Welcome to Philomila Tsoukala

On behalf of Credit Slips, I wanted to welcome Professor Philo Tsoukala from the Georgetown University Law Center. Professor Tsoukala will be joining as a guest blogger, and she will be commenting especially on the Greek debt situation and how the debt situation is affecting everyday life in Greece. Professor Tsoukala specializes in family law and is the co-author of a forthcoming new edition of a well-respected textbook in the field. At Georgetown, she teaches classes in family law and EU law as well as a seminar on the regulation of the family and the market. We're very happy that she has agreed to lend her expertise to our online community.

And Now Featuring Melissa Jacoby

On behalf of all the Credit Slips bloggers, it is my pleasure to announce the permanent return of Professor Melissa Jacoby as one of our "Occasionals." For the past several weeks, she had doing some guest posts, but we are very happy that she has agreed to stick around. Melissa is a professor at the University of North Carolina School of Law and a leading expert on bankruptcy law with a number of prominent studies on medical debt as well as housing issues. As one of the founding members of Credit Slips, Melissa is one of the reasons we're here at all. Welcome back.

SOPA, PIPA, and Us

Given what a small part of the web we are, it seemed a little melodramatic for Credit Slips to go dark over the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA). It did seem appropriate at least to add my own voice to the opposition.

If you are not familiar with these heavy-handed attempts to police intellectual property piracy, plenty of information is available from Wikipedia here (and, yes, that link still works today, January 18). Some of the provisions in these acts could have implications for small sites such as this.

Although the government should stop the theft of intellectual property, these proposed laws go way too far, sacrificing too much freedom in the name of property rights. In particular, it disappoints me that some senators who have been champions of consumer protection have put themselves on the wrong side of this issue. Specifically, Senators Patrick Leahy, Sherrod Brown, Dick Durbin, Charles Schumer, Al Franken, and Sheldon Whitehouse are listed on THOMAS as sponsors or co-sponsors of PIPA (S. 968). It would be great to see these senators lead a retreat from these onerous pieces of legislation.

Those are my personal views as blog administrator. And, that is probably a point we don't emphasize enough on this blog -- everyone is speaking for himself or herself only.

Welcome Back Melissa Jacoby

A few evenings ago, a wonderful e-mail arrived in my inbox from Melissa Jacoby, the Graham Kenan Professor of Law at the University of North Carolina. Melissa was one of the founding members of Credit Slips, and she was writing to accept our invitation to come back and guest blog. Melissa is a nationally recognized expert on bankruptcy, debtor-creditor, and commercial law. It is great to have her voice back with us even if it is just for a while.

Regulatory Bankruptcy

My Jotwell review of Sarah Woo's last article is here. 

How to Find Me

I've had a series of funny phone calls this week, in which the speaker expresses total shock that I answer the phone. While I am notorious for never answering my phone, the real cause of the callers' surprise is that the number where I answer is sometimes the third one they have called looking for me. Why? I just relocated to Irvine, California as I've joined the faculty of the UC Irvine School of Law, after a year-long visit at Harvard Law School and several years on the faculty at the University of Iowa College of Law. For those of you looking for detailed information, the bio link on the Credit Slips homepage will get you what you need.

Happy Fifth Birthday

On July 18, 2006, a few academics studying bankruptcy and debt decided to take a whirl on putting up a blog making today the fifth anniversary of Credit Slips' launch. According to Site Meter, we have had over 1.4 million visits during that time resulting in over 2.3 million page views. Those numbers do not even count those of you who read us in places like Google Reader.

We will continue to try to do what we do best, discussing credit and bankruptcy issues from a policy perspective. We cannot pretend we don't make mistakes, but what we try to bring you are independent perspectives. Credit Slips does not accept advertising or solicited guest posts (and you would be amazed how many people write wanting us to host their blog post on some industry topic).

Thank you for your readership and interest. It has sustained us for five years, and we to keep this discussion going for a long time.

Sarah Woo

I am sad to report that my co-author, and recent Credit Slips guest blogger, Sarah Woo of NYU recently passed away after a long illness. She was one of the few who easily bridged the devide between banking and bankruptcy, and will be missed.

Thanks for the Insurance Memories (and Lessons), Professor Schwarcz

This past week we were lucky to be edified by guest blogger Professor Daniel Schwarcz from the University of Minnesota School of Law. I bet Daniel is a great teacher. I mean, the guy can make insurance interesting, if not downright scandalous!

There was tons of foot traffic in the way of comments on Daniel’s blogs, especially the one about whether you can predict if your own insurer will pay large claims, and the one about how lenders should be handing insurance payouts when a home is in default or foreclosure. Daniel finished with his own Top 10 for  insurance reform. By the way, regarding his nutritional labels, this exact idea has been floated as a way to make disclosures more meaningful in all consumer contexts. Now let's just hope the regulators are listening.

 

 

Welcome Guest Blogger and Insurance Guru Daniel Schwarcz

This week we are a happy to welcome guest blogger Professor Daniel Schwarcz from the University of Minnesota School of Law. Daniel has done some great research in the area of property and casualty insurance and consumer protection. He is also very interested in consumer perspectives in health insurance and regulatory design in general. We blogged about one if his articles on April 22, 2011, and his work has gained national attention  elsewhere as well. 

We know Daniel writes lots of articles as well as a widely used textbook on insurance law, but we are excited to hear some of his more informal musings about all things debtor-creditor, especially about the disconnect between transparency in the credit world and the lack of transparency in insurance. Thanks Daniel, and enjoy the blogspace!

And Occasionally Jean Braucher

On behalf of everyone at Credit Slips, I am extremely pleased to announce that Jean Braucher will be joining us as an "Occasional." Jean will be well known to many Credit Slips readers and has been a past guest contributor. She is, of course, the Roger C. Henderson Professor of Law at the University of Arizona and has published widely in the areas of bankruptcy and commercial law. Jean's list of publications is too long to capture in a short summary other than to say she is one of the leading bankruptcy scholars in the country. She just completed a stint as the Robert Zinman Resident Scholar at the American Bankruptcy Institute and also serves on the board of directors for the National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys.

And for those who are wondering: the "Occasionals" are a category of bloggers here that we established a while back. The main difference between the "Occasionals" and the "Regulars" is just the expected frequency of postings.

Greetings from Woodstock Institute

Hello, Credit Slips readers.  My name is Geoff Smith.  I am Senior Vice President at Woodstock Institute, and I will be joining you as a guest blogger this week.  As Bob Lawless pointed out, my guest blogging coincides with the release of a Woodstock Institute report examining patterns of personal bankruptcy filings in Cook County, IL (where Chicago is located and Woodstock Institute is based).  I will talk about that report in more detail in a forthcoming post, but first I wanted to give a bit of background on Woodstock and myself.

FeedBurner & E-mail Subscriptions

By popular demand, I have made some changes to the news feed for Credit Slips. The first change is that the Credit Slips feed is now available through FeedBurner. I am told this change should not affect anyone who already has subscribed to the Credit Slips feed because FeedBurner will automatically be sending your Credit Slips posts to your old feed. It worked for me although I did get some duplicate posts immediately after I switched us to FeedBurner, but the duplicates might have been because I was the one fiddling with the settings.

The reason I switched to FeedBurner was to implement the second change, which many people had requested. You now can sign up to receive Credit Slips posts via e-mail. Just enter your e-mail address in the box to the right, and FeedBurner will start sending our posts to your inbox. You can configure how you receive those e-mails through FeedBurner.

If you are wondering "What's a news feed?," you can ignore this post. You will still be able to read Credit Slips the old-fashioned way by clicking on a link or a bookmark in your web browser.

Thanks to Lois Lupica

Credit Slips and its readers benefitted from the thoughtful posts of Prof. Lois Lupica during the last week. Her study on attorneys fees in consumer bankruptcy will surely contribute to policy discussions about reforming the bankruptcy system, and I'm glad to have had a preview of how Prof. Lupica is going about this important work. We hope she'll join us again as her work progresses to provide additional findings and insights. Thanks from your fans at Credit Slips! 

Welcome to Lois Lupica

This week Credit Slips will feature posts from  Professor Lois Lupica. She is the Maine Law Foundation Professor of Law at the University of Maine Law School and counsel at Thompson & Knight LLP. Lupica's published works include writings about both business and consumer credit issues, including an early and important work on asset securitization and a piece on the effects of revised Article 9. My own personal favorite is the empirical study she authored with Jay Zagorsky on how debtors fare after bankruptcy. The study is sobering, suggesting that debtors may lag for a decade or more after filing behind similarly situated people who avoided bankruptcy. 

Professor Lupica is currently working on a large scale study of attorneys' fees in consumer bankruptcy cases. Funded by a grant from the ABI Endowment Fund, the study has already resulted in one piece, The Costs of BAPCPA: Report of the Pilot Study of Consumer Bankruptcy Case. I hope she will share more of her findings with Credit Slips. The increase in attorneys fees remains on the most enduring changes wrought by BAPCPA on the bankruptcy system. 

Welcome, Lois Lupica! 

Congratulations Bob Lawless!

Credit Slips' Very Own Robert M. Lawless was inducted into the American College of Bankruptcy last night at a ceremony at the Supreme Court of the United States. I'm hopeful that we can soon post a picture of the tuxedo-clad inductee. Congratulations Bob on a well-deserved honor!

Thank You to Sarah Woo

On behalf of the Credit Slips regulars, I wanted to thank Sarah Woo for joining us as a guest blogger. Her posts on Lehman, DIP financing, and the transmission of risk from financial sectors to the real sectors of the economy all had one underlying theme: those of us working in the credit and bankruptcy areas need to pay more attention to financial regulation. Well, yeah, we all should pay more attention to lots of things, but Woo's work makes very important and valuable points about how financial regulation can affect debt and bankruptcy outcomes in very specific and sometimes very surprising ways. She is a new face in the academy working on issue of debt, financial regulation, and bankruptcy, and I am sure we will hear a lot more from her in the years to come. Thank you, Sarah, for joining us, and please come back soon!

Thank You's and Welcomes

For the past ten days, Professor Jonathan Lipson has been a guest blogger with a series of posts that left few of our readers indifferent. Love 'em or hate 'em, the posts on everything from empirical methodology to state bankruptcy seemed to strike a chord with our readers. One of the things about blogging, especially when you are a visitor for a week, is that you put your opinions (and punctuation) out there for everyone to take a shot at. On behalf of everyone at Credit Slips, I want to thank Jonathan for joining us for a week and putting himself into the fray.

Joining us as a guest for this coming week will be Professor Sarah Woo of New York University. At the UCLA "Big Bankruptcy" workshop, I had the pleasure of meeting Woo. She is doing some important work on how financial and bank regulation affects specific outcomes in the bankruptcy courts. The intersection of these two bodies of law are important yet underdeveloped theoretically and empirically. Welcome Sarah.

Lipson's Back, Is He Going to Be Trouble? (Hey-La, Lipson's Back)

When you see him coming, you had better cut out on the double. Hey-la, hey-la. Lipson's Back
You've been spreading lies that I was untrue. Hey-la . . . OK, I'll stop.

We're happy to announce that Jonathan Lipson, the Foley & Lardner Professor of Law at the University of Wisconsin, will be joining us again as a guest blogger. Our long-time readers will remember that Lipson has blogged here in the past, and we are glad that he agreed to reprise his role. The short-term plan is that he will live blog the "Big Bankruptcy" conference organized by Professor Lynn LoPucki and being held at UCLA later this week. Lipson tells me that he also has a few other posts in the works. Welcome back, Jonathan.

Many Thanks to Troy McKenzie

On behalf of Credit Slips, I want to thank Troy McKenzie for joining us a guest blogger. Professor McKenzie's posts raised lots of interesting questions about attorneys' fees in bankruptcy and the Constitutional status of bankruptcy courts. I'm glad to see that his posts spurred some good discussion. Thank you again Troy!

Welcome Troy McKenzie

Credit Slips would like to welcome Troy McKenzie as a guest blogger. Troy is an Associate Professor of Law at NYU Law School, where he teaches bankruptcy, civil procedure, and complex litigation classes.  Troy's scholarship has focused on the intersection of bankruptcy and Constitutional law, an often neglected area of legal scholarship.  Generally, Constitutional law experts aren't well versed in bankruptcy law and policy and don't wish to become so, while bankruptcy experts often shy away from the still unsettled Constitutional status of the US bankruptcy court system, and its uncomfortable non-Article III existence.  

Troy's background spans both fields--as a bankruptcy practitioner at Debevoise and Plimpton and as a law clerk for the US Supreme Court.  (Note how few bankruptcy scholars--or practitioners--have clerked for the Supreme Court--I can think of all of 3.  A wag might note how problematic the Supreme Court's bankruptcy jurisprudence is...)  Troy's scholarship in the Constitutional dimensions of bankruptcy goes where others fear to tread, and we're the richer for it.  Welcome Troy!

Losing Part of Our Foundation

Back in June 2006, there were seven professors who were working on the Consumer Bankruptcy Project. We were knee-deep in the minutiae of drafting surveys, codebooks, and interviews. We started Credit Slips as a way to have some intellectual interaction among the team. We were not too worried about having readers. The point was for us to have a place to write for each other.

WIthout these founding members, Credit Slips would never have gotten started let alone have found any readers. Three of our founders have recently decided to retire from Occasional status: Debb Thorne at Ohio University, John Pottow at the University of Michigan, and Angie Littwin at the University of Texas. As their schedule permits, we hope that they will join us from time to time as guests.

We'll miss their valuable insights. Thank you, Debb, John and Angie (as well as our other retired founding members Melissa Jacoby and Elizabeth Warren) for helping to build Credit Slips into the blog it has become today. Whatever success we have is because of our contributors, commenters, and readers.

Many Thanks to Annelise Riles

On behalf of Credit Slips, I wanted to thank Annelise Riles for joining us a guest blogger. Professor Riles brought fresh and new perspectives to organizational and regulatory problems we often discuss here on Credit Slips. Her posts offered a perspective into the insights that lawyers can learn about institutional design from fields such as anthropology and sociology. Again, Annelise, many thanks for taking the time to join us.

Welcome Annelise Riles

Credit Slips would like to welcome Annelise Riles as a guest blogger. Annelise is the Jack G. Clarke Chair in Far East Legal Studies and Professor of Anthropology at Cornell University, where she teaches in both the Law School and the Anthropology Department. Annelise's work examines financial institutions and networks from an anthropological perspective.  

As a would-be historian, I am a particular fan of anthropological (and sociological) studies of consumer finance and the institutions involved there in. There aren't many, but they bring a much needed dose of reality to a field that is too often analyzed through economic theory. Legal scholarship rarely engages in the sort of qualitative field interviews that are the bread and butter of anthropology. (I recognize that there are important exceptions, including work by co-bloggers and past guest bloggers.) This is not just a matter of pesky internal review boards, but simply because this method of acquiring knowledge is not hard-wired into legal academia. (Given that it is somewhat analogous to the deposition, there's a lingering irony.) While we are not all going to becoming anthropologists, there's an enormous amount we can learn from the anthro literature about how regulators and market participants actually think , and I'm thrilled that Annelise will be sharing some of the insights with us on the Slips. Welcome Annelise!

Slipping into Arizona . . .

for the ABI Winter Leadership Meeting, where I'll be speaking as part of the Saturday morning plenary session on professional fees in "mega" chapter 11 cases. I'm in Arizona for less than 20 hours, but I urge our loyal Credit Slips readers to introduce themselves if you see me in the halls.

Hats off to Ethan Cohen-Cole

Credit Slips was fortunate to enjoy posts last week by Ethan Cohen-Cole. It's always fun to have non-law profs bring their perspectives to this blog, and Ethan offered up interesting thoughts on a range of issues, from the immediate (perhaps imminent)  mortgage foreclosure compensation fund, to the big picture future of whether the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau can avoid regulatory capture. Thanks for your time and your ideas, Ethan.

Welcome to Ethan Cohen-Cole

Credit Slips welcomes Ethan Cohen-Cole. He is an Assistant Professor at the Robert H. Smith College of Business at the University of Maryland--College Park. Previously, he was a research economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. He has done very interesting research on consumer credit, including work on access to credit after bankruptcy and redlining in credit card markets. You can review and download his research papers here. Prof. Cohen-Cole also studies banking regulation. We look forward to his posts, and your comments on them. 

No Thank You to Alan White -- We Have a Better Idea

Our regular readers will remember that, back in August, Professor Alan White of Valparaiso University kindly agreed to share his thoughts with us as a guest blogger. Our usual and customary practice is to put up a post thanking our guest bloggers at the end of their time with us. Those of you keeping score at home will note that there has been no such post. That's right, we have said no thank you to Alan.

Instead, we had a much better idea. Alan will join Credit Slips as one of our occasional bloggers. He will post here with his usual fantastic insights on real estate and mortgage issues as they relate to the sort of topics we cover here on Credit Slips. Alan also will continue posting on more general consumer law topics with our friends over at the Consumer Law & Policy Blog with some occasional cross-posting between the two blogs.

Just Can't Get Enough

For those of you desiring even more chapter 11 discussion, I've added another hat to my collection:  my first of hopefully many posts is up on the New York Times' Dealbook blog. Don't worry, I'm not giving up this gig.

Welcome Back, Jean Braucher

We are please to welcome back Jean Braucher, the Roger C. Henderson Professor of Law at the University of Arizona. Professor Braucher will be joining us a guest blogger, offering her always insightful observations about the bankruptcy and consumer debt scene. Thank you, Jean, for spending a little bit of your time with us.

Welcome to Alan White

We are happy to have Professor Alan White of Valparaiso University School of Law join us as a guest blogger. White joined the Valparaiso faculty in 2007 after substantial practice experience with Community Legal Services in Philadelphia. In practice, White filed numerous chapter 7s and 13s on behalf of consumer debtors and even represented consumer creditors on the creditors' committee in a corporate chapter 11. His policy views are leavened with a good dose of reality about what happens on the ground, and consequently his academic work has had immediate effect. Also, he maintains a web page where he posts regular analysis of foreclosures and modifications from securitized mortgage data. Welcome, Alan.

Credit Slips & the WSJ's Washington Wire

Mary Pilon of the Wall Street Journal's Washington Wire has a post up about Elizabeth Warren's blogging here at Credit Slips. Long-time readers will undoubtedly remember many of these posts highlighted there. I'll highlight two others. First, there is a post dated September 14, 2008, just after the U.S. government's bailout of Bear Stearns with some prescient comments about what the future would hold:

More bailouts will be needed, and, at some point, even the American taxpayer can't handle it. Bailouts will not put a stop to the underlying problem: we can't find a bottom in the housing market. Until that happens, the value of financial instruments based on those mortgage obligations will keep falling, and the worldwide market will keep sliding toward collapse.

Second, one of my favorite posts from Warren was this one about the distinction between facts and deductive reasoning. We used this great example in the introductory materials to our empirical methods text.

Four Years of the Slips

Over last weekend, we passed the four-year anniversary of Credit Slips. We've been blessed to have the bit of modest success we have enjoyed. As I wrote once, I was amazed the day that I typed in "creditslips.org," and the Intertubes took me to this site we had set up. The idea that anyone would read or care about what got posted here was even more novel.

Thanks for reading and participating as part of our little corner of the Tubes. We'll keep plugging away, and we hope you like the new format.

And, yes, the image is relevant to this post. Katie will explain why in the comments.

Thank You to Henry Sommer

On behalf of Credit Slips, I wanted to thank Henry Sommer for joining us as a guest blogger. Henry is one of the leaders of the consumer bankruptcy bar, and it was our privilege to have him share his views as part of Credit Slips. Andrew Leonard over at How the World Works and Brian Wolfman at Consumer Law & Policy from Public Citizen both noted his posts (and, thanks for doing so). It is always good to have leading practitioners like Henry join us for the important perspectives they can offer about how things are working in practice instead of just in theory.

New Looks

Credit Slips is featuring a new look. We've tried to make the site design a little cleaner and easier to read. Plus, we've moved some things around, but all of the same information should be there. This is a do-it-yourself web site. Everything should be working, but please post a comment if you find a glitch. Also, we'd like to hear any suggestions for formatting and design. I can't promise we can implement everything, but we'll do our best to make the blog as useful as possible to our readers.

New Faces, Old Faces, and a Few Changes

As the Credit Slips blogger with the oldest face, I probably should be announcing a new face for myself. Instead, it's the blog that is going to get some new faces and is going to see a few changes. Before discussing those changes, I have been remiss for not thanking Jason Kilborn for his time with us. As always, Jason updated us on issues happening around the world and offered his always insightful take on them.

Welcome Art Wilmarth!

Credit Slips is pleased to welcome its newest guest blogger, Professor Arthur E. Wilmarth, Jr. of the George Washington University Law School. Art is a leading authority on financial institution regulation. His past work has covered important topics such as National Bank Act preemption, financial services consolidation (here and here), and Glass-Steagal. We're thrilled that Art will be sharing his thoughts with us here at the Slips, particularly on the eve of financial regulatory reform. (Or at least one hopes.) Welcome Art!

Welcome to Henry Sommer

On behalf of Credit Slips, I would like to welcome Henry Sommer as a guest blogger this week. Sommer is a noted attorney who has dedicated his career to fighting for consumers' rights. Currently a supervising attorney at the Consumer Bankruptcy Assistance Project, he spent more than 20 years at Community Legal Services of Philadelphia. He is also the editor-in-chief of Collier on Bankruptcy. With the financial regulation bill nearing the home stretch, this is the perfect time to get the insights of such a distinguished consumer advocate.

Welcome Back to Jason Kilborn

This week, Professor Jason Kilborn of the John Marshall Law School will be joining us as a guest blogger. Jason has guest blogged in the past and should be well known to Credit Slips readers for his insightful comparative work on insolvency law. Since he joined us last, Professor Kilborn has published a book, International Cooperation in Bankruptcy and Insolvency Matters. An expert in many languages, I understand his latest efforts have been to understand Arabic with the intention of learning more about Islamic finance. Professor Kilborn always has interesting things to say about credit and insolvency matters around the world, and it is a pleasure to have him join us for a while.

Thank You to Michelle Harner

On behalf of all the regulars here at Credit Slips, I wanted to extend our thanks to Professor Michelle Harner of the University of Maryland School of Law. Michelle's guest posts over the past few days were typical of her work, which combines the detailed institutional knowledge of a partner in a major international law firm with the "big picture" policy perspective from academia. Thank you, Michelle, for spending some time with us, and we hope that it causes some Credit Slips readers from outside academia to go look up your scholarly papers.

Welcome to Michelle Harner

Credit Slips would like to welcome Professor Michelle Harner as a guest blogger. Harner is a professor at the University of Maryland School of Law teaches courses in bankruptcy and corporate law, including corporate finance. Before joining academia, Harner was a partner at Jones Day, and her work reflects a deep understanding of how bankruptcy law works in practice. Most recently, she has been working on articles that explore the ethical and legal responsibilities of directors of financially distressed businesses. Welcome Michelle.

I Become Spam

If you run a blog, you know about "comment spam." This blog is often hit by people who want to sell you a credit card or, more recently, want to turn your gold into cash (for them, not you). Our hosting service, Typepad, has a filter that blocks some of them. Others get deleted only after I see them on the list of comments. Spammers try to fool these techniques with empty messages liked "Great post. I agree with you completely." Of course, whenever I see that on one of my posts, I know it's a fake.

On this morning's comment list, I immediately spied a cogently argued and insightful point about small-business bankruptcies. It was comment spam only with a new tactic. They had copied and pasted something I had written as the body of the comment and then tried to sell you a credit card. It had to be deleted, despite the brilliance of my the writing.

Thank You Anna Gelpern

We'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 sovereign debt issues.  Thank you Anna!

Thank You to Jim Hawkins

On 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 been pushing against the legal academy's conventional wisdom on these issues for being too . . . . well, conventional. Jim's commentary on financial distress, for example, is a good example. We talk a lot about "financial distress" but rarely give the term the precise meaning it deserves. Jim's posts the past few weeks have given Credit Slips readers a sense of his work, and we have enjoyed having him offer his new perspective to the topics we discuss every day.

Welcome Back Anna Gelpern

The 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), and we are thrilled to provide a platform for her to share her thoughts on Greece, Dubai, Ecuador, and any other sovereign (including California and Illinois).  (She's also written a great paper on mortgage-backed securities workouts, which have some of the same collective action problems as sovereign debt workouts....) 

The usual repast at the Slips is consumer and business credit in the United States, but we're always interested in credit more broadly, including comparative credit systems and sovereign debt.  Unfortunately, given US government budget deficits, we may all want to become a little better versed in sovereign debt issues. 

A very brief primer for our readers who are not familiar with sovereign debt issues.  Sovereign debt presents four critical differences from consumer or corporate debt.  First, it is very hard to collect if the sovereign doesn't pay; Argentina's creditors have been trying for years to lay their hands on Argentine state assets, but there are few outside of the Argentina.  Second, there is no bankruptcy option for a sovereign; there is no legal mechanism for discharging debt at less than 100 cents on the dollar.  Third, sovereign debt is intimately tied up in both domestic politics and the politics of international relations.   And fourth, sovereign debt is highly intertwined with currency markets.  These four factors are central in shaping sovereign debt crises.  Again, welcome back Professor Anna Gelpern. 

Welcome to Guest Blogger Jim Hawkins

Credit Slips is pleased to welcome Jim Hawkins as our guest blogger for the upcoming two weeks. Jim is an Assistant Professor at the University of Houston Law Center, where he teaches contracts and consumer protection. His recent scholarship focuses on fringe banking, including payday loans and rent-to-own transactions, and on health care finance. He has two forthcoming papers on financing arrangements in the fertility market. Much of Jim's research draws on interviews with industry professionals, offering their insider view on the structure and nature of credit transactions. We look forward to his posts!

If You're Looking for More Blawgs to Follow . . .

The folks over at careeroverview.com have a list of 50 Great Business Law Blogs. They even gave us a shout out, go figure.

Thank You to Stephanie Ben-Ishai

Credit Slips would like to thank Professor Stephanie Ben-Ishai of the Osgoode Hall Law School at York University for joining us last week. Professor Ben-Ishai gave us a fairly comprehensive overview of the changes to the Canadian bankruptcy law that took effect in September (and earlier this year). Regardless of where you sit when you read Credit Slips, it is important to take a global perspective on bankruptcy issues, even consumer bankruptcy issues. With the globalization of consumer credit, all consumer bankruptcy is no longer local. Thank you, Stephanie, for giving us a valuable perspective on what is happening in Canada.

Welcome to Stephanie Ben-Ishai

 Credit Slips is excited to welcome Professor Stephanie Ben-Ishai of Osgoode Hall Law School at York University. Ben-Ishai has published widely on bankruptcy and commercial law and has several studies on how Canadian bankruptcy laws affect low-income consumers in Canada. With Canadian bankruptcy reforms taking effect last Friday (September 18) as well as earlier in the summer, Ben-Ishai has kindly agreed to discuss these changes with our readers as well as her perspectives on consumer indebtedness in Canada and around the world. Thank you, so much, Professor Ben-Ishai, for agreeing to join us for a while.

A Failure of Research: Posner on Law Professors and the Financial Crisis

I just came across a Richard Posner piece in the Atlantic that claims that law professors "have not made a contribution to the understanding and resolution of the current economic crisis, even thought it bristles with legal questions."   

Whoa!  This statement is really insulting to the large cadre of legal scholars (including many Slipsters) who have been focusing their energies on financial regulation and the crisis for far longer than Judge Posner, whose arrival to the debate is welcome, if recent.

Whatever one thinks of the quality of the work of law professors on financial regulation and the crisis, its existence cannot be denied, as Kenneth Anderson notes on Volokh Conspiracy.  Off the top of my head, I can count at least three dozen law professors who are active in this area, and can think of at least half-dozen symposia that have already occurred and a few crisis-themed law review volumes.  We have been writing articles and policy papers, speaking at legal and non-legal conferences, testifying for years on Capitol Hill, drafting legislation (if only the good judge knew just how many pieces of legislation had drafting input from authors of this blog alone...), and actively serving in government:  Daniel Tarullo as Fed governor, Michael Barr as Assistant Treasury Secretary for Financial Institutions, Peter Swire with the NEC, Cass Sunstein at OIRA, and Elizabeth Warren as Congressional Oversight Panel Chair.  Posner might not be bothered to read our work, but we exist.

[9.4.09--comments are now open]