[...]This article examines the origins and early development ofthe Federal Reserve’s book-entry system—the system mostclosely associated with the elimination of definitive, orcertificated, Treasury securities. We suggest that the Fed’ssystem was the product of three important factors: the...

[...]This article describes the institutional and economic settingof the fails problem and suggests why that problem led policymakers to depart so significantly from previous debtmanagement practices. The next section sets the stage byreviewing how investors establish beneficial ownership...

This paper explains how the choice of the indirect holding system for securities settlement forced U.S.issuers to cede their shareholder data to intermediaries. Part I describes the law applicable to thetransfer of certificated securities. Part II describes how the paper-intensive process of...