Dodd-Frank – Overlawyered

March 20 roundup

Walter Olson — Wed, 20 Mar 2019 09:57:09 +0000

Sports betting: best to ignore the leagues’ special pleadings and let federalism work [Patrick Moran, Cato, related podcast]
Everything you thought you knew about corporate personhood in the law is wrong [David Bernstein reviews Adam Winkler’s We the Corporations]
Federal judge John Kane, on lawyer’s filings: “I have described them as prolix, meandering, full of unfounded supposition and speculation, repetitive and convoluted almost to the point of being maddening.” And he’s just getting started [Scott Greenfield]
“Florida Voters Join Chevron Revolt And Strike A Blow Against Judicial Bias” [Mark Chenoweth, Federalist Society Blog] Plus video panel on “The States and Administrative Law” with Nestor Davidson, Chris Green, Miriam Seifter, Hon. Jeffrey Sutton, and Hon. Michael Scudder;
Argument that Congressionally extended extension of copyright on (among other works) Atlas Shrugged violates Ayn Rand’s own ethical code [Edward Sisson]
“More Legislation, More Violence? The Impact of Dodd-Frank in the Democratic Republic of the Congo” [Nik Stroop and Peter van der Windt, Cato; our longstanding coverage of the conflicts mineral fiasco]

Tags: administrative law, copyright, corporate governance, Dodd-Frank, Florida, gambling, lawyers

March 20 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Banking and finance roundup

Walter Olson — Fri, 14 Sep 2018 10:01:19 +0000

Critique of political-spending provisions of Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s proposals on corporate governance [Prof. Bainbridge] Plus, some WSJ letters on her plan [same; earlier here, here, and here]
“The Impact of the Dodd-Frank Act on Small Business” [Michael D. Bordo and John V. Duca, Cato Research Briefs in Economic Policy]
Something to keep in mind in New York Attorney General races: “The Martin Act Gives New York Politicians Way Too Much National Power” [Jeff Patch, Real Clear Markets, and thanks for quotes]
Through its Charities Bureau the New York AG’s office can also make life difficult for private nonprofits of whose ideology it disapproves; Democratic nominee Letitia (Tish) James says she intends to use the power to go after crisis pregnancy centers and NRA [Zach Williams, City And State NY]
Treasury based a list of supposed Russian oligarchs on Forbes mag list of wealthy Russians. Now a 79-year-old laser scientist faces sanctions who’s been a U.S. citizen for 10 years and says he isn’t friendly with Putin [Steven Mufson, Washington Post]
“Why California’s Gender Quota Bill [for corporate boards] Is More Likely To Be Unconstitutional Than California’s Pseudo-Foreign Corporation Statute” [Keith Paul Bishop, California Corporate & Securities Law (Allen Matkins)]

Tags: attorneys general, California, corporate governance, Dodd-Frank, Elizabeth Warren, New York, politics, Russia

Banking and finance roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Banking and finance roundup

Walter Olson — Fri, 03 Aug 2018 10:03:37 +0000

“State-run retirement plans are the wrong way to protect the poor” [Andrew G. Biggs, AEI]
Fifth Circuit panel: Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) “is unconstitutionally structured and violates the separation of powers” [Jonathan Adler] Unconstitutional structure afflicts Consumer Finance Protection Bureau too [Ilya Shapiro on Cato amicus brief in Fifth Circuit case of CFPB v. All American Check Cashing, earlier here, etc.]
Study: financial advisers in Canada who are not subject to fiduciary duty have personal investments similar to their clients [Peter Van Doren]
Regulation can have a lulling effect. Might it even breed financial illiteracy? [Diego Zuluaga, Cato]
“As I predicted, the ratchet effect is going to save Dodd-Frank. Sigh.” [Bainbridge]
“SEC proposes to limit whistleblower awards” [Francine McKenna, MarketWatch]

Tags: CFPB, Dodd-Frank, Securities and Exchange Commission, Wall Street, whistleblowers

Banking and finance roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Banking and finance roundup

Walter Olson — Tue, 05 Jun 2018 09:57:36 +0000

Dodd-Frank “rollback” nips around the edges only [Victoria Guida and Zachary Warmbrodt, Politico, Diego Zuluaga, Cato] Study on law’s impact on small businesses and banks [Michael D. Bordo and John V. Duca, NBER via Tyler Cowen]
“In Defense of Cash: Around the world, governments are trying to kill paper money. It’s a terrible idea.” [William J. Luther, Reason]
U.S. Department of Labor: shareholder resolutions demanding environmental, social, or corporate governance changes can run counter to best interest of investors, and sponsors should not pretend otherwise in weighing fiduciary duty [Ike Brannon, Cato] “Corporate social responsibility” is not politically neutral [Stephen Bainbridge] More: Burchell Wilson, Economics 21;
How to improve the CFPB, assuming that abolishing it isn’t on the agenda [Diego Zuluaga, The Hill]
Lingering federal prohibitions doom state-legal cannabis to the plight of an unbanked industry [documentary screening and video of Cato panel with Matt Wood, Julie A. Hill, John Hudak, Jeffrey Miron, and George Selgin]
“Mortgage Interest Deduction Reform Worked; Sky Isn’t Falling” [Vanessa Brown Calder, Cato]

Tags: CFPB, corporate governance, Dodd-Frank, illegal drugs, mortgages

Banking and finance roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Banking and finance roundup

Walter Olson — Tue, 06 Mar 2018 10:49:03 +0000

SCOTUS by 9-0, Ginsburg writing, agrees with Cato amicus (and disagrees with Sen. Grassley amicus) that Dodd-Frank doesn’t cover “whistleblowers” who never told the SEC [Digital Realty Trust v. Somers: Ilya Shapiro/Harvard Law Review, Joel Nolette/Least Dangerous Blog, earlier]
Claim: “rolling back bank regulations is a good way to trigger a financial meltdown.” How much truth in that? [George Selgin, Cato]
Crosstown hypocrisy: a closer look at the cities who tell judges and bond investors as needed that their infrastructure will or won’t face future destruction owing to climate change [Dan Walters, CalMatters; Jay Newman, Wall Street Journal, earlier]
Mortgage systems in Canada, Germany appear to operate with less risk and lower default rates. Would Americans accept the trade-offs? [Arnold Kling]
Tag-along private suits following regulatory action, familiar in US courts, now crop up in Australia [Kevin LaCroix]
Regrettable Lovenheim ruling turned liberal shareholder groups into boardroom players [Prof. Bainbridge] The law of corporate social responsibility and shareholder accountability [same]

Tags: Australia, banks, climate change, corporate governance, Dodd-Frank, mortgages, securities litigation, whistleblowers

Banking and finance roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Banking and finance roundup

Walter Olson — Mon, 13 Nov 2017 11:03:58 +0000

New research suggests “SEC rule intended to prevent conflicts of interest among staff has actually had the perverse effect of causing staff to profit from their knowledge as insiders of the SEC” [Thaya Brook Knight, Cato]
“Federal Prohibition Left California Cannabis Farmers Without Insurance or Banks When Wildfires Struck” [Christian Britschgi]
“Is Dodd-Frank/SOX reform dead?” [Stephen Bainbridge]
Trial lawyers and CFPB did little to correct Wells Fargo fake-account scandal [Ted Frank WSJ letter]
Study finds that more-cumbersome judicial foreclosure methods tend to correlate with tougher lending standards especially for poor; should constriction of home credit for poorer households be interpreted as a good? [Brian Feinstein, Chicago via CL&P]
A different way to encourage more prudent home lending practice, scale back FDIC coverage [Scott Sumner]

Tags: banks, Dodd-Frank, mortgages, Securities and Exchange Commission

Banking and finance roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Time to revisit the Chevron stretch

Walter Olson — Sat, 04 Nov 2017 13:58:11 +0000

A case called Digital Realty Trust v. Somers gives the Supreme Court a chance to rein in a particularly inappropriate use of the Chevron doctrine, under which courts give deference to agencies’ interpretations of law [Ilya Shapiro, Harvard Law Review blog]

The last few years have of course seen renewed attention — academic, judicial, and journalistic — to the question of whether courts have become altogether too deferential to executive agencies. While Chevron deference (and its cousins, Auer and Seminole Rock deference) was originally justified as a necessary tool for preventing courts from unduly meddling in administrative decisionmaking, hasn’t the pendulum swung too far?…

As the Supreme Court explained in Long Island Care at Home, Ltd. v. Coke in 2007, the APA [Administrative Procedure Act] requires an agency conducting notice-and-comment rulemaking to provide the public with “fair notice” of what will be, or might be, included in its final regulation. Yet there was nothing in the [Securities and Exchange Commission’s Notice of Proposed Rulemaking] that would have given any notice to the public that it was going to change whom Dodd-Frank would protect from retaliation.

Just last year, the Court reaffirmed in Encino Motorcars, LLC v. Navarro that procedurally deficient rules that violate the APA do not receive Chevron deference because they lack the “force of law.” The SEC regulation here was procedurally deficient because of the final rule’s fair-notice problem, so it shouldn’t qualify for Chevron.

More on the Somers case and Cato’s amicus brief: Trevor Burrus and Frank Garrison.

Tags: administrative law, Dodd-Frank, retaliation, Securities and Exchange Commission, Supreme Court

Time to revisit the Chevron stretch is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Banking and finance roundup

Walter Olson — Mon, 12 Jun 2017 04:05:58 +0000

What’s actually in the new House-passed bill revamping Dodd-Frank? And what’s likely to happen to it in the Senate? [David Henderson, EconLib; Benjamin Parker, Weekly Standard; Stephen Bainbridge]
Supreme Court, 9-0, rebuffs SEC: yes, disgorgement is a penalty and statute of limitations applies to it [Theresa Gabaldon/SCOTUSBlog (statutes of limitations “vital to the welfare of society,” per Sotomayor), Bainbridge and more, Thaya Brook Knight and Ilya Shapiro/Cato]
Allan Meltzer, R.I.P. [James Dorn, Gerald O’Driscoll, Ian Vásquez, Cato]
“The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and the New Trump Administration: Your Top Ten Questions Answered” [Foley & Lardner]
June 15, mark your calendar: “Financial Crisis and Reform: Have We Done Enough to Fix the Government-Sponsored Entities?” with John Allison, Susan Wharton Gates, R. Christopher Whalen, Landon Parsons, and Ike Brannon, Cato event streaming live or in person in Washington, D.C.;
Why, yes: “Is It Time to Repeal FATCA?” [Veronique de Rugy, more]

Tags: Dodd-Frank, FATCA, Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, Securities and Exchange Commission, statutes of limitations, Supreme Court

Banking and finance roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Banking and finance roundup

Walter Olson — Fri, 14 Apr 2017 10:01:43 +0000

“The real-world impact of Dodd-Frank, stress tests and other regs” [M&T Bank slideshow, American Banker] “Six feet of new mortgage regulations help explain slower housing market” [Ira Stoll]
Will Trump administration allow banking for cannabis-related businesses? [Kevin Funnell]
“‘Sustainability Standards’ Open A Pandora’s Box Of Politically Correct Accounting” [Howard Husock and Jim Copland]
An assumption of complete transparency would take away “the reason for financial intermediation in the first place” [Arnold Kling]
Statutes of repose in securities actions are important in protecting interests on both sides [WLF on CalPERS v. ANZ Securities, Inc.]
Encrypted messaging services allow Wall Streeters to bypass all sorts of regulatory scrutiny and speak freely, can’t have that [Bloomberg]

Tags: accounting, Dodd-Frank, mortgages, securities litigation, Wall Street

Banking and finance roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Good riddance (if they’re indeed going) to the Dodd-Frank conflict minerals rules

Walter Olson — Sat, 11 Feb 2017 14:50:39 +0000

President Trump is said to be considering an executive order suspending for a time the Dodd-Frank law’s provisions on conflict minerals, which have harmed American companies and consumers and also plunged many communities further into impoverishment in some of the poorest sections of Africa. Congress should rise to its part by repealing the provisions, I argue at Cato at Liberty. More: Hans Bader/CEI, Kevin Drum/Mother Jones, earlier, and as part of a wider look at securities regulation, Wallace DeWitt/National Affairs. More: Dominic P. Parker and Bryan Vadheim, JAERE; Tate Watkins, WSJ.

Tags: Africa, Dodd-Frank, Securities and Exchange Commission

Good riddance (if they’re indeed going) to the Dodd-Frank conflict minerals rules is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system