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Bankruptcy

Credit Slips

A discussion on credit and bankruptcy.
By Bob Lawless, Adam Levitin, Angie Littwin, Katie Porter, John Pottow, Debb Thorne, Elizabeth Warren

Post Frequency: 12.8/day

Last Entry: April 01, 2011 at 09:01:41

The Bailout -- another perspective (part 1)

Posted on September 23, 2008
First, I want to thank Bob Lawless and the rest of the Credit Slips folks for having me back yet again -- I'm getting to be like the guest who would not leave. Second, while it might make me part...

The Right and the Left of It

Posted on September 22, 2008
As debate on the bailout continued today, a funny thing happened on the New York Times' op-ed page. William Kristol, the Times' current token-ultraconservative columnist, and Paul Krugman, who might just be the most-read liberal economist in the country, agreed...

A Modest Bailout Proposal

Posted on September 22, 2008
There are two ways to do a bailout: wholesale and retail. The current proposals all look like retail-level proposals--individually negotiated deals with separate institutions. This sort of bailout, however, is (1) high on transaction costs and (2) vulnerable to favoritism...

The Dodd Bailout Proposal

Posted on September 22, 2008
Senator Christopher Dodd is apparently circulating an alternative bailout proposal to the Treasury's. I haven't found a link to the draft legislation, but purportedly it A link to the bill can be found here. It would require financial institutions to...

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Before I Hand Over a $700 Billion Check, How About Some Balances?

Posted on September 22, 2008
When the government bailout of the financial industry was first announced, we were told more details would be forthcoming. The weekend has passed, and we still have few details. We're being told that there is a big threat, things have...

Lehman: the Filing Mystery

Posted on September 20, 2008
There's been more going on this week than financial reporters have been able to cover. Lehman's bankruptcy filing now looks like a footnote. But there's a big question that remains unanswered about Lehman: what triggered the filing? Lehman's first day...

Comments Again Unmoderated

Posted on September 20, 2008
We had a spate of spam we experienced that caused me to make the comments moderated temporarily. That seems to have stopped, and comments are again unmoderated. That means comments will appear right after you post them. We still will...

Thoughts on the Bailout Plan

Posted on September 20, 2008
[Revised 9.21.08 at 1:40 pm9.20.08 at 4:15pm] The Treasury's bailout plan is out. There's really not much to it: under the plan, the Treasury would be authorized to purchase up to $700 billion in mortgage-related assets from US headquartered financial...

Why Have the Government Bailouts Involved Only a 79.9% Equity Position?

Posted on September 19, 2008
A small but unexplained detail in the federal government's nationalization of Fannie, Freddie, and AIG has been that the deals have been structured so that the Fed or Treasury ends up owning no more than 79.9% of the nationalized entities'...

Relaxation of Regulatory Capital Rules

Posted on September 17, 2008
As I noted in an earlier blog, the Fed seems to be knocking down every firewall that exists in banking regulation in an effort to stanch the current crisis. The danger, of course, is that by demolishing prudential firewalls, the...

It's Easier to Shoot Roadkill than Big Game

Posted on September 17, 2008
I'm a little miffed about the recent FTC settlement with Bear Stearns and its subsidiary, EMC Mortgage Corporation. The complaint alleged that EMC engaged in unlawful practices in servicing consumers' home mortgage loans, including violating the Fair Debt Collections Practices...

Lehman's Bankruptcy Petition

Posted on September 15, 2008
Courtesy of Credit Slips guest blogger extraordinaire, Stephen Lubben, here is the chapter 11 bankruptcy petition for Lehman Brothers Holdings, Inc.

Lehman 2007 Bonuses?

Posted on September 15, 2008
Lehman paid out around $5.7 billion in bonuses in 2007. Are those bonuses safe? Maybe not. The bonuses might be recoverable as fraudulent transfers---transfers made while insolvent without receiving reasonably equivalent value. (UFTA 5(a)). Thus, the key question is whether...

Market Apropos Reading

Posted on September 14, 2008
As a way to searching for some historical frame of reference for the current financial crisis, I've eschewed LTCM, etc. and gone back to the granddaddy of modern market crises, 1929. To that end, I've been reading Maury Klein's Rainbow's...

Are Bank Regulators Creating More Systemic Risk?

Posted on September 14, 2008
Systemic risk seems to be the byword for financial institutions regulators now, but a trio of developments indicates that it is only deepening: 1. Professor Anna Gelpern at Rutgers-Newark notes a scary change in Federal Reserve policy: the Fed just...

As Treasury Sows, So Shall It Reap

Posted on September 14, 2008
Once the Treasury bailed out Bear Stearns with government guarantees, the next buyer of a major US financial institution might expect similar help. Barclay's was the last likely buyer of Lehman Brothers. Minutes ago, it announced that without the US....

Lose Your Home, Lose Your Vote

Posted on September 11, 2008
With both political parties are focused on Michigan this fall, high foreclosure rates and the neighborhood fallout from those foreclosures are likely to become a political issue. The GOP has announced a new way to deal with the problem: challenge...

Moderated Comments for the Time Being

Posted on September 10, 2008
We're getting lots of comment spam from organizations explaining how their payday lending operation or credit-repair firm really could help you out. Not likely. Unfortunately, to prevent this spam from becoming an even bigger problem, I've had to set the...

Weller on Time to Avoid a Banking Bailout

Posted on September 07, 2008
Former Credit Slips guest blogger Christian Weller wrote me over the weekend to point out that the charge-off rate on credit cards hit an eye-popping 5.47% for the second quarter of 2008. That led to an e-mail conversation about what...

Connect the Dots

Posted on September 06, 2008
As I was reading last night, I came across three separate little dots of information. The first dot was good news for AmEx, the credit card of choice for higher-income, less financially stressed families, from JD Powers rating company: American...

8th Circuit Rules Section 526(a)(4) Unconstitutional as Applied to Attorneys

Posted on September 05, 2008
The United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit just ruled on a matter of first impression among circuit courts--the constitutionality of the treating attorneys as "debt relief agencies" under provisions of the 2005 Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Creditors'...

Congress is Costing You Thousands of Dollars...?

Posted on September 03, 2008
The other day I heard an alarming advertisement on the radio. It began by warning that a new federal law could cost "you" thousands of dollars. It then proceeded to say that, if you want to avoid paying this money,...

Revisiting the 2005 Amendments When Times Get Hard

Posted on September 03, 2008
As a follow up to my earlier post about the forces that have made bankruptcy less workable for reorganizations, I note a new Businessweek article. Retailers are feeling the pain of reduced consumer spending and tough credit terms, and now...

Bankruptcy Filings Reach New High in August

Posted on September 02, 2008
The U.S. bankruptcy filing rate climbed again in August, reaching a new post-2005 high of 4,476 filings per day. The year 2005 is significant because it was the year that the bankruptcy law changed making it more expensive and more...

Paying for Mistakes--Redux

Posted on June 12, 2008
Well, if the comments are any indication, Tuesday's post--where I discussed articles about problems with home equity lenders pulling their lines and errors in bond ratings--seems to have a struck a nerve. Rather than reply to each, I will reply...

Senate Rule XXVI and the Consumer

Posted on June 12, 2008
Yesterday, Senator Patrick Leahy caused the Senate Committee on the Judiciary to hold a hearing with the intention of shedding some light on how Supreme Court decisions affect everyday Americans. In the middle of answering my first question, Senator Whitehouse...

Have You Already Lost?

Posted on June 10, 2008
The reasons to dispute a credit charge are many--mistakes, failure to credit a return, identity theft, a lost payment that triggered penalty interest and fees, etc. Maybe the company will be nice and settle, or maybe the charge will be...

Paying for Mistakes

Posted on June 10, 2008
Our legal system is predicated in part on the idea that liability follows error. As Colin Powell said: You break it, you buy it. Not so in world of credit, however. Here, contract apparently has the power to shift the...

The Supreme Court and the Consumer

Posted on June 10, 2008
Tomorrow, the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary will hold a hearing entitled "Short-change for Consumers and Short-shrift for Congress? The Supreme Court's Treatment of Laws that Protect Americans' Health, Safety, Jobs and Retirement." The committee will shed light...

Reading Redux

Posted on June 09, 2008
Last year around this time, I wrote a Credit Slips post about a law-professor friend whose realtor expressed shock and dismay when she and her husband insisted on reading every document she gave them to sign regarding the house they...

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