Showing archive for: “Financial Regulation”
Conglomerate forum on Dodd-Frank
It’s up. Here’s my first post (hint, it’s not favorable).
The SEC’s strike suit
The SEC is heralding the $550 million settlement in its suit against Goldman as “the largest penalty ever assessed against a financial services firm in the history of the SEC,” and “a stark lesson to Wall Street firms that no product is too complex, and no investor too sophisticated, to avoid a heavy price if ... The SEC’s strike suit
A “Plain Vanilla” Proposal for Behavioral Law and Economics
I’ve been, for some time, a behavioral law and economics skeptic. Sometimes this position is confused with skepticism about behavioral economics, as in — believing that behavioral economics itself offers nothing useful to economic science or is illegitimate in some way. That’s not true. Now, I have some qualms about the explanatory power of some ... A “Plain Vanilla” Proposal for Behavioral Law and Economics
Fin Reg and Too Big to Fail: A New Kind of Antitrust?
Simon Johnson argues that the conventional antitrust tools of Sherman Act are outdated and ill-equipped to deal with the power of big banks: Why are these antitrust tools not used against today’s megabanks, which have become so powerful that they can sway legislation and regulation massively in their favor, while also receiving generous taxpayer-financed bailouts ... Fin Reg and Too Big to Fail: A New Kind of Antitrust?
Nudging Antitrust? Commissioner Rosch’s Weak Case for “Behavioral Antitrust” (Part 1)
Increasingly, the notion that updating antitrust policy with the insights of behavioral economics would significantly improve matters for consumers. Others have called for more major surgery, favoring an outright rejection of the current economic foundation of antitrust policy — and especially the portions of the foundation “Made in Chicago” — in favor of a new ... Nudging Antitrust? Commissioner Rosch’s Weak Case for “Behavioral Antitrust” (Part 1)
This week’s Forbes.com column: financial reform
Light holiday blogging, and this week I’m on the road. But I did have time to blast Dodd-Frank on Forbes.com.
Who Will Run the New CFPB and How Will They Run It?
The new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is right around the corner Talk has now turned to who might run the powerful agency and what it might do. The WSJ names names: Democratic leaders in Congress say their top pick for the post is Elizabeth Warren, the high-profile Harvard law professor and an outspoken critic of ... Who Will Run the New CFPB and How Will They Run It?
Judge Posner on Financial Reform and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
Judge Posner offers his thoughts on financial reform, mostly negative, at Bloomberg. The thrust of the essay is that the financial regulation produced by the political process has, at best, a poor nexus to the actual causes of the economic crisis, and that what we are left with is primary reorganization and reshuffling to look ... Judge Posner on Financial Reform and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
Antitrust at George Mason
Danny Sokol has posted the most downloaded antitrust law professors. I come in 4th behind Damien Geradin, David Evans, and Herb Hovenkamp. It is flattering to be in company like that by any measure. Cool. But, as Danny points out, what is even cooler is that George Mason is one of only a handful of ... Antitrust at George Mason
Carried interest and Swiss cheese
When I last wrote on the carried interest debate I commented on the NYT’s Andrew Sorkin’s support for characterizing private equity managers’ carried interest as ordinary income rather than capital gains. This is supposed to be a simple change that cuts fat cat fund managers down to size and fairly distinguishes what is essentially compensation ... Carried interest and Swiss cheese
Clawbacks
Dennis Berman, writing in yesterday’s WSJ, discussed the SEC’s case against Maynard Jenkins, former ceo of CSK, to return $4.1 million in stock option grants because accounting fraud, in which Jenkins was not involved, allegedly inflated the returns the grants were based on. This is the SEC’s first attempt to enforce SOX Section 304 against ... Clawbacks
Federalizing proxy access: the SEC vs. Congress and the states
Lucian Bebchuk objects to efforts in the financial regulatory conference committee to “gut proxy access” by imposing a 5% share ownership threshold requirement for access: He says: Hard-wiring such an ownership threshold in the financial regulatory bill would be a significant setback for shareholders and corporate governance reform. While shareholder power to elect new directors ... Federalizing proxy access: the SEC vs. Congress and the states
