The Wall Street Journal ran a column on municipal bankruptcy that is straight out of fantasyland. According to the WSJ, if municipalities are not able to shed their pensions in bankruptcy, the result will be a stampede of bankruptcy filings as cities file ... Read full article
Call for Papers – 2013 Conference on Public Pension Funds Sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland ... Read full article
Felix Salmon has a depressing blog post about the Fab Tourre verdict and a criminal conviction in another Goldman Sachs-related case. Felix concludes, " I’m increasingly coming to the conclusion that America’s system of jurisprudence simply isn’t up ... Read full article
Lauren blogged about a new article by Omri Ben-Shahar , who has written a number of interesting and often (deliberately) provocative articles about consumer contracts. This new article certainly fits in that vein. ... Read full article
Congress and the President are making huge decisions about the future of our biggest consumer credit markets – mortgages for homebuyers and college loans for students. Unfortunately critical policy choices are being avoided, ignored, or obfuscated. I’ll ... Read full article
As the CFPB gears up to regulate arbitration clauses, a timely article by Omri Ben-Shahar has been posted on ssrn. ... Read full article
I know what I'm going to start with the next time I teach bankruptcy crimes.... The indictment is here . ... Read full article
Just when you thought the world's economic leaders were a bunch of spineless, viewless appeasers who would sell their nearest and dearest to mollify the scary monsters who would eat them anyway ... France saves the day! ... Read full article
All's Quiet on the American Front in the interchange wars. But there has been some action to report in Canada and the EU. In Canada, the federal Competition Tribunal dismissed the suit brought by the Canadian antitrust authority against Visa and ... Read full article
Many commentators have assumed that the Supremacy Clause of the federal constitution settles the issue. I don't think it is so cut and dry. Bankruptcy always starts with inputs from "applicable non-bankruptcy law," which generally means ... Read full article
Continuing our coverage of the Detroit bankruptcy, it's being reported that Bankruptcy Judge Rhodes has ruled that the automatic stay extends to cover the progress of the suit regarding the constitutionality of the Detroit bankruptcy filing. I ... Read full article
The IMF will not file an amicus brief urging the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene in the pari passu litigation--for now. This would not have been news had the IMF's intent to file not been announced last week, causing a rally in Argentina's ... Read full article
Some thoughts on Detroit in chapter 9, at Dealb%k . ... Read full article
If the Simkovic & McIntyre analysis of the value of a law degree is correct, there are two somewhat counterintuitive implications. First, law schools have been massively undercharging for tuition in the past . If what is now a $150k investment ... Read full article
Already the Detroit bankruptcy is producing a interesting bit of litigation about the interaction between state and federal law. Federal bankruptcy law sets up this problem because among the requirements for a municipality to file for Chapter 9 ... Read full article
Bankruptcy prof Mike Simkovic and labor economist Frank McIntyre have an interesting paper about the value of a law degree. ... Read full article
Detroit's bankruptcy filing today is obvious grabbing some headlines. It's not clear, however, how much bankruptcy can do to fix Detroit. Bankruptcy is really good at dealing with problems created by overleverage. If there's too much debt, ... Read full article
