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Credit Slips 

A discussion on credit and bankruptcy.
Post Frequency: 12.8/day Last Entry: April 01, 2011 at 09:01:41 Recent Entries: 1126
By Bob Lawless, Adam Levitin, Angie Littwin, Katie Porter,
John Pottow, Debb Thorne, Elizabeth Warren
Go to Credit Slips, find other Bankruptcy blogs, or browse all law blogs.
Financial Consumer Protection--The Last Thing We Need Is Federal Banking Regulator Oversight
Posted on March 16, 2010Yesterday, I was talking with former Credit Slips guest blogger Pat McCoy about perhaps reprising that role for us. McCoy is a law professor at the University of Connecticut and, along with her co-author Kathleen Engel, was writing about Wall...
Of Cyborgs and Repo Men
Posted on March 15, 2010The New York Times may have thought it had the scoop on the repo man of the future, but the new movie Repo Men has it beat by several hundred years. Jude Law and Forrest Whitaker star as space-age repossession...
Thank You Anna Gelpern
Posted on March 15, 2010We've enjoyed having Anna Gelpern as a guest blogger for the past couple weeks. (Is there anyone who can write, much less say, "fortnight" any more?). Anna's saucy and erudite posts have provided a real education in some very timely...
Debt and the People, Part II: The Hot ... and Concluding Disquietudes
Posted on March 15, 2010This last post is about old news that I have been avoiding. Even so, it would be malpractice to omit Ecuador from even this partial snapshot of the sovereign debt landscape circa 2010. So on with its latest debt default,...
De-Detour: CDS Nudity on the Exotic Fringe
Posted on March 12, 2010A recent FT Editorial implicates a topic I -- basis risk in emerging markets (EM) credit derivatives. The problem is this: If you want to buy protection against default by a big U.S. firm--say, GM--you buy a CDS contract on...
Avoid Chapter 11 at All Cost!!!
Posted on March 11, 2010One thing that I think we all agreed on in yesterday's panel on "too big to fail" was that many of the plans for a separate resolution authority are being driven toward a FDIC model by Treasury and the Fed,...
Debt and the People, Part I: The Cold
Posted on March 11, 2010In earlier posts, I considered two trends: first, the eroding boundary between chronically defaulting sovereign and risk-free government debt; and second, the comfy symbiosis among feckless rules, fudged government accounts and basic financial engineering...
In Case You Didn't Feel Like Showing Up
Posted on March 09, 2010I'm on a panel tomorrow at the Dow Jones Restructuring and Turnaround Summit about how the government should address "too big to fail" and the collapse of systemically important firms. For those of you who won't find yourself in lower...
Early Thoughts on Milavetz
Posted on March 08, 2010This morning, the Supreme Court issued its decision in Milavetz on prebankruptcy attorney-client counseling and bankruptcy attorney disclosures. I've got to get to a meeting so I don't have time for an extended post. The early reporting has been technically...
Half-Empty or Half-Full: The February Bankruptcy Figures
Posted on March 08, 2010Pick which blog post you want to read: The year-over-year increase in bankruptcy filings for February hit its lowest mark since the trough in filings after the 2005 changes to the bankruptcy. February saw only 6,170 filings per business day...
Foreclosures: What About the States?
Posted on March 05, 2010Here's something that's puzzled me: no state has yet to enact any serious foreclosure moratorium. In the 1930s, these moratoria sprouted up all around the country, and foreclosure rates (but not default rates), were much lower than today. California imposed...
While everyone (including me) is talking about too big to fail . . .
Posted on March 05, 2010The small banks are dropping like flies. At this rate the only banks left are all is going to be too big to fail.
The Ban on "Universal Default"
Posted on March 04, 2010Did Congress' effort to protect you from your card company with the Credit CARD Act inspire you to pore over the new Cardmember "Agreement" that probably arrived in your mailbox this week? I actually read at least part of mine,...
Do Not Miss
Posted on March 03, 2010William White has a rocking op-ed in the FT arguing that debt overhang, notably in the U.S. household sector, makes fiscal and monetary policy ineffective. White is one of the early pre-pre-pre-crisis proponents of macroprudential regulation, and always worth tuning...
Half a (Rotten) Loaf is Worse Than None at All: The Fate of the CFPA
Posted on March 02, 2010As political wrangling over financial services reform continues, the creation of an independent CFPA remains a major bone of contention. A number of compromise proposals have been bruited: creating an independent bureau in Treasury, vesting the power in the Fed,...
It's All Greek to Me FAQ, Part II: Euroliar Loans
Posted on March 02, 2010While they hold some allure for the pointy-headed company I normally keep, the old fixing-floating-IMF-bailout handwringing detailed in my last post is nothing to the titillation of the Goldman-CDS angle on the Greek drama. FAQ series continues with a focus...
Thank You to Jim Hawkins
Posted on March 01, 2010On behalf of the Credit Slips bloggers, I want to thank Jim Hawkins from the University of Houston Law Center for joining us the past couple of weeks. Jim has been a new voice on consumer debt issues and has...
It's All Greek to Me FAQ, Part I: Power of Commitment
Posted on March 01, 2010This follows on Stephen's post earlier in an effort to help sort through the Greece-Goldman-Germany love triangle and the deafening din surrounding its implosion. This post sets out the background for the Greek crisis, mulls law as a macro commitment...
Fringe Banking, Financial Distress, and the Consumer Financial Protection Agency
Posted on February 28, 2010I'd like to say thanks again for the chance to share some thoughts at Credit Slips. I've really enjoyed the comments. I wanted to end with a post about a current issue before Congress. One reason it is important to...
De-Detour: FCIC Economists' Forum
Posted on February 27, 2010I spent most of Friday at the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission forum, which we are hosting at the American University Washington College of Law. I am going back on Saturday morning. The forum is open to the public, the papers...
Why Sovereign Is the New Black
Posted on February 27, 2010I am grateful to Adam and the Credit Slips team for indulging this detour. After years on the exotic fringe of the legal academy sustained by the entrepreneurial spirit of Mitu Gulati, sovereign debt has blown right past the sleepy...
What? Sovereign Debt Edition
Posted on February 27, 2010I'm sure our current guest blogger will have more to say about the current state of the sovereign debt markets, but I could not resist commenting on this rather confusing and odd article in today's FT about Goldman and Greece....
Welcome Back Anna Gelpern
Posted on February 26, 2010The Slips is pleased to welcome back Professor Anna Gelpern of American University's Washington College of Law for another guest bloggership. Anna's written extensively on sovereign debt crises (see here, here, here, here, here, here, and here, among other papers),...
A Snow Day Diversion
Posted on February 26, 2010My new Economist arrived today, cover story is The Data Deluge, And How to Handle It: A 14-Page Special Report. Next week they'll have a cover story on irony.
Why Don?t People Sue Their Doctors Over Bad Credit Advice?
Posted on February 25, 2010In my first post, I mentioned how common it is for fertility doctors (and other doctors, as the comments point out) to direct patients to specific third party creditors. Sometimes doctors direct patients to credit sources that are inferior to...
Conference on Subprime Lending
Posted on February 24, 2010An upcoming conference on subprime lending will feature empirical work from a data set of subprime loans put together by a collaboration of consumer advocates and professors. A brief conference announcement and link to the conference website is below...
Credit Reporting in Fringe Credit Markets
Posted on February 22, 2010Credit histories are an important part of what separates mainstream credit from fringe credit. One reason I believe that fringe banking is unlikely to cause financial distress is that fringe credit firms do not use credit histories to evaluate the...
Reflections on Credit CARD Act Day
Posted on February 22, 2010Today most of the provisions of the Credit CARD Act went into effect. It's been widely noted in various media outlets. The CCARD Act will surely cause some changes in the credit card industry's business model. I think there's scant...
Fringe Banking and Financial Distress
Posted on February 19, 2010The answers to the question about the definition of financial distress track with my thinking too. On the one hand, we could define financial distress loosely and almost everything counts (like forgetting your wallet and needing to pay for parking).....
What is Financial Distress?
Posted on February 18, 2010I?m new to teaching, so a lot of times I encounter new terms. I started working on a paper last year about the relationship between fringe banking (payday loans, rent-to-own, etc.) and financial distress. I realized half way into the...
Previous | Next
More owners facing foreclosure - Many paying a price for easy credit
Timothy Duggan, Shareholder in Stark & Stark's Real Estate Gro...
Ex-Spouses Can Ruin Each Other's Credit
Ex-Spouses Can Ruin Each Other's Credit By Kimberly Palmer, US New...
How Will My Divorce Affect My Credit?
A very good overview of some of the credit issues in divorce. ----...
Truth In Lending Act
Consumer Loans and Consumer Credit Protection Act
Bankruptcy Law
A complete prime (pre-2005)
Collection Agencies and Creditors
How to deal and stop the harassment
Federal Adoption Tax Credit
Financial Incentive for Adoptive Parents
My fiance's check is DD into a local credit union. Bank seems to have a pattern of "invisibly holding" charges from the debit card until just HOURS before his DD is processed (and this is after hours, of course). Over th
Have your fiance take the information you've collected and go into the bank...
What can i do about continued charges on closed account?
IMMEDIATELY call your bank and report the charges as fraudulent. They will be ab...
My father died and left my mother $200,000 (life insurance) My Mother died 2 years later leaving my sister and I with both about $75,000 each. (including house/vehicles/belongings which I never got). We were supposed to
File a police report. Two police reports, one for you and one for your sister. G...
Must I refinance my house aftering taking full ownership after a divorce via a quit claim?
When financing there are at least two documents...the mortgage and the note. The...
Should I return a phone call from a collection agency that doesn't name their client in the message?
In the county of the state where I live in the US, I am able to go to the websit...

My fiance's check is DD into a local credit union. Bank seems to have a pattern of "invisibly holding" charges from the debit card until just HOURS before his DD is processed (and this is after hours, of course). Over th
Have your fiance take the information you've collected and go into the bank...
What can i do about continued charges on closed account?
IMMEDIATELY call your bank and report the charges as fraudulent. They will be ab...
My father died and left my mother $200,000 (life insurance) My Mother died 2 years later leaving my sister and I with both about $75,000 each. (including house/vehicles/belongings which I never got). We were supposed to
File a police report. Two police reports, one for you and one for your sister. G...
Must I refinance my house aftering taking full ownership after a divorce via a quit claim?
When financing there are at least two documents...the mortgage and the note. The...
Should I return a phone call from a collection agency that doesn't name their client in the message?
In the county of the state where I live in the US, I am able to go to the websit...








