This article describes the causes of the boom and bust in the U.S. housing market, which brought down not just the U.S. financial system but the global economy. How did this vicious cycle begin? How did home prices appreciate so far and so fast? Why did rational investors not recognize and stop...

This paper is a brief analysis of the proposed class settlement in In re Interchange Fee and Merchant Discount Antitrust Litigation, MDL 1720 (E.D.N.Y.). The analysis concludes that the relief plaintiff class members would obtain from the proposed settlement is largely illusory. The settlement...

This Essay argues for the introduction of public competition in the payment card clearance market as a method of addressing suboptimal competition in an industry with extremely high barriers to entry. The Federal Reserve competes with private parties for check, wire transfer, and ACH clearance,...

This Critique takes issue with four of the main assertions of the American Bankers Association's Study on Credit Card Regulation. First, this Critique addresses the ABA Study's claim that credit card pricing is risk-based and demonstrates that only certain elements of card pricing are marginally...

Merchants pay banks a fee on every credit card transaction. These credit card transactions cost American merchants an average of six times the total cost of cash transactions. The variation among credit cards is also large, with some cards, such as rewards cards, costing merchants twice as much...

Who pays for credit card rewards? This Article demonstrates that credit card rewards programs are funded in part by a highly regressive, sub rosa subsidization of affluent credit consumers by poor cash consumers. In its worst form, food stamp recipients are subsidizing frequent flier miles. The...