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...

Private risk capital has virtually disappeared from the U.S. housing finance market since the market's collapse in 2008. This Article argues that private risk capital is unlikely to return on any scale until the informational problems in housing finance are resolved so that investors can...

Recent proposals to address housing market troubles through principal modification raise the possibility that such policies could increase the cost of credit in the mortgage market. We explore this using historical variation in federal judicial rulings regarding whether Chapter 13 bankruptcy...

Mandatory use of swaps clearinghouses represents the principal regulatory response to the systemic risk from credit derivatives. Scholars are divided on the merits of clearinghouses; some scholars see them as reducing systemic risk, others contend they increase it. The case for swaps...

Asset bubbles come and go. Only the housing bubble, however, brought the economy to its knees. Why? What makes housing uniquely a cause of macroeconomic risk? This article examines the workings of the housing market as well as theories and empirical evidence about the housing bubble. It explains...

Two parallel real estate bubbles emerged in the United States between 2004 and 2008, one in residential real estate, the other in commercial real estate. The residential real estate bubble has received a great deal of popular, scholarly, and policy attention. The commercial real estate bubble,...

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...

Fictitious scare statistics have featured prominently in recent debates over consumer credit policy. The latest example is David Evans and Joshua Wright's statistical claims about the impact of the Consumer Financial Protection Agency Act on the cost and availability of consumer credit and...