Covered bonds, traditionally associated with European finance since the time of Frederick the Great, are now becoming an important part of U.S., Canadian, and Asian finance. In these jurisdictions, market observers and government officials perceive the safety of covered bonds as an antidote for...

The recent financial woes of Greece and other nations are reinvigorating the debate over whether to bail out defaulting countries or, instead, restructure their debt. Bailouts are expensive, in the case of Greece costing potentially hundreds of billions of euros. But a bailout was virtually...

In a prior article, Professor Schwarcz examined the factors that differentiate Enron's questionable use of off-balance sheet special purpose entities, (SPEs) from the trillions of dollars of "legitimate" securitization and other structured-finance transactions that use SPEs. The presence of...

This essay examines, what, if anything, differentiates Enron's questionable use of off-balance-sheet special purpose entries, or SPEs, from the trillions of dollars of supposedly "legitimate" securitization and other structured finance transactions that use SPEs. The inquiry is important because...