The English law of mortgage is remarkable. Its complexity rivals that of Euler's equation and could, in the same manner, be described as ‘beautiful'. Its stubborn retention of archaic terms and concepts operates in sharp contrast to the ever changing world of finance which it inhabits. Most...

When things go wrong, it is always good to find someone to blame. As the credit crisis started to unfold in 2007, credit rating agencies (“CRAs”) emerged as the villain – or scapegoat, one might say – for commentators and regulators alike. To sum up, observers accused CRAs of doing a...

The repo market is a major source of short-term secured funding for financial institutions. Because lending in these markets is collateralized – often by high-quality securities – the stability of the market was, until recently, taken for granted by market participants and regulators....

This Article uses a rational choice analysis to simplify the increasingly complex area of international financial regulation. It proceeds by identifying four “interdependence problems” relating to harmonization of financial standards, capital requirements, bank resolution procedures, and an...

Foundational financial legislation is typically adopted in the midst or aftermath of financial crises, when an informed understanding of the causes of the crisis is not yet available. Moreover, financial institutions operate in a dynamic environment of considerable uncertainty, such that...

The existing international financial regulatory architecture is multifarious. Prevalent regulatory forums are numerous, with over-lapping spheres of activity, where all such forums share a lack of consolidated authority. Bodies like the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS), Group of 20,...

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...

Several commentators have argued that financial “reform” legislation enacted after a market crash is invariably flawed, results in “quack corporate governance” and “bubble laws,” and should be discouraged. This criticism has been specifically directed at both the Sarbanes-Oxley Act...

This Article maps financial crisis containment - extraordinary measures to stop the spread of financial distress - as a category of legal and policy choice. I make three claims.First, containment is distinct from financial regulation, crisis prevention and resolution. Containment is brief; it...