Posts Tagged ‘banks’

“Join us in a civil litigation against a well-known Bank…”

The things you find on Craigslist (via Gregory Angelo):

Join us in a civil litigation against a well-known Bank on behalf of o (Midtown)

Join us in a civil litigation against a well-known Bank on behalf of over a dozen Clients!

Bringing suit against a well-known bank who constantly fails to provide fair and timely services to their customers not only brings excitement and glory to your litigation career, but also benefits both parties.

Extraordinarily experienced litigators familiar with banking laws and settlement negotiations are greatly welcomed to join us to fight for dozens of clients on contingency basis.

If interested, please send your resume and cover letter to : [redacted]

Principals only. Recruiters, please don’t contact this job poster.
do NOT contact us with unsolicited services or offers

On the other hand, this one (“a lawyer is needed to take a case to the united states supreme court. … appeal was declined on 3/27/14”) is kind of sad. It seems unlikely that many Supreme Court advocates sift through Craigslist to find cases, but I guess it only takes one.

Filed under: banks, Craigslist, Supreme Court

Banking and finance roundup

Furor grows over Obama administration’s Operation Chokepoint program chilling bank access for legal but disfavored groups [Iain Murray, Elizabeth Nolan Brown, FDIC list (not just payday lenders but also lawful purveyors of pills, guns, ammunition, and much more), Hans Bader] Parallel, though not happening under same program: JP Morgan abruptly closes accounts of former Colombia finance minister who is a renowned international economist, apparently because he made it onto a list of diplomats and other “politically exposed persons” statistically associated with legal risks and high compliance costs [Business Insider] Update via Nolan followup: Dana Liebelson at Mother Jones quotes anonymous bank officials as claiming that some account closures are wrongly being attributed to the program, but even in defending it concedes that should banks opt for continuing to service clients in disfavored lines of business they will shoulder distinctive (maybe decisive) compliance costs from “manag[ing] these relationships and risks,” engaging in due diligence, etc. Also, lawmakers like Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) back the program; besides, this isn’t “the first time that feds have asked banks to keep an eye on their customers” since the Know Your Customer program goes back some years. So that’s comforting!
“Court: Standard & Poor’s is entitled to discovery supporting its ‘selective prosecution’ claim” [Volokh, earlier here and here]
“Plaintiff? Is That Really Necessary In A Class Action?” [Daniel Fisher on ZymoGenetics case]
Backed by hedge fund, lawyers exploit anti-terror law to squeeze global banks [Norman Lamont, New York Post]
“CEO facial masculinity predicts firm’s likelihood of being subject to SEC enforcement action” [Jia, Van Lent, and Zeng, SSRN via @brucecarton]
“Reflections on High Frequency Trading” [Robert Levy, Cato]
Banks finally lay to rest long-running litigation under Missouri second-mortgage law (MSMLA), though only after one Kansas City law firm ran up more than $600 million in settlements [Litigation Daily]

Filed under: banks, Missouri, mortgages, Operation Choke Point, Securities and Exchange Commission, terrorism, Wall Street

Intellectual property roundup

Federal judge invalidates two patents Intellectual Ventures had used to sue banks [Ars Technica]
Is there an actual debate over the economic effects of stronger vs. weaker IP protection, or are people talking past each other? [Simon Lester, Cato]
“Teller Wins Lawsuit Over Copied Magic Trick Performance” [Hollywood Reporter] Custom, informal law enforce joke “property” among comedians [McGraw/Warner, Slate]
I read the news today, oh boy/ And now I have to pay a license fee/ [ABA Journal on actions against song lyrics sites; earlier here and here; h/t for joke to Rogers T.]
“Paper” town, placed by cartographer on map to foil plagiarism, springs into real life [Now I Know]
Unsuccessful courtroom demand for access to list of donors to “Save Podcasting Campaign” [EFF]
Idea of giving people copyright in their faces (as against facial-recognition systems) “has two demerits: it is unconstitutional, and it is insane. Otherwise, it seems fine.” [Info/Law via @petewarden]

Filed under: banks, copyright, patent litigation, patent trolls

Radley Balko on structuring/”smurfing” laws

I’m a little late in getting to this, but last month Radley Balko wrote the definitive blog post on the appalling state of federal bank structuring law, which makes it a felony to arrange bank transactions in quantities of less than $10,000 so as to avoid reporting requirements that kick in at that threshold. He hits virtually every point we’ve made in this space over the past couple of years, including the trend toward “freestanding” structuring prosecutions not arising from any underlying criminal activity, the close connection to forfeiture law, the enlistment of banks as a covert surveillance/informant network not disclosed as such to customers, Congress’s removal of willfulness as a condition of the offense, the unusual concentration of cases coming out of the state of Maryland, the white-knight role played of late by the public-interest law firm Institute for Justice, and of course the jarringly atypical leniency extended to the most famous structurer of all, New York’s Eliot Spitzer.

The immediate news event that prompted the coverage, summarized by Eugene Volokh: a Seventh Circuit decision, in U.S. v. Abair, reversing and remanding for retrial the conviction of an Indiana woman convicted for withdrawing her own money from her bank in violation of the statute so as to finance her purchase of a house; the government took the house from her in forfeiture.

Filed under: banks, forfeiture

Banking and finance roundup

Divided D.C. Circuit panel partially overturns SEC conflict minerals law [Bainbridge, more, more, Adler, earlier]
Dodd-Frank vs. small banks, cont’d [Todd Zywicki]
A failing grade for new Financial Stability Oversight Council? [Louise Bennetts, Cato; Peter Wallison, AEI, on Prudential SIFI designation]
Regulators’ “choke hold” effort to throttle online payday lending draws protests [Kevin Funnell, more, yet more]
Securities litigation after Amgen: time to reassess the fraud on the market presumption [Richard Epstein, Cato Regulation mag (PDF)]
House hearing on allegations of employee retaliation at CFPB [Free Beacon, Funnell, more]
“How To Destroy The Stock Market In 8 Steps,” series of Marc Andreessen tweets [Business Insider] “The Growing Executive Compensation Advantage of Private Versus Public Companies” [Marc Hodak]

Filed under: banks, Crisis of 2008, Securities and Exchange Commission, securities litigation, Wall Street

Banking and finance roundup

Loan servicers prepare to throw large sums at making “forced placed insurance” class actions go away [Kevin Funnell]
How Are Small Banks Faring Under Dodd-Frank?
[Hester Peirce, Ian Robinson, Thomas Stratmann, Mercatus]
“How the Feds Can Take Even Legally Earned Bitcoins” [Peter Coy, Business Week]
“No Shame Dept.: Lawyers Sue Over Practically Every Merger, Again” [Daniel Fisher]
Brewster Kahle on Know Your Customer: “‘Bank Secrecy Act’ I suggest is a misnomer– it is more accurately the ‘Bank Surveillance Act'” [Kahle.org, earlier here, here, etc.]
SEC to [over-]regulate business brokers under Dodd-Frank? [David Burton, Heritage]
“Lawyer: How I Committed Insider Trading” [Bloomberg Law video via Prof. Bainbridge]
“The Federal Reserve at 100” [Cato Unbound; Gerald O’Driscoll, Lawrence White, Scott Sumner, Jerry Jordan]

Filed under: banks, Dodd-Frank, Securities and Exchange Commission, securities litigation

Financial and banking roundup

Following vindication, Mark Cuban begins transcribing transcripts of other SEC trials on his blog [Blog Maverick, background] “Why Settling With The SEC Can Be Worse Than Losing At Trial” [John J. Carney, David Choi and Francesca Harker]
Congress needs to investigate whether administration browbeat Standard & Poor’s over sovereign debt rating [John McGinnis]
As regs squeeze banks out of small business lending, will we like non-bank alternatives as well? [John Cochrane] More: Kevin Funnell;
Cash business can’t bank its proceeds: “Robber gangs terrorize Colorado pot shops” [NBC News]
“Will Plaintiff Lawyers Cut Down On The Choices In Your 401(k)?” [Daniel Fisher]
Does Delaware have an incentive to keep securities lawyers happy with big fees? [Bainbridge]
“It’s Time To Grill the Federal Reserve About Bitcoin” [Ira Stoll]

Filed under: banks, Delaware, Securities and Exchange Commission, securities litigation

Banning businesses without banning them

By cutting off their access to the banking system.

Filed under: banks, Operation Choke Point, regulation and its reform

Privacy and financial roundup

Harassing Google executives at their homes: what better way to show you truly care about privacy? [Ars Technica]
Feds arrest Bitcoin executive on charges of “money laundering” and running an unlicensed cash transmission service, latest of what looks very much like a series [Reason, Rob Wile/Business Insider, earlier on Bitcoin]
Know (and babysit) your customers: “HSBC imposes restrictions on large cash withdrawals,” then backs off [BBC, earlier on KYC as outgrowth of money-laundering law]
“Banks say no to marijuana money, legal or not” [NY Times]
Randy Maniloff on the Target data breach and the example of the T.J. Maxx case [Coverage Opinions and more on class actions] “Swipe fee” price controls don’t help in allocating the costs of response and prevention for card data breaches [John Berlau, CEI “Open Market”] and
“Financial Disclosures as Regulation” panel video, part of Vermont Law School symposium “The Disclosure Debates” that I participated in last fall; participants include Tennessee lawprof Joan Heminway and moderator Jennifer Taub [YouTube]

Filed under: banks, Bay Area, Google, privacy

Banking and finance roundup

Still money left in that piggy bank: Justice Department shakes $1.7 billion out of J.P. Morgan because its custody wing kept handling a primary Bernie Madoff account while a distant equity desk grew suspicious of him, in what “looks a bit like a tax on bigness and integration” [Matt Levine, Bloomberg; NPR].
Legacy of TARP one of cronyism and lawlessness [Mark Calabria, USA Today]
NYT assails a couple of academics as mouthpieces for Wall Street, Felix Salmon has a bit to say about that [Reuters, EconBrowser, Bainbridge, Pirrong] Daniel Fisher on a possible tie-in with Times reporter David Kocieniewski’s earlier piece flaying Goldman Sachs over aluminum warehousing [Forbes]
“Court Receptive to Overturning SEC’s Conflict Minerals Disclosure Rule” [Fed Soc Blog]
“Target Breach — Are Dodd-Frank ‘Swipe Fee’ Price Controls to Blame?” [John Berlau, CEI “Open Market”] “Volcker Rule Overshoots Wall Street to Hit Utah” [same]
“CFPB and Disparate Impact” [Hester Peirce, Point of Law]
“It might cost you $39K to crowdfund $100K under the SEC’s new rules” [Sherwood Neiss, VentureBeat via @jerrybrito]
Here’s a novel proposal for corporate governance: use the rules agreed upon by the original parties to the transaction [Hodak]

Filed under: banks, Bernard Madoff, corporate governance, disparate impact, Dodd-Frank, expert witnesses, New York Times, Securities and Exchange Commission, TARP