Banking and Finance Law Commons^™

Shining A Light On The Federal Reserve’S Foreign Affairs, Peter Conti-Brown, David T. Zaring

Penn Wharton Public Policy Initiative

Throughout its history, the U.S. Federal Reserve has engaged in international diplomacy, outside the bounds of (and sometimes in conflict with) the priorities of the White House and U.S. State Department. In directing monetary policy, the Fed’s primary concern is to benefit the U.S. economy. In the process, the Fed at times acts in concert with foreign central banks, as was the case in setting new bank regulations after the 2008 financial crisis. At other times, the Fed acts in ways that other countries view as detrimental to their economic interests. Either way, the Fed operates ...

Gorsuch's Purgatory: Attempting To Define Debt Collector Under The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, Matthew Haan

Georgia State University Law Review

Part I of this Note provides background on the FDCPA and the federal agencies charged with its enforcement. Part I also provides background on judicial analysis of the FDCPA before Henson v. Santander and explains the nature of the Supreme Court’s decision. Part II analyzes the ramifications of Henson v. Santander for debtors and debt purchasers. Part II also analyzes how the Supreme Court’s decision can affect the CFPB. Part III proposes and discusses a three-tiered solution that involves congressional and CFPB action and discusses what would happen if Congress and the CFPB left the solution up to ...

Making Consumer Finance Work, Natasha Sarin

Faculty Scholarship at Penn Law

The financial crisis exposed major faultlines in banking and financial markets more broadly. Policymakers responded with far-reaching regulation that created a new agency—the CFPB—and changed the structure and function of these markets.

Consumer advocates cheered reforms as welfare-enhancing, while the financial sector declared that consumers would be harmed by interventions. With a decade of data now available, this Article presents the first empirical examination of the successes and failures of the consumer finance reform agenda. Specifically, I marshal data from every zip code and bank in the United States to test the efficacy of three of the most ...

The Impact Of The Durbin Amendment On Banks, Merchants, And Consumers, Vladimir Mukharlyamov, Natasha Sarin

Faculty Scholarship at Penn Law

After the Great Recession, new regulatory interventions were introduced to protect consumers and reduce the costs of financial products. Some voiced concern that direct price regulation was unlikely to help consumers, because banks offset losses in one domain by increasing the prices that they charge consumers for other products. This paper studies this issue using the Durbin Amendment, which decreased the interchange fees that banks are allowed to charge merchants for processing debit transactions. Merchant interchange fees, previously averaging 2 percent of transaction value, were capped at $0.22, decreasing bank revenue by $6.5 billion annually. The objective of ...

Exploring The Legal Issues Of Blockchain Applications, Nathan Fulmer

Akron Law Review

A decade ago, blockchain technology made its mainstream debut with the introduction of Bitcoin, a cryptocurrency that has generated a lot of buzz in the financial sector. Blockchain’s elegantly simple way of securely and reliably recording data gives the technology the power to disrupt multiple industries. Cryptocurrencies and smart contracts are blockchain’s most common applications, but it can be implemented in a variety of ways.

This article examines blockchain’s core characteristics and mechanics as they apply to its common applications like cryptocurrency and smart contracts, as well as other transactional uses. The author presents some of the ...

How Bitcoin Functions As Property Law, Eric D. Chason

Faculty Publications

Bitcoin replicates many of the formal aspects of real estate transactions. Bitcoin transactions have features that closely resemble grantor names, grantee names, legal descriptions, and signatures found in real property deeds. While these “Bitcoin deeds” may be interesting, they are not profound. Bitcoin goes beyond creating simple digital deeds, however, and replicates important institutional aspects of real estate transactions, in particular recordation and title assurance. Deeds to real property are recorded in a central repository (e.g., the public records office), which the parties (and the public) can search to determine title. When one grantor executes more than one deed ...

Beyond Bankruptcy: Resolution As A Macroprudential Regulatory Tool, Steven L. Schwarcz

Notre Dame Law Review

Postcrisis efforts to extend bankruptcy-resolution techniques to protect the stability of the financial system have been insufficient, in part because regulators have been conflating bankruptcy’s traditional goals of resolving troubled firms individually with the need to resolve critical elements of the financial system to ensure its continued operation as a “system.” This requires resolving troubled firms collectively, as well as resolving securities-trading markets and the infrastructure that serves to facilitate that trading. The Article examines how to design that regulation, differentiating three approaches: reactive regulation, which comprises variations on traditional bankruptcy; proactive regulation, which consists of preplanned enhancements that ...

The Near Impossibility Of Pleading Falsity Of Opinion Statements Under Section 10(B) Of The Securities Exchange Act And Rule 10b-5, J. Cooper Davis

Oklahoma Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Promised Land Is On The Horizon: The Fix Crowdfunding Act Will Implement Small Changes That Could Make A Big Impact On Investors And Businesses Alike, Michaela Smith

The Journal of Business, Entrepreneurship & the Law

No abstract provided.

Implementing A Portable Reciprocity Passport To Crowdfund Real Estate Across Borders, Raymond Tran

The Journal of Business, Entrepreneurship & the Law

No abstract provided.

Failed Anti-Activist Legislation: The Curious Case Of The Brokaw Act, Alon Brav, J.B. Heaton, Jonathan Zandberg

The Journal of Business, Entrepreneurship & the Law

The Brokaw Act was proposed legislation aimed at “financial abuses being carried out by activist hedge funds who promote short-term gains at the expense of long-term growth . . . .” Sponsoring Senators named it after a small town in Wisconsin that, according to the Act’s sponsors, was decimated by the actions of a hedge fund activist in shutting down the local paper mill with a loss of hundreds of jobs. The Brokaw Act represented the first attempt at federal legislation aimed at restricting hedge fund activism. Since then, new and similar bipartisan proposals have appeared as have threats of state regulation. In ...

Recent Developments Concerning The Purchase Of Consumer Debt; Defining Potential Problems And Proposals For Suggested Solutions, Gerald A. Williams

The Journal of Business, Entrepreneurship & the Law

No abstract provided.

Lady Justice Cannot Hear Your Prayers, Deborah Ogali

Fordham Law Review

The Islamic finance industry continues to grow quickly as the appetite for everything, from Sharia-compliant home mortgages and car loans to sophisticated financial products, increases. This growth has triggered an interest in sukuk, bond-like financial instruments. And while the international market for sukuk has long been dominated by foreign issuers and English law, the attraction of a niche market compatible with U.S. federal and international securities laws may propel increased participation by U.S. issuers and investors who wish to transact under U.S. federal and state laws. As with all Islamic financial products, sukuk transactions inherently pose a ...

Comment On 'Error And Regulatory Risk In Financial Institution Regulation', Keith Hylton

Faculty Scholarship

I agree with just about everything Jonathan Macey (2017) says in his symposium contribution. His claim that bureaucratic tendencies toward regularity—specifically, treating like cases alike—generate errors in categorization seems appropriate to me. His explanations of the pathologies in financial regulation should fall in the category of essential or required reading for anyone who chooses to write on the topic. Where I differ from Macey is in the choice of framework, or perspective from which to view the pathologies. Whereas Macey adopts an “error cost” framework, which is clearly appropriate for this symposium, I would build explicitly on a ...

"The Essential Characteristic": Enumerated Powers And The Bank Of The United States, Richard Primus

Michigan Law Review

The idea that Congress can legislate only on the basis of its enumerated powers is an orthodox proposition of constitutional law, one that is generally supposed to have been recognized as essential ever since the Founding. Conventional understandings of several episodes in constitutional history reinforce this proposition. But the reality of many of those events is more complicated. Consider the 1791 debate over creating the Bank of the United States, in which Madison famously argued against the Bank on enumerated-powers grounds. The conventional memory of the Bank episode reinforces the sense that the orthodox view of enumerated powers has been ...

Introduction: Investment Law For The Twenty-First Century, Frank J. Garcia, Sebastián López Escarcena

Boston College Law Review

No abstract provided.

Investment Treaties, Offshore Finance, And The Resource Curse, Karl M.F. Lockhart

Boston College Law Review

Questions of how best to understand offshore financial centers (“OFCs”)—countries that have low or zero tax rates, strong banking secrecy regulation, and easy-to-form legal entities—and what, if anything, the international community should do about them remain fixed on the agenda of national and international discourse. This Essay seeks to provide a new theoretical perspective on tax havens and applies this perspective to the cross-border legal regimes that govern international investment. This new analytical framework sees offshore financial centers as countries that are victims of the “resource curse,” as that term is described in economic development literature. Often physically ...

Reforming International Investment Law: Opportunities, Challenges, Paradigms, Frank J. Garcia, Leo Gargne, Eric De Brabandere, Rachel Denae Thrasher, William Park

Boston College Law Review

Transcription of a panel discussion.

Expansive Disclosure: Regulating Third-Party Funding For Future Analysis And Reform, Rachel Denae Thrasher

Boston College Law Review

Third-party funding (TPF) is a relatively new phenomenon in the field of international investment arbitration. TPF takes place when a non-party to a dispute provides funding to one of the parties (usually the claimant) in return for a percentage of the amount recovered. International investment arbitration is a unique context, however, because investor-states dispute settlement puts States always in the role of respondent and private investors in the role of claimants. Despite this apparent imbalance, TPF proponents argue, among other things, that it provides much needed access to justice for poorer clients and adds value to the system by providing ...

Greening Investor-State Dispute Settlement, Daniel B. Magraw, Sergio Puig

Boston College Law Review

Climate change poses serious threats to human society. Climate change is already affecting our environment and thus, many aspects of human and economic activity. Among the challenges ahead, governments will need to more actively adopt regulatory policies given the international obligations in this area, such as the Paris Agreement, as well as promote green private investment as a means toward unlocking sustainable growth. How can international investment law be adapted and modernized to respond to these challenges? In this Essay, we summarize a comprehensive set of innovations that could be included in International Investment Agreements to address international obligations regarding ...