The most important lesson we can learn from the financial crisis is what caused it. Even though the Dodd-Frank Act (DFA) has been signed into law, this is still an important question. If we do not attribute the crisis to the right cause, we could well stumble into another crisis in the future;...

The portfolios of mortgages and mortgage-backed securities held by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have now become the central issue in the legislative battle over improvements in their regulation. But it was not always so. When the notion of improving their regulation was first advanced in 2000, the...

There is little reason, from an economic perspective, for banking regulation. Incentives exist, or can be created through private systems, to protect against the risks that are usually cited in defense of banking regulation. Moreover, the private systems would remove much of the cost and risk...

Following the costly banking and thrift crises of the 1980's and early '90s, the United States dramatically reformed the federal government safety net for depository institutions, which many blamed for the outbreak and high cost of the crises. The reforms, highlighted by the 1991 Federal Deposit...

Jonathan Macey's recent article quot;Commercial Banking and Democracy: The Illusive Quest for Deregulationquot; offers such a problematic argument for banking regulation that it implies such regulation is losing its intellectual foundation

The Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC), established by the Dodd-Frank Act, has the extraordinary authority to designate financial firms as systemically important financial institutions (SIFIs). Firms so designated are then turned over to the Fed for “stringent” regulation. FSOC's...

We analyze the ability of the “Single Point of Entry” strategy (SPOE) to resolve large banks without financial market disruption. We identify several legal and financial impediments that could prevent SPOE's use. In particular, Title II of the Dodd-Frank Act was conceived by Congress as an...