- Federal judge refuses to dismiss suit against prosecutor Preet Bharara, FBI agents by hedge funder David Ganek over treatment in now-dismissed Chiasson inside trading case [Peter Henning, New York Times “DealBook”; Business Insider] SEC agrees to return $21.5 million extracted from Ganek’s Level Global Investors [BNA via Ira Stoll]
- CFPB follies: “Government-Directed Lending Comes to America” [Ike Brannon, Cato] Agency casts its eye on marketplace, otherwise known as peer-to-peer, lending [Thaya Brook Knight, Cato]
- SEC inspector general sides with agency against allegations of undue sway over ALJs [Reuters, earlier here, here, etc.]
- Third party liability for crime: “HSBC Sued Over Drug Cartel Murders After Laundering Probe” [Bloomberg]
- Former Ally Bank CEO: administration extorted race-lending settlement by threatening to derail regulatory approvals [Paul Sperry/New York Post, more]
- Bellevue, Wash.: $213,000 award to complainant Leticia Lucero “could mean other cases where homeowners argue lenders [cause] emotional distress during negotiations.” [AP/Yakima Herald]
Posts Tagged ‘Securities and Exchange Commission’
Banking and finance roundup
- Stock analyst in India puts out a “sell” recommendation, is arrested and jailed [W$J, compare Argentina economists]
- Dear Mayor Bill de Blasio, Messrs. Dodd, Frank, & Co.: London thanks you! (It’s now back on top over NYC as most-desired financial center.) [Business Insider]
- Amid court setbacks, SEC says it might tinker with its use of in-house administrative judges after all [David Michaels, Bloomberg]
- “The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s Arbitration Study: A Summary and Critique” [Jason Scott Johnston and Todd Zywicki, SSRN]
- “Rand Paul and Five Expats Sue the Feds Over FATCA” [Matt Welch, Reason, earlier on this exceedingly bad law]
- Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) came to Cato and spoke, that’s not a punch line setup but a real thing that happened [Tom Clougherty, more on Warren-Vitter and “too big to fail”]
- Use credit responsibly? Sucker! NYC first city to follow state trend toward banning employer use of credit history in hiring [Jennifer Mora, David Warner, and Rod Fliegel, Littler this spring]
Study: Dodd-Frank conflict minerals rule worsened Congo bloodshed
We’ve covered this story repeatedly, but now there’s further confirmation:
The 2010 Dodd-Frank Act increased violence in the Congo by 143 percent (and looting by 291 percent) through its “conflict minerals” rule, which has backfired on its intended beneficiaries. So concludes a new study by Dominic Parker of the University of Wisconsin and Bryan Vadheim of the London School of Economics.
As we noted earlier, Dodd-Frank conflict minerals regulations have also caused starvation in the Congo, harmed U.S. businesses, and resulted in increased smuggling—even as they punish peaceful neighboring countries in Africa just for being near the Congo, whose civil wars have killed millions over the last 20 years. They have inflicted great harm on a country that was just beginning to recover from years of mass killing and had the world’s lowest per capita income. The new study is consistent with a 2013 paper by St. Thomas University law professor Marcia Narine that criticized the conflict minerals rule for its dire consequences for the Congolese people.
That’s from Hans Bader’s write-up at CEI; more, Stephanie Slade, Reason. The Parker-Vadheim paper is here.
Banking and finance roundup
- “But the questions of fairness are real and seem to be bolstered by the S.E.C.’s win/loss record in its home court versus its performance in district courts.” [Gretchen Morgenson, New York Times, earlier here, etc.]
- With Greece as with subprime crisis, same regulators who messed up credit markets will probably ask for and get more power [Arnold Kling]
- “In fact an AIG-and-taxpayer bailout of Wall Street firms engineered by government officials and Wall Street professionals with deep and ignored conflicts of interest” [Lawrence Cunningham, National Interest via Bainbridge]
- CSR by way of SEC? “Disclosure Rules Are the Wrong Way to Push Social Change” [Thaya Knight, American Banker/Cato]
- “Supreme Court Blasts Maryland Taxman’s Double-Dipping” [Elizabeth BeShears, Heartland on this year’s Supreme Court decision in Comptroller v. Wynne, I’m quoted]
- Dodd-Frank: “Are State Regulators A Source of Systemic Risk?” [Mark Calabria, Cato]
- Feds’ latest round of mega-settlements against banks prompts usual demands to jail execs. Is it really that simple? [Scott Greenfield]
Federal court: SEC cannot use employees as judges
The Securities and Exchange Commission practice of trying many complaints before administrative law judges (ALJs) who are its own employees, rather than before federal courts, has grown increasingly controversial lately and now one defendant’s challenge to the practice has prevailed — at least for the moment. A federal judge in Atlanta has ruled that because ALJs are “inferior officers” under the constitution, they cannot be simply employed like other federal workers by an agency like the SEC. Writes Thaya Knight at Cato, “there is a fairly easy fix available to the SEC: the five commissioners can simply appoint the existing ALJs to their current positions…. [but] other agencies could face greater difficulties.” But Daniel Fisher quotes Prof. Philip Hamburger as saying the ruling could still prove “profoundly important,” leading to the unraveling of other aspects of administrative law arrangements within agencies. More: W$J (commission fighting off at least seven legal challenges; in one instance it “asked one of its own judges to submit a formal statement about whether he has ever felt pressure to favor the agency”), Adam Zimmerman/PrawfsBlawg.
Yet more on Dodd-Frank conflict minerals rules
Banking and finance roundup
- “FATCA: An American Tax Nightmare” [Stu Haugen, New York Times via TaxProf]
- Following Iceland’s model? “Neither [Krugman nor Yglesias] mentions that a major part of the Icelandic recipe was letting *foreign* deposit holders twist in the wind.” [Tyler Cowen]
- Wasting a Crisis: Why Securities Regulation Fails, new book by Virginia law dean Paul Mahoney [Thaya Knight, Cato, with video of Cato event]
- Seventh Circuit reverses $2.46 billion judgment against HSBC Holdings in Household International case [Reuters/Business Insider]
- “I’ve been with them 40 years and then they have this? It’s a pain.” Banks close longtime local accounts as anti-money-laundering rules squeeze economy in border town Nogales, Ariz. [W$J]
- Six regulatory agencies issue diversity guidelines for financial institutions, implementing Dodd-Frank mandate [FDIC]
- Judge to Labaton Sucharow, Bernstein Litowitz: you might at least want to talk to those “confidential informants” your case relies on [Daniel Fisher, Forbes]
Banking and finance roundup
- Home-court advantage: SEC wins against defendants 90 percent of the time when it litigates before its own judges [Jean Eaglesham/W$J, Thaya Knight/Cato, earlier]
- Oops! “Corporate Inversions Increase U.S. Tax Revenues” [Rita Nevada Gunn and Thomas Lys/SSRN via Paul Caron/TaxProf, related, earlier]
- “How U.S. rules on conflict minerals are making life worse for desperately poor people in war-torn Congo” [Politico, earlier]
- “Lock up the banksters.” “Lock up the drug dealers.” Dara Lind spots some populist parallels [Vox]
- Should bank boards owe fiduciary duty to regulatory as well as investor interests? [Marc Hodak]
- “Nobody’s Worried About ‘Too Big to Jail’ Any More” [Matt Levine/Bloomberg View] “Hunting Whales: The Problem With Prosecuting SIFIS” [Thaya Knight/Cato]
- Luigi Zingales: market economists need to address question of when and how finance sector goes wrong, or others will do it for them [“Does Finance Benefit Society?“, presidential address to American Finance Association, Buttonwood/Economist, Arnold Kling]
Banking and finance roundup
- Cato Book Forum tomorrow (Wednesday, May 13): Paul Mahoney, “Wasting a Crisis: Why Securities Regulation Fails” [register or watch online]
- “When The SEC Pays Your Lawyer For Informing On You, Is That A Good Thing?” [Daniel Fisher]
- “Unfortunately for the CFPB’s ideological imperative, Ballard Spahr concludes otherwise: ‘In fact, the study confirms that arbitration does benefit consumers.'” [Kevin Funnell]
- Which “established members of the business establishment” brought the AIG prosecution to Eliot Spitzer’s desk, and from what motives? [Ira Stoll]
- Dodd-Frank “say on pay” failed to slow rise in CEO compensation, and it would help to understand why [Marc Hodak vs. James Surowiecki]
- “One-Third of Americans Living Abroad Have Thought Actively About Renouncing Citizenship Due to Tax-Filing Requirements” [Matt Welch, followup, earlier on FATCA] Rand Paul bill would repeal the law, and there’s also a constitutional challenge in the works [TaxProf]
- “What’s the point of the implied covenant of good faith? Other than generating fees for lawyers?” [Prof. Bainbridge]
Sued if you do: SEC vs. EEOC
“Guess what? You know those SEC disclosures about pending litigation that publicly held companies are required by law to make? Well, if an employer says too much, it may be ‘retaliating’ against the litigants.” [Robin Shea on Seventh Circuit opinion in Greengrass v. International Monetary Systems Ltd.]