Bankruptcy Blogs

Mortgage Market 2011 - Not a Pretty Picture

09/19/12

The annual Federal Reserve report on Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) data for 2011 paints a bleak picture.  Despite interest rates at or below 4%,
mortgage lending volume continued its four-year decline.  The drop in mortgage lending was
particularly steep for minority home buyers, and in distressed neighborhoods.  More than 40% of home purchase loans that were made were backed by government (FHA or VA) insurance. 
Overall mortgage denial rates were 31% for black ap

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Why 'Back to Basics' Is the Wrong Answer to Basel

09/19/12

A simpler calculation isn't necessarily the right one. If a capital ratio misrepresents a bank's risk or creates incentives to take on more of it, simple is scarcely an improvement.

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'Damnit Lloyd, I'm a CFO, Not a Chief Risk Officer'

09/19/12

Receiving Wide Coverage ...

Goldman CFO to Retire: David Viniar, who has served as Goldman Sachs' chief financial officer since its 1999 IPO, plans to retire in January and take a "non-independent" seat on the board. The 57-year-old will be succeeded by Harvey Schwartz, nine years his junior, in what the Journal describes as Goldman's "first nod to a group of younger leaders." In another Journal story, analyst Meredith Whitney is quoted interpreting Viniar's retirement as...

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Second Circuit Summarily Reverses Claims Trading Decision

09/19/12

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals, acting with unusual alacrity (oral argument was heard only one month ago), summarily reversed the district court decision in Longacre Master Fund v.

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Disputing Items On Your Credit Report

09/19/12

I follow a blog called The Points Guy because he informs readers of incentive reward programs for new credit cards and recommends the best credit cards for different consumer needs. His blog occasionally reports on credit scoring as it affects people’s ability to get new credit cards.

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Installment Lenders Already Make Small-Dollar Loans Work

09/18/12

While deposit-driven financial institutions, at best, could use small-dollar loans to bring in customers who would later purchase other products, installment lenders have been successfully serving underserved communities for close to 100 years.

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In Defense of Bankruptcy Courts (or, Is Bankruptcy Really That Exceptional?)

09/18/12

Although not always acknowledged expressly, exceptionalism is pervasive in bankruptcy scholarship. Some work makes no attempt to contexualize bankruptcy within the federal courts, apparently assuming its unique qualities (for example, the disinterest in most bankruptcy venue scholarship about venue laws applicable to other multi-party federal litigation). But other projects are more deliberate in their exceptionalist pursuits.

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Why Banks Need to Adopt a Common Cybersecurity Language

09/18/12

Adopting universal terminology will allow financial institutions to quickly identify, understand and share information about threats, plan for different scenarios and build the systems required to effectively defend their interests.

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A Solid Board Can Turn a Good Bank into a Great One

09/18/12

The board of directors must anticipate the unexpected and quickly execute strategic alternatives when a problem arises, regardless of its severity. Failure to do so could land their financial institution on the FDIC's problem list.

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Square Gets a Big Infusion; Hard Times for Swiss Banks

09/18/12

Receiving Wide Coverage ...

Mobile Payments: Jack Dorsey's Square closed on a $200 million financing round that the papers say values the mobile-payments company at about $3.25 billion. The Journal's "Heard on the Street" column uses the occasion to offer a succinct overview of the disruptive implications of mobile payments technologies. Not only are the makers of cash registers and swipe terminals threatened (Nordstrom, for example, plans to go "completely mobile" in its department stores), so...

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