Skip to main content

Category: Newsroom

Fact Sheet: Don’t Fall for SIFMA’s Spin Campaign

The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA) – which boasts that it is the “voice of the U.S. securities industry, representing broker-dealers,” Wall Street banks, and others – has relentlessly worked to delay, derail, and kill the Department of Labor’s (DOL) proposed rule to require that the clients’ best interest be put first and […]

Read More

Barney Frank Says GE's Financial Sales Show Regulation Can Work

“General Electric’s moves to divest most of its real-estate and financial-service assets demonstrate that a key provision in a post-financial crisis law imposing tougher rules on “systemically important” firms’ is working, a key architect of the legislation said on Monday. “It shows that it works, but it also shows that being designated a systemically important […]

Read More

Margins, Liquidity and the Cost of Hedging

The paper argues that requiring commercial businesses to post margin does not increase the cost of hedging. In fact, the paper states that the costs for such a transaction is the equivalent for those trades that impose margin as well as providing for a line of credit. John Parsons of MIT and Antonio Mello of the University of Wisconsin School of Business authored the paper, which also details how accounting rules and bank regulators treat the implicit credit charges embedded in these […]

Read More

Finance Watch Paper on Improving the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID)

Brussels-based Finance Watch on April 24 released a white paper with recommendations of how to improve the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive, which governs European securities trading among member states. The report calls for tougher rules on high-frequency trading because it damages liquidity, such as establishing circuit breakers and requiring firms to provide their algorithm codes and trading audit-trail. It also calls for limits on commodity speculation, including putting individual […]

Read More

SEC Commissioner Luis Aguilar's Statement on Investor Protection

SEC Commissioner Luis Aguilar on April 11 published a lengthy dissent over the agency’s study on the rights of investors to sue in securities cases that involve foreign exchanges. Aguilar detailed his concern in the aftermath of a 2010 U.S. Supreme Court ruling barring U.S. fraud suits for securities traded on foreign exchanges. Aguilar was displeased that the study, mandated under the Dodd-Frank Act, did not recommend to Congress that it strongly reestablish the right for U.S. investors […]

Read More

Sheila Bair and Academics Letter To The Federal Reserve For Advocating Tougher Bank Capital Standards

Former Federal Deposit Insurance Corp Chairman Sheila Bair and a group of academics wrote to Federal Reserve on March 30 urging the central bank to impose tougher capital requirements on the largest U.S. banks. The letter urges the Fed to impose strong capital requirements from firms that will come under enhanced supervision from the Dodd-Frank law, including banks with at least $50 billion in assets and nonbanks that have been deemed as […]

Read More

Debt Overhang and Capital Regulation

This March 2012 paper analyzes shareholder incentives to change the leverage of a firm that has borrowed substantially. Because of such debt, shareholders typically don’t have incentives to decrease leverage that would make the remaining debt safer. Government subsidies of debt contribute to resistance of such deleveraging. The analysis is relevant to the debate over bank capital regulation, where subsidies favor debt over […]

Read More

Getting up to Speed on the Financial Crisis: A One-Weekend-Reader's Guide

Two finance professors at the Yale School of Management have issued a report that serves as compilation of books, academic papers and reports chronicling the 2008 financial crisis. Gary B. Gorton and Andrew Metrick selected 16 different documents to provide and overview on what led to crisis, the actions taken when the U.S. economy neared collapse, and the aftermath as policymakers try to prevent it from occurring again. Read the full study here

Read More

Report Showing Major Decline on Prosecutions for Financial Crimes

A new report shows criminal prosecutions for financial crimes have dramatically decreased in recent years even in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis and massive wrongdoing along Wall Street. The report, by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University, shows that 1,251 prosecutions were filed during the first 11 months of the last fiscal […]

Read More

Shadow Banking: Strengthening Oversight and Regulation

The Financial Stability Board, an international body established by the G20 to monitor and make recommendations on the international financial system, released a new report on how to better oversee the shadow banking system so it does not pose a global systemic risk. The shadow banking system is represented by non-depository institutions such as hedge […]

Read More

Congressional Budget Office Report on Household Income

This CBO report finds that house income grew much more for the top households than any other group. The study shows that the top 1 percent of housholds saw its after-tax income grow by 275 percent over the last 30 years. By contrast, the bottom 60 percent saw their ernings increase 40 percent, while the […]

Read More

The Brookings Institution: Rethinking Central Banking

Under the rubric of the Committee on International Economic and Policy Reform, a group of academics and former government officials are working on ideas that can further financial reform. Its latest effort examines how to revamp central banking in the aftermath of the financial crisis. An excerpt: The actions needed to achieve price stability, such […]

Read More

Contact Us

For media inquiries, please contact [email protected] or 202-618-6433.

To sign up for our email newsletter, please visit this page.

Name(Required)
This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Sign Up — Stay Informed With Our Monthly Newsletter

"* (Required)" indicates required fields

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

For media inquiries,

please contact [email protected] or 202-618-6433.

Donate

Help us fight for the public interest in our financial markets, protecting Main Street from Wall Street and avoiding another costly financial collapse and economic crisis, by making a donation today.

Donate Today