Who pays for credit card rewards? This Article demonstrates that credit card rewards programs are funded in part by a highly regressive, sub rosa subsidization of affluent credit consumers by poor cash consumers. In its worst form, food stamp recipients are subsidizing frequent flier miles. The...

How did pricing for mortgage credit risk change during the years prior to the 2008 financial crisis? Using a database from a major American bank that served as trustee for private-label mortgage-backed securitized (PLS) loans, this paper identifies a decline in credit spreads on mortgages...

This United States Supreme Court amicus curiae brief was filed in the joint cases of Bank of America v. Caulkett and Bank of America v. Toledo-Cardona, which pose the question of whether a wholly underwater second-lien mortgage may be lien-stripped in a Chapter 7 bankruptcy. A previous Supreme...

The worst financial and economic crisis to hit the world's richest economies since the Great Depression inspired a flood of scholarship that straddled the disciplines of law and macroeconomics. With few exceptions, this crisis scholarship did not set out to build a new interdisciplinary movement...

This Article argues that the student loan crisis is due not to the scale of student loan debt, but to the federal education finance system's failure to utilize its existing mechanisms for progressive, income-based payments and debt cancellation. These mechanisms can make investment in higher...

This Article takes stock of post-financial crisis regulatory developments to tell a tale of two markets within a political economy of financial regulation. The financial crisis stemmed from excessive risk-taking and dodgy practices in the subprime home mortgage market, a market that owed its...

The car loan market is rife with consumer abuses: inflated pricing, discriminatory lending, and a variety of deceptions and scams. These abuses all stem from the dealer-centric nature of the auto finance market that ties the vehicle purchase to the vehicle financing.The overwhelming majority of...

What would happen if the City of Chicago, the Chicago Public Schools, and Cook County all became insolvent at the same time? How should policy-makers and courts respond? This Article argues that the pension and budget crises that have left so many local governments deeply in debt have generated...

The idea of a bankruptcy procedure for large, systemically important financial institutions exercises an irresistible draw for some policymakers and academics. Financial institution bankruptcy promises to be a transparent, law- based process in which resolution of failed financial institutions...

“Rent-a-bank” arrangements are the vehicle of choice for subprime lenders seeking to avoid state usury, licensure, and other consumer protection laws. In a rent-a-bank arrangement, a non-bank lender contracts with a bank to make loans per its specifications and then buys the loans from the...