The Second Circuit argument in NML v. Argentina was awesome--I was at the edge of my seat the whole time. My takeaway after the hearing is that even though Argentina got the brunt of the yelling, it would be relatively straightforward for the court to ... Read full article
The panel for Monday's Second Circuit hearing in NML v. Argentina is Judges Raggi, Pooler and Parker (follow link , click on name for official bio). ... Read full article
Today is the si ... Read full article
The NML [Elliott] v. Argentina pari passu argument was rescheduled yet again, to July 23 . ... Read full article
In addition to a post last week broadly raising visitors' physicial interaction with courts, an earlier post discussed variation in the website availability of daily calendars for U.S. bankruptcy courtrooms. ... Read full article
The Association for Legal Career Professionals has released data on starting salaries of 2011 law school graduates, reporting a median salary of $60,000. So how can these recent graduates afford to repay their student loans? ... Read full article
Think about what happens when you pit tribal sovereign immunity against effective consumer protection laws. In my view, no one wins. Yet payday lenders are now very actively seeking tribes with whom to partner, in order to get the benefits of tribal ... Read full article
With half the year over, there is half of the year still to go. For our few readers who might actually know the quote--yes, that is a tribute to the legendary Murray Walker . Giving our place in the calendar year, it seemed like an appropriate time to ... Read full article
The Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities held a symposium on " Courts: Representing and Contesting Ideologies of the Public Sphere " in 2011, and recently published papers from this event. ... Read full article
The number one agenda item for small banks is to repeal the physical, on-machine disclosure requirement for ATMs. Yes, I'm serious, that, that is the top agenda item for small banks. And they wonder why they're not doing so well... ... Read full article
The International Monetary Fund has focused its critical gaze on us. Just in time for the holiday marking the end of our colonial period, the IMF has completed its "Mission to the United States of America." See here. The IMF has held up its ... Read full article
Check out this story in the New York Times about free-wheeling consumer credit in India . Much of the article focuses on how Indians are using consumer credit to pay for cosmetic surgery. At one point, I had a collection of online advertisements offering ... Read full article
For the past couple of years, I've been thinking that cramdown is dead as a policy solution. But I was thinking about cramdown as requiring legislation. It doesn't. We could start doing it tomorrow. Under current bankruptcy law, a Chapter 13 ... Read full article
Do any of you read creditcards.com? It is a great source of info on various topics, not just credit cards. Today’s story featured three debt collection horror tales, as well as a state of the nation of nasty collection efforts. According to the story, in ... Read full article
Folks in Washington tell me there is a general sense of “foreclosure fatigue” in our nation’s capital. It’s just so boring to keep thinking about all the people losing their homes year after year. Can’t we move on to something new? This attitude goes ... Read full article
When I read economics articles, I'm often struck by the absence of citations to the legal literature. Citations to legal works, even when very much on point, are frequently missing from literature reviews and citation lists. There are exceptions to ... Read full article
FHFA has sued the State of Illinois and some local government units claiming that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are exempt from state and local real estate transfer taxes. FHFA's argument is basically that the GSEs are subject only to non-discriminatory ... Read full article
At times I've joked to my classes about the possibility of a Coasean Republic, a state I call "Coase-istan" (or perhaps Kosistan), in which the entire world operates via private ordering. In Coase-istan, government does, well, nothing ... Read full article
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court finally issued its long-awaited ruling in Eaton v. Fannie Mae. This case involved the question of whether a "naked mortgagee"--a mortgagee that was not also the holder of the promissory note--had standing ... Read full article
The wheels of litigation move slowly, but there are a couple of recent securitization fail litigation decisions that are worthy of note. First, in the Congress case, a wrongful foreclosure action in Alabama (see my previous blogging on it here ), the ... Read full article
