CreditSlips

Some Changes at the Slips

01/23/14

We are making a few changes in the author line-up here at Credit Slips. The blog has been running for seven and a half years. During that time, new voices have entered the academy, and we need to keep up!

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And it's so damn cold

01/23/14

Yet I've used my numb fingers to stop checking the weather in Los Angeles and write a Deal%k column on a recent SDNY decision involving the safe harbors, and what it tells us about the safe harbors generally.

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Detroit and the Swaps

01/17/14

So in declining to approve Detroit's proposed payoff of its interest rate swaps – all out of the money, naturally – Judge Rhodes has reminded us that the case is not pending in Wilmington or Manhattan.

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Kaiser Family Foundation on ACA and Medical Debt

01/15/14

I'm on the road and only have time to link to the USA Today story about the Kaiser Family Foundation report on how medical debt might look like after the Affordable Care Act. Short version: high deductibles and co-pays may mean not a lot of difference for those enrolled in the cheapest bronze level plans. Credit Slips readers will want to check it out.

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The Basic Problem with "Chapter 14"

01/15/14

There has been a big push, from several different directions, to develop a more "free market" – as compared with Dodd-Frank's OLA – approach to financial institution insolvency, the Hoover Institute's "chapter 14" proposal being the most famous of these "pushes."

The problem is in the funding. Chapter 11 depends on private DIP funding, but even the largest DIP loans are much smaller than the liquidity needs of a SIFI.

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Cert granted in that *other* Argentina case

01/15/14

As Argentina-watchers know, the pari passu saga is only one aspect of the broader kerfuffle between Argentina and NML. On Friday, the U.S.

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Data Breaches: Target, Neiman Marcus

01/11/14

Let's be really clear about what most identity theft is about:  it's about payments data.  Identity theft is first and foremost a payments fraud problem.

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The Behavioral Economics of Bitcoin

01/11/14

I'm going to wade into unchartered Slips waters today and head into Bitcoinland. I've been trying to understand Bitcoin from a payment systems perspective, where it has an interesting problem and solution:  double spending.  The lesson in all of this is how Bitcoin has a sort of built in seniorage--payments are never free. Currently Bitcoin builds in its costs through inflation, which is not particularly transparent, but that will ultimately change to being more transparent--and salient-- transaction fees.

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Yes, Walmart, You Are in Fact Responsible for What You Sell

01/08/14

The Consumerist posted a story about a man who purchased prepaid debit cards from Walmart only to discover that the debit cards in the package were not Vanilla MasterCards as labeled but instead gift cards from other stores that had virtually no stored value left on the card. OK, so someone had tampered with the cards, and Walmart refunds the money.

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