- 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]
Posts Tagged ‘Bernard Madoff’
May 26 roundup
- “New Study: U.S. Legal System Is World’s Most Costly” [Daniel Fisher, Ted Frank on Chamber/NERA study]
- “Madoff lawyers collect $700 million in fees” [CNN Money]
- “How insurance substitutes for regulation” [Omri Ben-Shahar and Kyle Logue, Regulation, PDF]
- On the Founders’ concept of rights as embodied in Declaration of Independence [Ray Hartwell, American Spectator; and thanks for reference to my book Schools for Misrule]
- “A Glass Half Full Look at the Changes in the American Legal Market” [Benjamin Barton, SSRN]
- Oooh, a whole WordPress site devoted to ripe-for-rediscovery social scientist Edward Banfield [Kevin Kosar: Edward C. Banfield, An Online Resource]
- “Q. How does one go from editing an adult magazine to practicing law?” [Susannah Breslin interviews Dan Kapelovitz]
“Devil’s Bargain: Wall Street and the Martin Act”
My new op-ed at the New York Post looks at the history of Spitzer-to-Cuomo-to-Eric Schneiderman prosecutorial overreach and asks: how exactly did the New York Attorney General come to have so much power with so little constraint? (& welcome Instapundit, Real Clear Markets, Timothy Carney/Examiner, CEI readers)
More: I and others have written about the act here and at Point of Law.
Mopping up the Madoff mess
$1.3 billion in fees are headed toward lawyers and consultants [FT via Salmon]
December 20 roundup
- Texas Gov. Rick Perry may urge the state to take a step toward loser-pays [NJLRA]
- “FCC push to regulate news draws fire” [The Hill]
- Could litigation on behalf of Madoff victims get more than all their money back? [Salmon, more, NYT, Above the Law]
- “Chevron Says Documents Show Ecuador Plaintiffs Worked With Government” [Dan Fisher/Forbes, more]
- Organized trial lawyers expect to fare less well in next Congress, but prospects for actual liability reform remain slender [Joseph Weber/Wash. Times, Matthew Boyle/Daily Caller]
- Mount Laurel rulings in New Jersey (towns given quotas to build low-income housing) described as “libertarian”, I express doubts [Hills, Prawfsblawg]
- Criminal law’s revolving door: “prosecutors turn up the fire and then sell extinguishers” [Ribstein, TotM]
- The wages of unconstitutionality: a Utah attorney’s curious fee niche [five years ago on Overlawyered]
Claim: Goldman Sachs should have insisted he give them his money
Business Insider and the NYLJ have details.
March 2 roundup
- “Trial Lawyers vs. Toyota” [Holman Jenkins, Jr./WSJ] Rep. Towns’s hearing didn’t even pretend to be other than showcase for trial bar [Wood, PoL; Henry Payne coverage in National Review here, here, here, and here] And make way for the inevitable investor suits [Daily Breeze]
- “Obama open to curbing medical malpractice suits” [AP/WaPo] Related: The Hill; advice from Newsweek’s Evan Thomas [Jim Pinkerton]
- Why doesn’t the Securities and Exchange Commission hire finance people? “They’re overlawyered. They’re poisoned by lawyers.” [Harry Markopolos interviewed by Deborah Solomon, N.Y. Times]
- “Plaintiffs Lawyer’s ‘Reptile’ Strategy Bites Back” [Fulton County Daily Report] Plus: Max Kennerly wonders why it was admitted into evidence;
- “Facebook plus divorce equals flammable situation” [Tampa Bay Online]
- Officials get wined, dined and more: “Paying public pensions to sue” [Forbes]
- Parents sue many defendants in Colorado ice cream shop crash [Denver Post]
- Called for jury duty yesterday, and Tweeting the results: arts critic/biographer Terry Teachout and conservative writer Michelle Malkin.
Unpersuasive claims of victimhood dept.
“Madoff’s Accountant Acknowledges Guilt, Casts Himself as Victim” [NLJ]
“Golden receivers”
Fees for receivers, administrators and other professionals are eating up too much of the remaining assets of Madoff and other collapsed investment ventures, critics charge: “in one recent $6.6 million fraud, the receiver distributed 43 percent of the assets to the victim — the rest went to professionals.” [NY Post]
“Plaintiff’s lawyer talks to Madoff in prison”
The mega-fraudster has turned down innumerable interview requests from others, and was not as forthcoming with prosecutors as they might have liked either, but apparently had a cordial and productive chat Tuesday with high-profile San Francisco plaintiff’s lawyer Joseph Cotchett, who pronounced the scoundrel “an absolute gentleman” and said he “answered every single question”. [Amir Efrati, WSJ Law Blog]