Law and Economics Commons^™

Revolution In Manipulation Law: The New Cftc Rules And The Urgent Need For Economic And Empirical Analyses, Rosa M. Abrantes-Metz, Gabriel V. Rauterberg, Andrew Verstein

Articles

Three major banks have now admitted that their employees manipulated worldwide interest rates through the London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor), the most widely used interest rate index. Libor is the interest rate term for trillions of dollars of swaps and loans, and its manipulation may have been used to extract billions of dollars. These allegations come just as commodities manipulation law has been dramatically reformed and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) given vast new regulatory powers. This Article provides the first extended, scholarly analysis of the CFTC’s new anti-manipulation rules. We consider the difficulty the rules address: Commodities manipulation …

Index Theory: The Law, Promise And Failure Of Financial Indices, Gabriel V. Rauterberg, Andrew Verstein

Articles

Financial indices, like the S&P 500 or the Consumer Price Index, have become a ubiquitous feature of our financial markets. One index, the London InterBank Offered Rate (“Libor”), may be the world’s most important number, an interest rate benchmark upon which hundreds of trillions of dollars depend. Yet, almost everyday new revelations emerge that Libor was tampered with during the height of the financial crisis by one or many of the world’s most prominent banks, with billions of dollars potentially misappropriated. This index disruption has attracted tremendous interest from regulators, private litigants, and market observers. Despite their importance, however, financial …

Veil-Piercing Unbound, Peter B. Oh

Articles

Veil-piercing is an equitable remedy. This simple insight has been lost over time. What started as a means for corporate creditors to reach into the personal assets of a shareholder has devolved into a doctrinal black hole. Courts apply an expansive list of amorphous factors, attenuated from the underlying harm, that engenders under-inclusive, unprincipled, and unpredictable results for entrepreneurs, litigants, and scholars alike.

Veil-piercing is misapplied because it is misconceived. The orthodox approach is to view veil-piercing as an exception to limited liability that is justified potentially only when the latter is not, a path that invariably leads to examining …

Assessing Transnational Private Regulation Of The Otc Derivatives Market: Isda, The Bba, And The Future Of Financial Reform, Gabriel V. Rauterberg, Andrew Verstein

Articles

For the last twenty years, the dominant narrative of the over-the-counter derivatives market has been one of absent regulation, deregulation, and regulatory conflict, predictably resulting in disaster. This Article challenges this narrative, arguing that the global derivatives market has been subject to pervasive and harmonized regulation by what should be recognized as transnational private regulators. Recognizing the reality of widespread transnational private regulation of derivatives has significant implications, which this Article explores. Appreciating the actual regulatory status quo is essential if policymakers are to correctly diagnose problems, avoid past regulatory errors, and plan effective remedies. There are also advantages to …