There are lots of silly or unsupported arguments made about consumer finance; too often commentators rely on their priors and read evidence through the light of their priors ( here too ). ... Read full article
Some quick thoughts on the "bankruptcy" part of the proposed bill: ... Read full article
Tara Twomey is just a keen observer of the consumer finance world, and she recently alerted me to a trend. Reverse mortgages are being aggressively hawked as a valuable financial planning tool, and the media is picking up the story. Even the reverse ... Read full article
Th ... Read full article
Over at Dealb%k . ... Read full article
After a delay of nearly 15 months, the Second Circuit this past Friday finally released its opinion in the Tribune Co. Fraudulent Conveyance Litigation . ... Read full article
As California Monitor, my staff and I fielded tens of thousands, probably hundreds of thousands, questions from homeowners. The hardest conversations were the easiest from a legal perspective. If someone's home was foreclosed in California, we ... Read full article
I, too, join the cohort of surprised observers from this week's argument. For me, the biggest takeaway is not so much that the Justices were engaging in textual sport, it's that they wanted to engage in those gymnastics. That is, everyone ... Read full article
I did not realize that a US state had defaulted on its bonds, offering a historical comparative example of the difficulties facing Puerto Rico, its creditors, and mostly its citizens if the mess there is not subjected to an orderly, judicially supervised ... Read full article
So Noah Feldman has a column up on Bloomberg that suggests that section 903(1) of the Code should clearly apply to the Commonwealth. It's a sensible argument, if you read that section entirely in isolation and know nothing about the overall structure ... Read full article
The transcript can be found here . Based on my initial read, it seems like the First Circuit might be reversed, which opens up all the issues Jacoby noted earlier (namely, will the statute pass Contracts Clause review – assuming the Clause even applies ... Read full article
Does the Obama White House truly stand for consumer financial protection, or will it support Wall Street when it thinks no one is looking? That's the question that the Supreme Court served up today. The Supreme Court is considering whether to hear ... Read full article
With a fiasco as big as the financial crisis, one of the only positive outcomes is there are a lot of lessons for the future. As Credit Slips thinks about how the administration might influence the resolution of Puerto Rico's bond problems, I think ... Read full article
I know nothing about the statutes delegating "home rule" authority to the Commonwealth, but do they have any reversionary clauses? For example, if there's crisis, war, etc., can the federal government revest in any power? Leaving aside ... Read full article
When I think about "bondholders," I tend to think about their lawyers. (That probably says a lot about the crowds that I run in). In the case of Puerto Rico, we've seen affable, whip smart, expensively dressed New York lawyers make cogent ... Read full article
It has been a humbling torrent of creativity, and I am honored to chip in a tuppence at the eleventh hour. After an existential preface, I consider how one might use (or resist using) federal credit enhancement in the inevitable debt exchange. ... Read full article
