Posts Tagged ‘Switzerland’

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]

International free speech roundup

  • Tonight in New York City, Cato presents its Milton Friedman Award to Danish journalist Flemming Rose, a key figure in the [still-ongoing] Mohammed cartoons episode, and author of The Tyranny of Silence [David Boaz, Cato]
  • Troubles in Turkey: journalists sentenced to two years in jail for reprinting Charlie Hebdo cover [Reuters, Reason] Erdogan’s campaign against foreign critics assumes extraterritorial reach with complaints against comedian in Germany and Geneva exhibit [Colin Cortbus/Popehat, Foreign Policy]
  • Ya mad wee dafty: “Man faces hate crime charge in Scotland over dog’s ‘Nazi salute'” [Guardian]
  • Publish a “wrong” map of India, face seven years in jail and a huge fine [Hindustan Times; “crore” = 10 million]
  • United Kingdom man fined £500 for calling romantic rival “fat-bellied codhead. [Blackpool Gazette]
  • Emulating USA tycoon D. Trump, China pressures finance analysts against negative forecasts [WSJ, Barron’s on the Marvin Roffman story, which I used to tell when giving speeches on my book The Litigation Explosion]

FIFA: “Use of an American bank”

The federal government is bringing charges against the leadership of FIFA, the international soccer association, and Switzerland has arrested them in accord with American wishes. But are the jurisdiction of U.S. courts and U.S. criminal law really proper for this alleged international wrongdoing? David Post:

…ask yourself: if you think that the “use of an American bank” is a sufficient basis for the exercise of US jurisdiction over foreign nationals residing and conducting business abroad, then presumably you’re OK with being hauled into court in Singapore because you have used, say, a Singaporean bank, or into a Mexican court because your money found its way to a Mexican mortgage broker, or into a Danish court because you have at times used a Danish Internet Service Provider. Yes? When you look at it that way it becomes a little more difficult to applaud wholeheartedly – shouldn’t we have been able to count on the Swiss, within whose jurisdiction FIFA undoubtedly lies, to do something?

Banking and finance roundup

  • Calvin’s refuge: how Swiss banking confidentiality undermined state despotism [Matt Welch, who also discusses how the gruesome FATCA law is proving to be the first component of an multilateral effort by OECD governments to curtail account privacy]
  • Dodd-Frank compliance costs and the rapid decline of community banks [Marshall Lux and Robert Greene/Kennedy School, Carrie Sheffield, Jeff Sovern with a scoffing view; WSJ]
  • “The IRS seized $242 million based on suspected structuring in more than 2,500 cases from 2005 to 2012.” [Jacob Sullum, new Institute for Justice report (PDF) by Dick Carpenter II and Larry Salzman and summary] More: new structuring case against Dubuque, Iowa widow raises question of whether feds have really followed through on promise not to press structuring charges where income is otherwise legal [AP/WHEC]
  • “House Investigators: DOJ Forced Banks to Donate to Left-Wing Groups” [Joel Gehrke, NRO]
  • “FDIC retreats on Operation Choke Point?” [Todd Zywicki] Rep. Luetkemeyer likely to keep up the pressure on regulators [Kevin Funnell]
  • “Fed Officials Accused of Perjury in AIG Bailout Trial” [Lawrence Cunningham, Concurring Opinions]
  • “Standard & Poor’s Settlement Shows Futility Of Fighting Government Policy” [Daniel Fisher, earlier]

Banking and finance roundup

Banking and finance roundup

  • J.P. Morgan and the Dodd-Frank system: “With Wall Street’s capable assistance, government has managed to institutionalize and monetize the perp walk.” [Michael Greve, related from Greve on the self-financing regulatory state]
  • Harvard needs to worry about being seen as endorsing its affiliated Shareholder Rights Project [Richard Painter]
  • Under regulatory pressure, J.P. Morgan “looking to pull back from lending to politically incorrect operations like pawn shops, payday lenders, check cashers” [Seeking Alpha]
  • Rare securities class action goes to trial against Household lending firm, HSBC; $2.46 billion judgment [Reuters]
  • Car dealers only thought they were winning a Dodd-Frank exemption from CFPB. Surprise! [Carter Dougherty/Bloomberg, Funnell]
  • “Memo to the Swiss: Capping CEO Pay is not an Intelligent Way of dealing with Income Inequality” [Bainbridge]
  • American Bankers Association vs. blogger who compiled online list of banks’ routing numbers [Popehat]

International human rights roundup

Scales of justice: lawyer represented fish after its demise

A noted Swiss animal rights lawyer who’s campaigning for wider assignment of lawyers to represent animals’ interests “once represented a dead fish that had been caught, killed, and eaten” [Global Legal Post via John Steele, Legal Ethics Forum; title courtesy @KenParish1]

P.S. From last year (but new to us), this Jon Stewart segment on the unsuccessful PETA lawsuit against Sea World for holding whales in “involuntary servitude.”

Banking and finance roundup

  • “The Dodd-Frank Say-on-Pay Cases Are on the Brink of Death” [Kevin LaCroix]
  • Kevin Funnell of Bank Lawyers Blog interviewed [Crystal Gimesh via BLB]
  • How taxpayer lending props up business model of banks, fast-food franchisors [Dayton Daily News on SBA via Tad DeHaven]
  • Independent currency = money laundering? “How Bitcoin Dies” [Econ Policy Journal] Or death by trial lawyer? [Coyote, Andrew Sullivan]
  • Nose of the camel: Obama budget plans to limit IRAs to $3 million [Politico]
  • How Swiss bank secrecy protected freedom [Daniel Fisher]
  • Sure, what could go wrong? Obama push for more mortgage lending to borrowers with weaker credit [Gideon Kanner, Coyote] More: Arnold Kling testifies before Congress on housing finance, and feels a resulting “need to scream” [ASKBlog, more]
  • More: Per NYT’s expert, “Shareholders have been demanding” disclosure on corporate political spending. Well, 18% of shareholders anyway [Jim Copland]

Bradley Birkenfeld’s $104 million bounty

By ratting on his employer and clients, the UBS informant greatly advanced Washington’s project of preventing Americans from squirreling assets out of reach of the U.S. tax and legal systems. So it’s no surprise that few in the federal establishment — even among longtime critics of what they deem excessive executive compensation — begrudge him the whopping payout. Among his defenders, of course, is Iowa Republican Sen. Charles Grassley, patron of the whistleblower program: “Need we add that Mr. Grassley’s longtime aide, who actually drafted the whistleblower law, now represents Mr. Birkenfeld and stands to collect an interesting percentage of the award Mr. Grassley so obligingly applauds? If one were rich, if one had a sense of history, one might well wish to move a part of one’s nest egg out of the way of Mr. Grassley and his ilk.” [Holman Jenkins, WSJ]