Author Archive for lawrence-cunningham
Strange (Leiter) Poll on Best Law Blogs
posted by Lawrence Cunningham
As Dan Solove notes below, a law professor at the University of Chicago, named Brian Leiter, who appears to be an avid blogger, early Monday morning posted a poll. He invited anyone who cared to rank their favorite law bloggers. Strangely, and without detailing why, the blogster cancelled the poll in the early evening that same day, after 86 votes had been cast.
The blogster’s explanation said, in all capital letters, “some have resorted to using Facebook to stack the voting, specifically against someone else.” He added: “Pretty pathetic, but what can one do.” There were no details concerning who the “some” or “someone else” were. Some bloggers and others were moderately curious. Theories run wild.
In the original poll, the blogster declared he chose the candidates on his list according to those “I find myself reading regularly” or who “colleagues mention as ones they read regularly.” He added: “To even make the list is, of course, a great honor.”
That must be a joke, of course. Humor aside, since the blogster aborted the poll after a day, and 86 votes, it seems worth wondering what the poll looked like then.
The results are posted on the Internet for public view here. Following is a simplier version, for those curious about results when the poll was aborted. Notably, they do not include the blogster. They do include several fellow bloggers here at Co-Op. Read the rest of this post »
March 9, 2010 at 8:39 pm
Posted in: Humor
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Introducing Guest Blogger Alfred Yen
posted by Lawrence Cunningham
It is a great pleasure to (re)introduce Professor Alfred C. Yen, our previous guest now returning for the next month. Fred is a leading copyright scholar and an expert in the fields of sports law, legal education, legal theory, and Asian Americans and the law.
Since 1987, he has been a professor at Boston College Law School, where he currently is a Law School Fund Scholar and Director of BC’s Emerging Enterprises and Business Law Program. Fred earned his B.S. in Mathematics and M.S. in Operations Research from Stanford University, and his J.D. from Harvard Law School. After graduating from law school, he practiced in Los Angeles for four years at Sheppard, Mullin, Richter and Hampton.
From 2000-02, Fred was Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at BC Law School and spent the spring 2000 term visiting at University of Arizona. He served as counsel of record/lead author for an amicus brief to the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of 12 copyright scholars in the case of Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music Publishing Co. and participated in preparing an amicus brief in the Napster case.
Fred has chaired the AALS’s Minority Law Teachers Section, its Section on Art Law and its Professional Development Committee; was lead organizer for the first, fifth, and tenth Conference of Asian Pacific American Law Faculty; served on the Board of Editors for the Journal of Legal Education; and has been a member of the Board of Visitors at the New England Conservatory. Most recently, he has had extensive experience serving with the ABA and AALS for annual site visits to inspect law schools around the country.
Fred’s extensive publications include the innovative casebook, prepared with his BC Law colleague, Joseph P. Liu, Copyright: Essential Cases and Materials (West 2009). A few examples of his recent scholarship include the following invited symposium contributions:
A Preliminary First Amendment Analysis of Legislation Treating News Aggregation as Copyright Infringement, Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment and Technology Law (forthcoming 2010)
A First Amendment Perspective on the Construction of Third Party Copyright Liability, 50 Boston College Law Review 1481 (2009)
Torts and the Construction of Inducement and Contributory Liability in Amazon and Visa, 32 Columbia Journal of Law and the Arts 513 (2009)
Some of Fred’s earlier well-known works can be obtained by visiting his home page.
March 2, 2010 at 7:43 am
Posted in: Administrative Announcements
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Unconscionable Arbitration Clauses: Who Decides?
posted by Lawrence Cunningham
Suppose the law is pellucid that a contract providing for resolving all disputes by arbitration requires that they be submitted to arbitration if the parties clearly and unmistakably so intend. Then suppose a boilerplate employment contract saying: “We clearly and unmistakably intend that all disputes arising hereunder, including disputes about the enforceability of this agreement, shall be submitted to arbitration.” A dispute arises. Can that dispute be litigated or is arbitration required?
The Supreme Court soon will decide, and on what this may depend. Its precedents, construing the Federal Arbitration Act, state the standard of clear and unmistakable intention. A pending case presents a contract clearly and unmistakably committing all disputes, including disputes about the contract’s enforceability, to arbitration. The opinion being reviewed, a 2-1 by the Ninth Circuit, prescribes a threshold issue for judicial decision before determining whether the dispute is subject to arbitration: whether the contract is unconscionable.
The logic? “Intentions of the parties” is a meaningful legal notion only when a bargain is the product of free exchange. The doctrine of unconscionability recognizes that some purported bargains do not follow that pattern. Instead, terms are massively one-sided, obnoxiously unfair, and presented as a take-it-or-leave it contract of adhesion. Contracts formed that way do not manifest recognizable intention that can be evaluated, whether as clear and unmistakable or otherwise. The threshold issue of unconscionability must therefore be resolved, by a court, before deciding whether the dispute is subject to binding arbitration. Or so said a majority of the Ninth Circuit panel.
February 22, 2010 at 8:09 pm
Posted in: Contract Law & Beyond
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Snow Shows City Contrasts
posted by Lawrence Cunningham
New York and Washington are two contrasting cities. People in New York walk with a pep in their step. Those in Washington pad along slowly. Workers at Starbuck’s in New York get orders going quickly and deliver services promptly. Those in Washington could care less whether their customers are in any sort of rush. Most are not.
How the towns deal with snow reflects this relative energy and apathy. True, Washington was crushed with more snow last week than New York. But both towns faced in excess of 10 inches of snow on two separate occasions these last days. The streets and sidewalks of New York were promptly cleared of all but the most innocuous snow. The city did not shut down, amid either snow fall, though schools were closed for one day in the first of the two.
In Washington, schools and everything else closed for a week. And today, a full week after the second snow storm came and went, there are still mountains of snow all around town. Snow is piled high on every street corner, including all the busy intersections, with drifts from three to ten feet. The sidewalks remain snow strewn, with small narrow pathways to walk.
Washington snow plows were busy during the snow falls and for a short bit afterwards. Then they went into hibernation. Since, no city agency, nor many private land owners, have chosen to do anything more. How hard would it be, now, to shovel the sidewalks and intersections? Wouldn’t that make it easier for people to walk around town? No doubt. But, in Washington, no one seems to care about how long it takes to get anywhere or get anything done. The snow may be piled up here for many weeks to come. In New York, this would get a mayor fired.
February 18, 2010 at 5:33 pm
Posted in: Uncategorized
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Justice Obama (not President)
posted by Lawrence Cunningham
Barack Obama is in the wrong branch of government. The Presidency suits him less well than would a Supreme Court appointment, argues my GW Law School colleague Jeff Rosen, in an essay to appear in Washington Post this weekend.
Rosen, an expert on the Court, among other things, explains how Obama’s education, temperament and experience gives him the ideal credentials and capacity to contribute as a leader on the Supreme Court. His skills, not exactly effective so far in the White House, would be better deployed engaging, as a liberal, with the current Supreme Court’s conservative majority.
Rosen notes at least two routes for Obama to move to this more natural and productive place: (a) Obama could appoint himself to the Court, to replace Justice Stevens (soon likely to retire) or (b) Obama could opt not to run for President in 2012, handing the Democratic nomination to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, with the understanding that she would appoint him.
As with anything Jeff Rosen writes, this essay is well worth reading.
February 18, 2010 at 5:07 pm
Posted in: Current Events
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For Faculty Buyouts
posted by Lawrence Cunningham
Universities nationwide are in a vise, devastating for most, but an opportunity for a few. The grip is how financial woes dictate reduced spending while rankings intensity demands enhanced research prowess.
For most universities, the cross-pressures mean spending and research curtailed. But a few universities can make the dilemma others face into an opportunity. They can shed highly-paid professors who do not conduct research and hire newer professors devoted to that. That saves money and promotes valuable research.
This strategy will not help already-established national research universities like Harvard or many University of California schools. They must rely on furloughs and other cuts to deal with fiscal adversity and cling to hope that existing research resources will hold their own. Nor would it pay off for the vast majority of universities lower in the academic hierarchy. They must not only resort to furloughs and such but are not positioned to leverage research investment.
But it may be an ideal strategy for well-established and well-regarded universities towards but not at the top of the academic hierarchy. My employer, George Washington University, may be the perfect example and probable beneficiary of this strategy. GW is a centuries-old, large and famous university. It is well-respected for excellent pedagogy, student life and prospects and a generally solid research orientation. But it is not routinely ranked as among the finest national research universities. Read the rest of this post »
February 17, 2010 at 9:23 pm
Posted in: Education
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AIG Bonuses Redux
posted by Lawrence Cunningham
Nearly this time last year, I wrote in The New York Times, that the inflammatory exchange of “nebulous assertions and hysterical threats” would not get the country any closer to resolving the fury over paying millions in bonuses to employees of American International General, a firm whose wild financial products contributed decisively to the prevailing financial calamity still throttling us, and now propped up by US government financial support.
One year on, while that fury has died out, the country is no closer to a valid substantive answer to the fundamental question of whether the law of contracts requires paying the bonuses or recognizes an excuse from doing so. Instead, tomorrow and next month the same company reportedly will pay the same employees large bonuses, with a slight discount, in the name of honoring what the company continues to call, and the US government now agrees without explanation are, “legally binding” contracts.
During the past year, Ken Feinberg, the Obama administration’s special master on compensation for bailed out companies, urged AIG to reduce the bonuses. The company reports it has done so, though only by about half what Fienberg recommended. It proposes to pay, tomorrow and next month, to the same employee group who enjoyed them last year, a total of about $200 million in bonuses. Employees receiving these amounts this month reportedly agreed to hair cuts of 10-20% off what they say their contracts require (in exchange for getting them one month early); those getting them next month reportedly refused the hair cut and insist on getting 100% of the contractually committed amount.
February 2, 2010 at 7:37 pm
Posted in: Contract Law & Beyond, Current Events
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Rather v. CBS Appeal Denied
posted by Lawrence Cunningham
Brains rightly concentrated last week on the lively Conan O’Brien-NBC contract dispute (some of my thoughts are here and here) though not to be overlooked is the final resolution of the Dan Rather-CBS contract dispute. The New York Court of Appeals ended that litigation last week by declining to hear Rather’s appeal from an intermediate court denying claims for breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty and fraud against CBS.
A September 8, 2004 broadcast Rather narrated on CBS’s 60 Minutes concerned then-President George W. Bush’s service in the Texas Air National Guard. It turned out to be erroneous and some asserted Rather knew or should have known this. CBS disavowed the broadcast and Rather made a public apology—which he later retracted, saying CBS fraudulently induced him to do it.
CBS soon removed Rather as anchor of the CBS Evening News, gave him de minimus assignments on 60 Minutes, and paid him the balance due under the contract. In dispute was exactly what those 60 Minutes assignments were and whether they conformed to the contract, plus whether Rather was entitled to work elsewhere during the period. These issues implicated the Rather-CBS employment contract, dating back 40 years and amended many times.
All seem agreed that the Rather-CBS contract provided that if CBS removed Rather as news anchor it would give him some sort of correspondents’ job on 60 Minutes and in any event pay all amounts otherwise due under the contract. All also seem agreed it paid him those amounts (some $6 million). The dispute centered on whether CBS did reassign him and whether he was entitled to work elsewhere during the period. Read the rest of this post »
January 18, 2010 at 7:48 pm
Posted in: Contract Law & Beyond
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New Journal: Accounting, Economics, and Law
posted by Lawrence Cunningham
Scholars like me interested in law as it interacts with accounting and economics will be excited to learn of a new joural offering to link these three fields and many others. Called the Journal of Accounting, Economics and Law, this is a welcome new forum to celebrate study of the relation, too often under-appreciated, among these subjects. The journal’s founding editors are three scholars I’ve come to know and admire, Michigan law prof Reuven Avi-Yonah, Yale accounting prof Shyam Sunder and University of Paris business economics prof Yuri Biondi.
I’m flattered to have been asked to serve on the Advisory Board, which boasts many luminous scholars from around the world, including, from the US, Sudipta Basu (Temple, accounting); Jonathan Glover (Carnegie Mellon, accounting); David Kennedy (Harvard, law); my colleague Larry Mitchell (GW, law); Roberta Romano (Yale, law); Martin Shubik (Yale, economics); and Lynn Stout (UCLA, law).
Following is a description of the journal. Manuscript submissions are encouraged!
“The Journal of Accounting, Economics, and Law aims to encourage a comprehensive understanding of the relationship between individuals, organizations, and institutions in economy and society.
Financial, economic and legal techniques and languages play an influential and neglected role in this relationship. Concerns of finance, control, accountability, responsibility, valuation, regulation, and governance will be raised in their connection with accounting, economics, law, sociology, anthropology, history, finance, political science, and the management and policy sciences.
The journal encourages works that seek to recombine disciplinary domains in response to practically relevant issues, while encouraging theoretical advances and insights, and comparative historical perspectives.”
January 18, 2010 at 5:50 pm
Posted in: Accounting, Economic Analysis of Law, Education, Law School (Scholarship)
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Finance Theory and Accounting Policy
posted by Lawrence Cunningham
Amid the financial crisis, considerable debate attends the enduring validity of Modern Finance Theory, including assumptions of capital market efficiency, reliability of recognized risk measurement tools and models of risk reduction through diversification. There’s little doubt that MFT has had considerable effects on positive law and legal scholarship in the past three generations. Looming are questions about whether those policies warrant reconsideration given ongoing discoveries of potential deficiencies in those models.
Some of these implications appear in contexts covered by the broad subject called Law and Accounting, topics within securities regulation, corporation law and financial reporting policy. In writing a paper addressing the influence of MFT on L&A, I’m trying to identify the most significant subjects. In outlining a draft, I’ve identified the following as the most consequential, and would be delighted to hear, through comment or email, alternative suggestions or criticisms of this initial compilation. Read the rest of this post »
January 18, 2010 at 4:48 pm
Posted in: Accounting
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Conan NBC Contract Issues II
posted by Lawrence Cunningham
My post on the Conan-NBC contract affair generated excellent comments, several gracious private emails, many cross-postings, including in the Washington Post, Conglomerate and Contracts Prof blog and, above all, lively discussion in my Contracts class. In light primarily of the latter, a few supplements follow.
January 15, 2010 at 12:16 am
Posted in: Contract Law & Beyond, Current Events
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Accounting 101 and the New Bank Tax
posted by Lawrence Cunningham
Christine Hurt and Erik Gerding have several good posts at Conglomerate on how the White House tomorrow will formally propose a tax on banks to recover losses government incurred providing capital infusions under the so-called Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).
It appears the tax would be computed based on a bank’s total liabilities other than its insured deposits, although some reports say the tax could be based on profits. Aside from recouping costs, the liability approach suggests creating an incentive for banks to avoid incurring liabilities deemed riskier than insured deposits, though without appearing to distinguish among risk types.
Aside from the inevitably contentious debate about the merits, fairness or efficiency of such a proposal, a particularly strange feature is how, according to a Wall Street Journal report, liabilities other than insured deposits would be calculated. The report says that liabilities would be calculated as “the difference between a firm’s assets and its combined equity and insured deposits.” Isn’t this a convoluted way of speaking?
Anyone vaguely familiar with business or accounting knows that owners’ equity equals total assets minus total liabilities. For five hundred years, bookkeepers have used this relationship to define the fundamental equation of accounting. Contemporary corporate law students describe equity as the residual claim on firm assets, reflecting that same subtraction of liabilities from assets.
Isn’t it confusing and backwards then to propose to measure liabilities as the difference between assets and equity (setting aside insured deposits)? Assets and liabilities are the normative categories forming the substantive content of accounting’s fundamental equation. Equity is only the difference between them.
So if you want to impose a tax on liabilities, there is no need to think of them as the difference between assets and equity. Apart from looking forward to hearing the President tomorrow defend the proposal’s merits and spell out its details, I’d like to know whether this reported feature appears and, if so, why it makes any sense.
January 13, 2010 at 4:39 pm
Posted in: Accounting
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Contract Law Issues in the Conan-NBC Affair
posted by Lawrence Cunningham
Thanks to Conan O’Brien, NBC and Fox, the country is being entertained in contract law, in a case raising some fundamental and fun issues. To resolve them requires reading the Conan-NBC contract and learning facts about its negotiation, performance and current impasse. But some main issues can be identified by making some basic suppositions.
Conan, a rising talk show host, and NBC, a major television network, entered into a contract providing that Conan would, starting six years hence, host The Tonight Show, a 60-year old program NBC always launched at 11:30 or 11:35 p.m., right after local television news.
The two performed under that contract, beginning seven months ago, but now NBC has determined that the show should be aired at 12:05 a.m., with a different talk show, hosted by The Tonight Show’s previous host, Jay Leno, aired during the previous half hour. Conan objects. A competing network, Fox, expresses interest in having Conan host a competing show. What are the main issues? Who seems to have the better position?
January 12, 2010 at 8:36 pm
Posted in: Contract Law & Beyond, Current Events
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Billionaire Girard’s Imperfect Legacy
posted by Lawrence Cunningham
In his early-19th century will, Stephen Girard, one of the richest persons in United States history, endowed a school, Girard College, for the education of white boys who were poor and orphaned. As of the early 21st century, the Philadelphia school (whose Founder’s Hall is pictured at right and from which I was graduated in 1980), educates students of all races and both genders from families with limited financial resources headed by a single parent or guardian. Thus have the scope of race and gender radically opened and the concepts of poor and orphaned subtly shifted.
Girard’s will, which elaborately detailed all aspects of the school and dedicated his entire fortune to creating it, also prohibits clergy of any sect ever from stepping foot on campus. Despite early constitutional challenges, this provision remains unchanged and generally enforced. Though there is considerable scholarship on Girard College, in law as well as sociology and other fields, relatively little intellectual energy has been devoted to discerning how and why transformations occurred as to race, gender, poverty and family, yet not as to religion.* Read the rest of this post »
January 5, 2010 at 8:59 pm
Posted in: Civil Rights, Estates and Trusts, Family Law, Feminism and Gender, Race, Religion
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Unhappy New Decade (A Rant)
posted by Lawrence Cunningham
This century’s inauspicious beginnings, marred by terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001 and 2001-02’s corporate ruination at Enron and a half-dozen likewise fraudulent industrial companies, are eerily echoed by this decade’s ill-fated close, marred by the terrorist airplane assault on Christmas Day 2009 and ruination at AIG, Bear Stearns, Citicorp and a score of likewise irresponsible financial companies in 2008-09.
Official responses to the earlier ills were remarkably unsuccessful, offering greater occasion for political grandstanding and gains to the powerful than justifiable comfort to citizens. After 9/11, the Bush administration and Congress renovated and expanded government bureaucracy and waged two costly, endless, losing wars, with the losers being travelers, soldiers and taxpayers and the winners those in command of government, the military and companies benefiting from procurement and administration.
Despite weekend blathering from an Obama administration official, suggesting the 2009 Christmas bomber’s botched plans showed the Bush-installed system works, the system failed. And despite that failure, already official responses are making air travel even more difficult, costly and painful, with no basis for believing that official steps will be on target.
The Obama administration needs to correct this by implementing recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, like matching known terrorists to airline flight reservation systems, not putting passengers through inspection charades, like removing shoes and opening lap tops, designed more to keep us flying than prevent terrorists from flying.
December 29, 2009 at 11:18 am
Posted in: Current Events
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Junior Faculty Workshops: GW in Business Law
posted by Lawrence Cunningham
For ages, academic institutions have promoted scholarly inquiry by younger faculty members, especially through the junior faculty workshop. Scores of US law schools host these regularly during terms; both the AALS and Law & Society run programs at their annual meetings; the Yale/Stanford junior faculty forum boasts wonderful annual draws; and now regional junior faculty workshops are rising, like that in the southwest next term, hosted by Arizona State.
Though these ventures focus on career stage, not field, more recent, school-sponsored forums add substantive focus. Junior faculty workshops appeared recently in environmental law (arranged jointly by Harvard, Berkeley and UCLA); family law (at Washington & Lee); national security law (at Texas); and federal courts (hosted alternately by American University and Michigan State).
You can soon add to that list business/financial law (including corporate, securities and banking) at George Washington. Next year, GW will inaugurate a series of Junior Faculty Workshops and Junior Faculty Prizes, seeking submission of papers in Fall 2010, for a celebratory academic event to be held in Spring 2011. This is one part of GW’s forthcoming Center for Law, Economics and Finance (C-LEAF), which also includes GWNY (posted about here).
While further details about these C-LEAF programs and descriptions of others must await a formal grand announcement, these Junior Scholar endeavors are ripe and time-sensitive enough to warrant advance notice.
December 18, 2009 at 11:12 am
Posted in: Corporate Finance, Corporate Law, Law School, Law School (Scholarship), Securities, Securities Regulation
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Destination Externships and GW in NYC
posted by Lawrence Cunningham
In the vanguard of legal pedagogy, my colleagues and I are constructing an enriching new feature of our curriculum, offering George Washington University Law School students the chance to spend a semester in New York City, engaging in a supervised externship and taking courses given by me and a rotating slate of my wonderful business law colleagues at GW Law.
Such a destination externship is among the most visible trends in legal education. Schools, long boasting optional local semester externships coupled with an on-campus seminar, now reach to other cities, principally Washington DC, to create destination externship programs. Just in the past few years, DC externships programs have been created by Arizona State, Duke and a Berkeley-UCLA joint venture, following along older programs led by Wash U as well as Ohio State (in partnership with GW). Students take positions in the destination city and take courses there, usually taught by the school’s own faculty, who rotate or locate in the destination town.
Many other schools took the less comprehensive step of offering to facilitate destination externships, coupled with an individually-supervised independent study paper. Again, most schools, like North Carolina, target Washington DC; some, like UCLA, target DC, and a few other big towns, like San Fran and NYC; and a handful, like Stanford, impose no geographic limits. A few schools target particular externship employers, presumably because of past experience or special screening, such as Seattle’s with the International Court of Trade in New York or Villanova’s Senate Banking Committee in Washington. Read the rest of this post »
December 16, 2009 at 2:04 pm
Posted in: Law School, Law School (Teaching)
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Book Review: Justin Fox, The Myth of the Rational Market
posted by Lawrence Cunningham
Those interested in the intellectual history of modern finance theory will find Justin Fox’s The Myth of the Rational Market riveting. It is familiar territory to anyone who has written on the subect; Fox, a writer at Time, uses the pop style of financial journalism. Even so, many useful insights appear and the arrangement suggests relationships among ideas worth exploring.
Notably, this book, which Fox began writing in 2002, is not about the current financial crisis. But of the dozen about the current crisis I’ve read so far (several reviewed on this blog) it is far more illuminating in relation to it. Fox demonstrates how the ideas hatched by academic financial economists during the past 45 years, and adopted with alacrity by nearly everyone else, from bankers to law professors to regulators, contributed significantly, though unwittingly, to prevailing woes.
Fox’s story, using lucid and engaging prose, based on well-documented research and interviews, concentrates on how academic finance departments reshaped our world, not always for the better. Beyond the book’s scope is a parallel story, yet to be written, about how law professors, applying the finance work, wrought similar change. Read the rest of this post »
December 15, 2009 at 11:30 am
Posted in: Book Reviews, Corporate Finance, Culture, Current Events
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And Justache For All at GW Law
posted by Lawrence Cunningham
The global movement to promote men’s health issues, Movember, led GW Law students to adapt it to raise money to support public interest law service. The idea behind the Movember movement is that men grow moustaches in November to raise money and awareness for men’s health issues, especially prostate and testicular cancer.
A group of wonderful GW Law students (some pictured) tweaked that in an awareness- and fund-raiser, called Justache, to make it about the Equal Justice Foundation, which funds stipends for law students working in the public interest. Begun last year, Justache invites participants to register in early November clean-shaven. For the rest of the month, men have to let the upper-lip grow and keep the rest of their face relatively clean. Women participate using fake mustaches, glued, drawn or otherwise.
Participants must raise pledges of at least $15 weekly during the month. The participant raising the most money wins first prize in the competition. Last year, most contributions came from friends passing along a dollar or two, but there were a couple big donations. With about ten competitors in 2008, Justache raised about $3,000. The fund-raiser winner was Katie Taylor, winning a $150 prize. The honor of best mustache went to Jeremy Abbott.
This year, more funds are expected. There are 35 participants signed up, including 4 women and 3 professors, with pledges raised and photographs appearing here (and rules are here). There is also a gala dinner this year, tomorrow night, where a couple dozen guests, mostly GW Law students, are paying $75 each to attend.
I was the lucky recipient of an invitation and look forward to a delightful evening with this group. (I wasn’t asked to pay the entrée fee but how can I resist contributing at least that for this wonderful cause?) Rumor is other guests may include Members of American Mustache Institute and selected Members of Congress sympathetic to the cause.
The only other school GW Law’s Justache promoters are aware of that’s done anything similar is Georgetown, although it seems to have been abandoned. An old post on mustaches from the WSJ Law Blog has a defunct link to their competition. Also, as GW Law student Dan Martin put it to me, “they apparently did it in the spring, rather than the sacred month of Movember.”
Kudos to all GW Law students behind this, with special thanks to Dan Martin (on the right in the photo here) and Greg Crespo (in the center) for the leadership and Dan for the information and dinner invite!
November 19, 2009 at 6:26 pm
Posted in: Law School
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Rep. Garrett Meddling with FASB
posted by Lawrence Cunningham
On Monday, I criticized political interference with US accounting standard setting and this morning I referenced innovative securitization deals that contributed to the credit crisis. Now I read that Rep. Scott Garrett (R-NJ) yesterday offered an amendment to the House financial reform bill to require the accounting standard setter to prepare a written study on the effects of its new accounting standards for securitizations!
The current financial crisis, plus the Enron calamity earlier this decade, made clear the vitality of having accounting standards, for securitization and similar financial transactions, that make a company’s debt obligations transparent to investors. The Financial Accounting Standards Board has done just that by issuing two new accounting standards governing such deals. As always, FASB did so after extensive study, deliberation, solicitation and evaluation of comment letters from anyone interested in providing them.
Garrett’s proposed amendment would now impose a legal obligation on FASB to do a more particular study, in cooperation with various federal regulatory agencies, on the effects of the new standards on companies who do securitization deals. This is objectionable for at least the following reasons: (1) it is inherently objectionable political intermeddling into the independent accounting standard setting process; (2) it is the result of lobbying campaigns by banks and others in the business of securitization; and (3) it caters to those lobbying interests rather than focusing on those for whom accounting standards are written: investors.
Rep. Garrett says he’s worried that making securitizations more transparent to investors would make it more difficult for banks and other financial institutions to do them. That would, in turn, mean reduced availability of consumer credit. It is as if the Representative has not read a single newspaper in the last two years. After all, it does not appear that the biggest problems in the country the past decade were consumers borrowing too little or banks doing too few opaque financing deals.
November 19, 2009 at 10:45 am
Posted in: Accounting
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