The 2010 Summer Workshop on Money, Banking, Payments and Finance met at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago this summer, for the second year. The following document summarizes and ties together the papers presented.

The events from the 2007-2009 financial crisis have raised concerns that the failure of large financial institutions can lead to destabilizing fire sales of assets. The risk of fire sales is related to exemptions from bankruptcy's automatic stay provision enjoyed by a number of financial...