The most recent round of state budget crises has resulted in calls to permit states to file for bankruptcy in order to restructure and reduce their financial obligations. This Article argues that these proposals are misguided because states' financial distress is primarily a political problem...

Systemic risk - the possibility that an individual firm's failure will result in broad damages to the economy as a whole - is the epitome of financial crisis. Bailouts of troubled firms have long been the standard response to systemic risk. Yet, bailouts suffer from problems of political...

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...

Credit card transactions cost American merchants six times as much as cash transactions. American merchants paid nearly $40 billion to accept credit cards last year. Why, then, do consumers pay the same price for purchases, regardless of their means of payment? The answer lies in a set of credit...

Bankruptcy is a statutory system, yet it is replete with practices for which there is no direct authorization in the Bankruptcy Code. This article argues that the authorization for judicial creation of bankruptcy law beyond the provisions of the Code has been misidentified as the equity powers...

Bankruptcy is a statutory system, yet it is replete with practices for which there is no direct authorization in the Bankruptcy Code. This article argues that the authorization for judicial creation of bankruptcy law beyond the provisions of the Code has been misidentified as the equity powers...

Courts have repeatedly stated that equitable subordination is a compensatory remedy. This view is demonstrably mistaken; if equitable subordination is compensatory, only injured creditors, and not trustees or debtors in possession, would have Constitutional standing to bring equitable...

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 in fees among credit cards is also large, with some cards, such as rewards cards, costing merchants twice...

Who pays for credit card rewards? This Article demonstrates empirically that credit card rewards programs are funded in part by a highly regressive, lt;igt;sub rosalt;/igt; subsidization of affluent credit consumers by poor cash consumers. In its worst form, food stamp recipients are subsidizing...

This article is a response to Professor Yair Listokin's article: Paying for Performance in Bankruptcy: Why CEOs Should be Compensated with Debt. In this response, I argue that the Professor Listokin's proposal is for empowering creditors' committees to bind all unsecured creditors to compensate...