On October 18, federal regulators released Prudential Financial—the last remaining systemically important nonbank financial institution—from enhanced government oversight. This Essay contends that Prudential's deregulation was both unwise and illegal. In removing Prudential's “systemically...

The 2008 financial crisis exposed a longstanding problem in financial regulation: traditional regulatory strategies tend to be procyclical. That is, regulatory tools—most notably, bank capital requirements—incentivize excessive credit growth during economic expansions and insufficient...

The recent financial crisis demonstrated that, contrary to longstanding regulatory assumptions, nonbank financial firms — such as investment banks and insurance companies — can propagate systemic risk throughout the financial system. After the crisis, policymakers in the United States and...

Since the 2008 financial crisis, policymakers and scholars have fixated on the problem of “too-big-to-fail” banks. This fixation, however, overlooks the historically dominant pattern in banking crises: the contemporaneous failure of many small institutions. We call this blind spot the...

Sixty years ago, Congress established a federal pre-approval regime for bank mergers to protect consumers from then-unprecedented consolidation in the banking sector. This process worked well for several decades, but it has since atrophied, producing numerous “too big to fail” banks.This...

Over the past decade, a consensus has emerged among academics and policymakers that climate change could threaten the stability of banks, insurers, and the broader financial system. In response, regulators from around the world have begun implementing policies to mitigate emerging climate risks...

After decades of disuse, antitrust is back. Renewing the United States’ longstanding distrust of concentrated economic power, antimonopoly scholars have documented widespread harms of corporate “bigness” and inspired policy initiatives to deconcentrate the U.S. economy. To date, however,...