- Per more than 30 state attorneys general, the less information lenders can draw on in credit reports, the better the credit system will work [Annamaria Andriotis, WSJ; exclusion of many tax liens and civil judgments under pressure from authorities]
- Federalist Society podcasts: Ted Frank on Walgreen shareholder litigation, Thaya Brook Knight on “predatory lending” cases before Supreme Court [Bank of America Corp. v. City of Miami and Wells Fargo v. City of Miami; can cities sue under Fair Housing Act as indirectly injured?];
- The eternal recycling of bad old ideas: efforts to bring back public ownership of banks persist [East Bay Express, Oakland; earlier]
- Statutes of limitations protect us from spending life anxious about distant past coming back to haunt us over half-forgotten slights [Ilya Shapiro, Thaya Brook Knight, and David McDonald on Kokesh v. SEC “equitable disgorgement” end-run around 5-year statute]
- Obligatory employee vacation-taking as an anti-fraud measure [Dan Lewis, Now I Know]
- Obama’s hosing of secured creditors in Chrysler bankruptcy raised borrowing costs of other unionized firms [Bradley Blaylock, Alexander Edwards, and Jared Stanfield, SSRN]
Posts Tagged ‘banks’
Why do people use check-cashing stores?
Policy elites tend to sniff at check-cashing stores as seedy and exploitative. So Penn professor Lisa Servon went to work at one in the South Bronx for four months. Here’s what she learned. [Business Insider via David Henderson; Servon’s website and new book]
Banking and finance roundup
- Judge Neil Gorsuch on securities litigation and related issues of agency deference [Paul Weiss attorneys at D & O Diary]
- New York attorney general’s office pursued Hank Greenberg for years, wound up settling for $9 million and this lousy t-shirt [WSJ editorial]
- Exit tax and FATCA: “America charges $2,350 to hand in your passport, a fee that is more than twenty times the average of other high-income countries.” [Robert Wood, Forbes]
- “Overgrown Wall Street regulation needs a trim in 2017” [Thaya Brook Knight, The Hill] Last-minute Obama regs encourage shareholder activism [Stephen Bainbridge]
- Organized push to restrict use of cash includes some idealists, some economists, quite a few tax- or rent-seekers [Lawrence White/Cato, David Henderson (did USAID push India?), Stephen Williamson via Henderson]
- U.S. regulatory environment threatens the rise of fintech [Nikolai Kuznetsov, TechCrunch]
Banking and finance roundup
- John Cochrane and Stephen Bainbridge on Dodd-Frank reform in a new administration;
- Gift of insider information to friends or family is insider trading, rules SCOTUS in Salman v. U.S. [Thaya Brook Knight, Bainbridge, WLF, Ira Stoll; earlier]
- Five state legislatures (California, Oregon, Illinois, Maryland, and Connecticut) now push private employers to enlist employees in state retirement plans. Caution needed [Vimbai Chikomo, AMI Newswire, SIFMA, NAIFA, Bloomberg in August on new rules; earlier here and here]
- “The Repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act: Myth and Reality” [new Oonagh McDonald Cato Policy Analysis, Mark Calabria]
- Federalist Society podcast with Jason Johnston and Thaddeus King on class actions in consumer finance agreements;
- More on why de novo bank starts have become so uncommon [Kevin Funnell]
Banking and finance roundup
- Bank of England deputy governor: banks have incurred an estimated $275 billion in legal costs since 2008 and that’s been a drag on economic growth [Katy Burne and Aruna Viswanatha, WSJ]
- Economist Ken Rogoff proposes doing away with most large-denomination paper money so as to stifle crime, tax evasion and the like, and George Selgin of Cato pushes back;
- “M&A Lawsuits Plunge As Delaware Judges Make Them Harder To Settle” [Daniel Fisher]
- CFPB keeps pushing to expand its authority, but on lending rate caps it runs into a direct statutory limit [Thaya Brook Knight]
- House Financial Services Committee votes to repeal the awful conflict minerals rule [Marcia Narine via Bainbridge and more, earlier] And maybe the rest of Dodd-Frank too? [Mark Calabria]
- How the Swiss–American Chamber of Commerce sees FATCA, the overseas banking law vexing expats and legitimate business overseas [American Swiss Foundation]
Discrimination law roundup
- Prof. Sam Estreicher proposes safe-harbor rule to overcome disincentives to hiring of costly or risky job seekers [SSRN via Workplace Prof]
- “Muslim flight attendant for ExpressJet suspended, wouldn’t serve alcohol” [Detroit Free Press, earlier]
- Profile of lawyer Joel Liberson, who’s talked many cities into suing banks for big bucks under Fair Housing Act [WSJ]
- “Did the 7th Circuit finally kill McDonnell-Douglas?” [Jon Hyman on “burden-shifting” evidentiary framework in employment discrimination law]
- U.S. Commission on Civil Rights believes law should defer to religious conscience claims “only to the extent that they do not unduly burden” bans on discrimination [Stephanie Slade, Reason; report with nonpartisan sections written by Lenore Ostrowsky] Anti-discrimination laws as applied to private actors restrict liberty and sometimes force conscience [David Harsanyi, The Federalist] “Massachusetts: Churches may be covered by transgender discrimination bans, as to ‘secular events'” [Volokh]
- “Unfair ‘Fair Housing’: The new Obama administration policy to ‘deconcentrate’ poverty is a threat to communities” [Howard Husock, City Journal; Kurtz, NRO]
Banking and finance roundup
- Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) estimates its new anti-arbitration rule will generate 1,200 more class actions a year [Daniel Fisher, Joshua Davey/McGuire Woods, CEI comments]
- Denial: Treasury officials are at pains to deny that federal money-laundering rules are cutting off access to legitimate customers [Emily Glazer and Aruna Viswanatha, WSJ]
- State management of private pensions, to CALPERS’s benefit? “California Politicians Want Your Nest Egg” [James Freeman, WSJ]
- In designating MetLife “systematically important” to nation’s financial stability, federal regulators glossed over questions they should have had to confront [Thaya Brook Knight and Ilya Shapiro on Cato amicus brief]
- “How the UK prime minister’s corporate boardroom reforms hurt Britain” [J.W. Verret, The Hill via Prof. Bainbridge]
- New CFPB debt collection rules will encourage consumers to avoid paying what they owe [Ronald Rubin, Weekly Standard]
September 14 roundup
- “Conviction Overturned In Case Of Rutgers Student Whose Roommate Committed Suicide After Being Secretly Filmed” [Mike Masnick, TechDirt; earlier on Dharun Ravi and the Tyler Clementi case generally]
- Report from Denver: “Threat of Lawsuits Crimps Condo Developments” [Chris Kirkham, WSJ]
- “California bans Civil War painting from county fair because it shows Confederate flag. Artist now suing the state.” [Jacob Gershman, WSJ Law Blog; Ken White, Popehat]
- Don’t make housing discrimination law a money tree for municipal government plaintiffs [Thaya Brook Knight and Ilya Shapiro on Cato amicus brief in Supreme Court case of Bank of America v. City of Miami; earlier on municipal suits against banks here, here, here, etc.]
- Federal court: bus company not responsible for what happened to its passenger after she alit in D.C.’s Union Station [Reyen v. Jones Lang Lasalle and Megabus]
- Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and eight GOP colleagues co-sponsor bill to transfer $490 million to United Mine Workers pension fund [Diana Furchtgott-Roth, WSJ]
George Will on settlement slush funds
George Will’s new column is on settlement slush funds, a favorite topic around here. A Wall Street Journal op-ed the other day by Andy Koenig observed that tens of millions of dollars from settlements with big banks by the Obama Department of Justice and New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman are being directed to liberal political groups allied with Obama and Schneiderman, rather than to customers or taxpayers. Earlier here, here, here, here, here, etc.
Banking and finance roundup
- Wells Fargo declines to serve firm that sells knives online, which might relate to a “mass de-risking” trend that followed Operation Choke Point [Kelsey Harkness/Daily Signal, H. Clay Aalders/The Truth About Knives]
- “Time For Securities Lawyers To Stand Behind Their `Confidential Witnesses'” [Lyle Roberts via Daniel Fisher]
- Attractions of English law may help London retain luster as financial center post-Brexit [Jon Sindreu, WSJ]
- “Hillary Clinton’s ‘Exit Tax’ Is an Unseemly Example of Banana Republic Economics” [Daniel Mitchell, related earlier] Three good ideas from Clinton’s small business tax plan [Scott Greenberg, Tax Foundation]
- Lawyers file class actions against Yale, Harvard, MIT, many other universities, objecting to excessive fees on retirement fund investments [Ira Stoll, Future of Capitalism; Benjamin Edwards, PrawfsBlawg]
- “White House climate disclosure plan is major executive overreach.” [Ray Lehmann, R Street Institute]