodd–Frank addresses one of the flaws, it underregulates or fails to regulate other flaws. It also overregulates by addressing aspects of securitization that are not flawed.

Understanding Regulatory Capture: An Academic Perspective From The United States, Lawrence G. Baxter

Faculty Scholarship

Although it sometimes seems that financial regulatory agencies have been entirely captured by the larger players in the industry they regulate, a closer examination reveals that a variety of factors contribute to policy outcomes in this arena. Agencies have different agendas and stakeholders, and banks often perform quasi-governmental roles that blur the line between the captors and the captured. The real danger is that public policy can be distorted as a result of excessive influence by one set of interests at the expense of others. This danger is best thwarted or at least mitigated through the application of a range …

Cds Zombies, Anna Gelpern, Mitu Gulati

Faculty Scholarship

This paper examines the contract interpretation strategies adopted by the International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) for its credit derivatives contracts in the Greek sovereign debt crisis. The authors argue that the economic function of sovereign credit default swaps (CDS) after Greece is limited and uncertain, partly thanks to ISDA’s insistence on textualist interpretation. Contract theory explanations for textualist preferences emphasise either transactional efficiency or relational factors, which do not fit ISDA or the derivatives market. The authors pose an alternative explanation: the embrace of textualism in this case may be a means for ISDA to reconcile the competing political …

The Eurozone Debt Crisis: The Options Now, Mitu Gulati, Lee C. Bechheit

Faculty Scholarship

The Eurozone debt crisis is entering its third year. The original objective of the official sector’s response to the crisis -- containment -- has failed. All of the countries of peripheral Europe are now in play; three of them (Greece, Ireland and Portugal) operate under full official sector bailout programs.

The prospect of the crisis engulfing the larger peripheral countries, Spain and Italy, has sparked a new round of official sector containment measures. These will involve active intervention by official sector players such as the European Central Bank in order to preserve market access for the affected countries.

This article …

Fundamental Forces Driving United States And International Financial Regulations Reform, Lawrence G. Baxter

Faculty Scholarship

Multiple forces create a systemic crisis of the proportions of the Global Financial Crisis of 2008. Global and domestic financial reform is a difficult and perplexing task, one that is likely to take many years, and one that will surely continue to be shaped by a diverse range of forces. Recent measures remain incomplete and in some cases are even proving to be misdirected. This article considers seven fundamental forces shaping actions on future reform, specifically the (1) long term impact of the Crisis (and all financial crises); (2) increase in the “financialization” of the global economy, seemingly disproportionate to …

A Current Assessment Of Some Extraterritorial Impacts Of The Dodd-Frank Act With Special Focus On The Volcker Rule And Derivatives Regulation, Lawrence G. Baxter

Faculty Scholarship

As the world struggles to emerge from the Global Financial Crisis the vision of a harmonious framework of global financial regulation seems as distant as ever. Important progress made by international committees such as the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision and the Financial Stability Board notwithstanding, there seem to be increasing signs of unilateral, extraterritorial action by major jurisdictions, including the United States. This paper reviews the framework created by the US financial reforms, in particular anti money laundering provisions, the Volcker Rule and the proposed OTC derivatives margin requirements, and considers some of the dilemmas presented by modern global …

Accountability And The Bureau Of Consumer Financial Protection, Susan Block-Lieb

Faculty Scholarship

Some industry and political actors oppose the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) on the grounds that its institutional design ensures its lack of accountability. Specifically, opponents point to the CFPB’s regulatory and financial independence and to the fact that a single director heads the Bureau rather than a bipartisan panel of commissioners. But to focus on the Bureau’s financial independence and single director misses the distinctive political deal struck when Congress created the CFPB. The CFPB has been uniquely and intentionally structured to insulate it not only from interest group influence and executive interference, but also from congressional control, while …

Do We Have A Debt Collection Crisis? Some Cautionary Tales Of Debt Collection In Indiana, Judith Fox

Journal Articles

The Federal Trade Commission, in 2009, raised issues about debt collection practices and called on jurisdictions to investigate local practices that may be abusive to consumers. This article is the beginning of a larger study of debt collection practices in Indiana. It examines debt collection cases filed in Indiana courts in a three month period of 2009 and 2011 While most research on this issues has been in small claims court systems, this article suggests that the same, if not greater, consumer abuses exist in other courts. The research shows a pattern of large, national debt collection firms moving away …

Computable Contracts, Harry Surden

Publications

This Article explains how and why firms are representing certain contractual obligations as computer data. The reason is so that computers can read and process the substantive aspects of contractual obligations. The representation of contractual obligations in data instead of (or in addition to) the traditional written language form - what this Article calls "data-oriented contracting" - allows for the application of advanced computer processing abilities to substantive contractual obligations. Certain financial contracts exemplify this model. Equity option contracts are routinely represented not as contract documents written in ordinary language - but as data records intended to be processed by …