126 posts categorized "Historical Perspectives"

The New Usury: The Ability-to-Repay Revolution in Consumer Finance

posted by Adam Levitin

I have a new article out in the George Washington Law Review, entitled The New Usury: The Ability-to-Repay Revolution in Consumer Finance. The abstract is below:

American consumer credit regulation is in the midst of a doctrinal revolution. Usury laws, for centuries the mainstay of consumer credit regulation, have been repealed, preempted, or otherwise undermined. At the same time, changes in the structure of the consumer credit marketplace have weakened the traditional alignment of lender and borrower interests. As a result, lenders cannot be relied upon to avoid making excessively risky loans out of their own self-interest.

Two new doctrinal approaches have emerged piecemeal to fill the regulatory gap created by the erosion of usury laws and lenders’ self-interested restraint: a revived unconscionability doctrine and ability-to-repay requirements. Some courts have held loan contracts unconscionable based on excessive price terms, even if the loan does not violate the applicable usury law. Separately, for many types of credit products, lenders are now required to evaluate the borrower’s repayment capacity and to lend only within such capacity. The nature of these ability-to-repay requirements varies considerably, however, by product and jurisdiction. This Article terms these doctrinal developments collectively as the “New Usury.”

The New Usury represents a shift from traditional usury law’s bright-line rules to fuzzier standards like unconscionability and ability-to-repay. Although there are benefits to this approach, it has developed in a fragmented and haphazard manner. Drawing on the lessons from the New Usury, this Article calls for a more comprehensive and coherent approach to consumer credit price regulation through a federal ability-to-repay requirement for all consumer credit products coupled with product-specific regulatory safe harbors, a combination that offers the best balance of functional consumer protection and business certainty.

 

What's 300 Years Among Friends?

posted by Adam Levitin

It often doesn't end well when law professors play at being legal historians. The Purdue Pharma Supreme Court appeal is a case in point. 

A group of prominent bankruptcy law professors filed an amicus brief in support of the appellee, Purdue Pharma. Their brief takes direct aim at my amicus brief in support of the appellant, the United States Trustee. Specifically, the good professors challenge my claim that nonconsensual nondebtor releases were entirely unknown in Anglo-American law until the Johns Manville case in 1986. They write: 

One amicus has argued that releases would have been “incomprehensible to the Framers” and “were entirely unknown in American bankruptcy” prior to 1986. Adam J. Levitin Amicus Br. 4-5. This is a puzzling claim that misses the mark by at least 367 years.

Third-party releases have been known and comprehended in bankruptcy law as means to achieve global resolution since at least 1619, when the Lord Chancellor used his injunctive powers to release third-party sureties from the non-debtor claims in exchange for compelled contributions to a bankruptcy composition. See Tiffin v. Hart (1618-19), in John Ritchie, Reports of Cases Decided by Francis Bacon 161 (London 1932). Similar to the releases at issue in the present, the injunction in Tiffin was directed at dissenting creditors to facilitate a resolution that had been approved by the majority. Ibid.; see also Finch v. Hicks (1620), in Ritchie, Reports, at 166-167 (enjoining creditors from pursuing actions at common law against non-debtor sureties of an insolvent individual).

So, according to Purdue's amici, I'm wrong on the history because I failed to account for a 1619 case. But there's a HUGE problem with their argument...

Continue reading "What's 300 Years Among Friends? " »

The Lasting Economic Effects of Slavery

posted by Bob Lawless

Nicholas Brown has written the latest piece in a fascinating Reuters series documenting how the effects of slavery remain with us today. Brown's article, entitled "American Dreams," follows two families over 150 years. One family is the descendants of enslavers, and the other is the descendants of those who they enslaved. It is a case study of how slavery, the Jim Crow era, and racial discrimination put the two families on very different economic paths. It brings home the lingering effects of these shameful parts of U.S. history in ways that aggregate statistics about wealth disparity often do not. Credit Slips readers will be particularly interested in how bankruptcy helped the white family (and not because I am quoted there). We say that our blog's mission is to discuss credit, finance, and bankruptcy issues, and if you are here, you likely have those interests as well. I strongly recommend Brown's article.

The Debt Limit Is Unconstitutional—But It's Not What You Think!

posted by Adam Levitin

Anna Gelpern, Stephen Lubben and I have an article in The American Prospect entitled The Debt Limit Is Unconstitutional—but Not for the Reason You Think. Various commentators—and members of Congress—have suggested that the President “invoke the 14th Amendment” to declare the debt limit unconstitutional. They're right to argue that the debt limit is unconstitutional, but the constitutional problem isn't the 14th Amendment. Instead, it's Article I of the Constitution, namely Congress's power to enter into contracts. The tl;dr version is that Congress has a power to make binding commitments for the United States and the President is constitutionally obligated to perform those commitments. If the Treasury lacks the funds, then the President must borrow. No specific authorization is needed. Instead, it is implicit every time Congress appropriates funds to perform a binding commitment.

Relocating the constitutional problem with the debt limit isn't merely an academic exercise. It has two implications.

First, it changes the nature of the legal debate and puts the administration on much, much firmer legal footing. The 14th Amendment argument is weak because it simply is not a prohibition on defaulting. It's a prohibition on repudiation, and a default is not a repudiation. An Article I argument reframes the issue as being about the validity of the debt ceiling, rather than the ability to default. In other words, it goes to question of whether the House GOP has holdup power, rather than whether the administration is under some cryptic constitutional limitation that it must affirmatively "invoke."

Second, it means that the President not only can, but must disregard the debt limit in order to fulfill his own constitutional duty to "Take Care" that the laws are faithfully executed. In other words, breaching the debt limit is not merely an option, but a legal requirement if Treasury is short of funds. Once Congress has appropriated funds, the President must carry out the authorized spending.

The New Usury

posted by Adam Levitin

I have a new paper up on SSRN. It's called The New Usury: The Ability-to-Repay Revolution in Consumer Finance. It's a paper that's been percolating a while--some folks might remember seeing me present it (virtually) at the 2020 Consumer Law Scholars Conference, right as the pandemic was breaking out. Here's the abstract:

Consumer credit regulation is in the midst of a doctrinal revolution. Usury laws, for centuries the mainstay of consumer credit regulation, have been repealed, preempted, or otherwise undermined. At the same time, changes in the structure of the consumer credit marketplace have weakened the traditional alignment of lender and borrower interests. As a result, lenders cannot be relied upon not to make excessively risky loans out of their own self-interest.

Two new doctrinal approaches have emerged piecemeal to fill the regulatory gap created by the erosion of usury laws and lenders’ self-interested restraint: a revived unconscionability doctrine and ability-to-repay requirements. Some courts have held loan contracts unconscionable based on excessive price terms, even if the loan does not violate the applicable usury law. Separately, for many types of credit products, lenders are now required to evaluate the borrower’s repayment capacity and to lend only within such capacity. The nature of these ability-to-repay requirements varies considerably, however, by product and jurisdiction. This Article collectively terms these doctrinal developments the “New Usury.”

The New Usury represents a shift from traditional usury law’s bright-line rules to fuzzier standards like unconscionability and ability-to-repay. While there are benefits to this approach, it has developed in a fragmented and haphazard manner. Drawing on the lessons from the New Usury, this Article calls for a more comprehensive and coherent approach to consumer credit price regulation through a federal ability-to-repay requirement for all consumer credit products coupled with product-specific regulatory safe harbors, a combination that offers the greatest functional consumer protection and business certainty.

Sorting Bugs and Features of Mass Tort Bankruptcy

posted by Melissa Jacoby

I have posted a short draft article about mass tort bankruptcy. If you would like to send me comments on the draft, that would be lovely, but please keep two caveats in mind. First, I must submit the revisions by February 9. Second, the article must not exceed 10,000 words. For every addition, some other thing must be subtracted. The required brevity means the article does not and cannot canvas the large volume of scholarship about the topic, let alone the mini-explosion in recent years. 

For the Credit Slips audience I would like to particularly highlight Part I of the article, which contextualizes debates about current mass tort bankruptcy by reviewing two sets of sources from the 1990s and early 2000s. The first is the 1997 final report of the National Bankruptcy Review Commission. The second is scholarship, including two Federal Judicial Center books published in 2000 and 2005, of Professor Elizabeth Gibson, whose expertise lies at the intersection of civil procedure, federal courts, and bankruptcy.  If you are working on or talking a lot about mass bankruptcy but have not reviewed these materials in a while (or ever), then I hope you will be incentivized to check those out for yourselves. 

Tort Law, Social Policy... and Bankruptcy

posted by Melissa Jacoby

DePaulI cannot tell you what to think about the fact that the long-running Clifford Symposium on Tort Law and Social Policy, at DePaul University College of Law in Chicago, kicks off with a bankruptcy panel this year.  The official title of the conference this year is Litigating the Public Good: Punishing Serious Corporate Misconduct. Much of the June 2-3 conference is scheduled to occur in person but online observation is available and free: register here. 

Harmony or Mismatch? A virtual event on mass torts and bankruptcy on February 28

posted by Melissa Jacoby

Just wanted to make sure Credit Slips readers were aware of this virtual event at noon Eastern/3 Pacific on February 28. Bonus: a link to a masterful analysis of the topic by Professor Elizabeth Gibson that the Federal Judicial Center published in 2005. (click here for information and registration)

Event

Annotated Bibliography of Histories of Debt and Bankruptcy

posted by Jason Kilborn

I just read a really fabulous annotated bibliography of books (alas, articles by such luminaries as Emily Kadens are excluded) on the history of credit, debt, and bankruptcy in the United States. Many of my favorites are on here, along with a few new entrants with which I was, embarrassingly, unfamiliar. This is a great resource for new lawyers and law professors, in particular, but also for anyone interested in this fascinating history and/or looking for something to help while away the cold, blizzard-bound winter hours. Enjoy! 

Shocking Business Bankruptcy Law

posted by Melissa Jacoby

Another quick announcement that I have posted a draft essay on some under explored intersections between big business bankruptcy and big shocks here. The abstract is short, yes, but so is the essay. It also discusses ice cream. Thanks for reading! 

Who extracts the benefits of big business bankruptcy?

posted by Melissa Jacoby

NBRCThe Deal has a new podcast called Fresh Start hosted by journalist Stephanie Gleason. Stephanie and I recently chatted about big bankruptcies with litigation management at their core and the stakes those cases raise. We covered a lot of ground along the way, including non-debtor releases and the SACKLER Act, notice and voting, forum shopping, equitable mootness, the homogeneity of the restructuring profession, bankruptcy administrators and the United States Trustee system, and the skinny clause of the Constitution at the heart of all of this. We begin by reminiscing about the mass tort and future claims discussion during the deliberations of the National Bankruptcy Review Commission, for which Elizabeth Warren was the reporter, and how much has changed. Check it out here.

Antique Chinese Debt - The Latest

posted by Mitu Gulati

Mark Weidemaier and I have talked about antique Chinese (mostly Imperial) debt often on this site.  And we've also discussed these debts on our podcast with sovereign debt gurus Tracy Alloway and Lee Buchheit (here).  Yes, we are a bit obsessed. Part of our fascination with this topic is that the Chinese government asserted a defense of odiousness to paying these debts.  The lenders (backed by western powers, seeking influence in China) and the Imperial borrowers (seeking to sell access to their country in exchange for self preservation) had, in essence, sold out the people of China.  End result: Revolution and refusal of successor communist governments to pay these debts, no matter what - even today, when China is a financial behemoth.  

Below is the abstract for a wonderful new paper, "Confirming the Obvious: Why Antique Chinese Bonds Should Remain Antique" in the U Penn Asian L. Rev. by two of our former Duke students, Alex Xiao and Brenda Luo.  Bravo! We are so proud.

As the Sino-U.S. relationship goes on a downward spiral, points of conflict have sparked at places one might not expect: antique sovereign bonds. In recent years, the idea of making China pay for the sovereign bonds issued by its predecessor regimes a century ago have received increasing attention in the U.S. This note takes this seeming strange idea seriously and maps out the possible legal issues surrounding a revival of these century-old bonds. Although two particular bonds show some potential for revival—the Hukuang Railways 5% Sinking Fund Gold Bonds of 1911 and the Pacific Development Loan of 1937—the private bondholders would unlikely be able to toll the statute of limitations on the repayment claims based on these bonds. Even in the unlikely scenario that they succeed, the Chinese government would have an arsenal of contract law arguments against the enforcement of these bonds, most notably defenses based on duress, impracticality, and public policy. By going into the details of the legal arguments and history behind these bonds, we seek to confirm the obvious, that is, the idea of making China pay for these bonds is as far-fetched as it sounds and would not be taken seriously by courts.

A Campaign to Opt-Out

posted by Chris Odinet

Following-up on my prior post, let’s talk more about what’s at stake in this little legislative kerfuffle in the Hawkeye state, as well as how consumer advocates should seize on this moment in a different way.  

First, repealing this 521 provision in Iowa law is really all about whether states should have, to a large degree, the ability to control the interest rates charged on products and services that are offered to consumers by nonbank firms. 

Many readers of this blog may already know this history backwards and forwards – but for those who don’t, here’s the backstory. In Marquette Nat’l Bank of Minneapolis v. First of Omaha Serv. Corp., the U.S. Supreme Court interpreted the National Bank Act as giving nationally-chartered banks the ability to charge the highest interest rate allowed in the state where the bank is located to borrowers located not only in that state, but also to borrowers located in any other state.  This means, for instance, that a national bank located in Iowa can not only charge the highest interest rate allowable in Iowa to anyone located in Iowa, but it can also charge that same rate to a borrower located in Oklahoma, Louisiana, or any other state.  Even if Louisiana, Oklahoma, or another state’s laws prohibit interest at such a rate, the loan is nevertheless free from being usurious. This concept is known as “interest rate exportation.”  

After the 1978 decision in Marquette, there was a concern about the ability of state-chartered banks to compete with national banks. So, state legislatures started enacting “parity laws” that allowed their state banks to charge the maximum rates of interest allowable by any national bank “doing business” in that particular state. These parity laws were often even broader, granting to state chartered banks all of the incidental powers granted to national banks. In sum, the goal of these parity laws was to put state banks on equal footing with national banks, particularly when it came to usury.  Good so far?

Ok here comes the part dealing with this shady Iowa house bill…

In a final effort to give state-chartered banks a competitive edge, in 1980 Congress passed the Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act (DIDMCA).  A portion of DIDMCA, specifically section 521 (see where this is going...) granted interest rate exportation to any state-chartered bank that was federally insured (in other words, to all FDIC-insured state-chartered banks). 12 U.S.C. 1831d. This allowed a state-chartered bank to charge out-of-state borrowers the same interest rate allowable for in-state borrowers.  Thus, a state-chartered bank located in Iowa could charge an Oklahoma borrower the Iowa-allowable interest rate, even if that rate was higher than what would otherwise be legal under Oklahoma law. 

But here’s the catch. In Section 525 of DIDMCA, Congress gave states the ability to opt-out of section 521 by enacting legislation stating the state did not want section 521 to apply. Only two jurisdictions opted out: Puerto Rico and…you guessed it…Iowa. In 1980, right after DIDMCA was passed, Iowa opted out per 1980 Iowa Acts, ch. 1156, sec. 32. To add one more bit of background, Iowa also did not enact any parity laws. In fact, a former general counsel to the Iowa Division of Banking stated in a 2002 interview that enacting such a law that delegated control over Iowa state banks to the feds would be seen as “a slap in the face” to the Iowa legislature. 

So, there you have it. This little provision in an otherwise unrelated tax bill is to OPT INTO section 521 and thereby reverse the decision Iowa’s legislature made in 1980.

Now you may say to yourself, why is this so bad? The bad part requires you know something about the rent-a-bank partnership model between certain state-chartered banks and a number of online “fintech” lenders. Since the 2008 financial crisis, a growing number of nonbank fintech firms that make loans over the internet have partnered with a handful of state-chartered banks (mostly chartered in Utah, Kentucky, and New Jersey) in order to make and market unsecured installment consumer loans. By and large the way the business model works is that although the loan application is submitted through the nonbank’s website or smartphone app, it is the partner bank that actually advances the funds. The marketing and underwriting process are both performed by the nonbank. Then, very shortly after, the bank sells the loan along with others (or some interest in those loans) to the nonbank fintech company or an affiliate. The fintech or another firm then sells the interest to a pre-arranged wholesale buyer or sponsors a securitization of a large pool of loans for sale as securities in the capital markets. 

The bank’s role is merely passing, and it typically retains no material economic interest in the loans. However, so the argument goes, because the loan is originated by an insured state-chartered bank, it can export the interest rate of its home state to borrowers located in ANY state (with state usury laws preempted by DIDMCA section 521). And sometimes these loans can be quite expensive (rates of 160% APR or more e.g., CashNet USA, Speedy Cash, Rapid Cash, Check n' Go, Check Into Cash). You can get more info on these partnerships and check out some nifty maps provided by the folks at the National Consumer Law Center here. 

So, here’s how I think consumer advocates can turn the tables. There are a number of states that have aggressively gone after these rent-a-bank schemes (adding a lawsuit by AG of DC to the mix here) and a group of state AGs are currently suing the OCC on account of its true lender rule. In other words, a number of states do not want this kind of high cost, fintech-bank lending happening in their jurisdiction. 

Here’s my suggestion to those states: why not just pass your own opt out of DIDMCA Section 521? 

As mentioned above, many of these online lenders in high-cost rent-a-bank schemes favor partnering with FDIC-insured, state-chartered banks rather than national banks. Opting out of DIDMCA would deprive these schemes of their regulatory arbitrage. Without the ability to import the interest rate law of another state into a given jurisdiction, it would force these online firms to apply for a lending license and otherwise abide by the jurisdiction’s usury limit. DIDMCA allowed states to opt out of Section 521, and the statute didn’t give a deadline to do it. So, here’s a call to states like Colorado and others who are going after these usury and regulatory evasive business models…take away the linchpin of the business model. Opt-out of section 521!

And as for those of us back here in the Hawkeye state, here’s to hoping that the Iowa legislature doesn’t (pardon the Peloton pun) get so easily taken for a ride.

Book Recommendation: Caesars Palace Coup

posted by Jason Kilborn

A fun new book applies a revealing Law & Order analysis to the multi-billion-dollar, knock-down-drag-out reorganization of Caesar's Palace. In The Caesars Palace Coup, Financial Times editor, Sujeet Indap, and Fitch news team leader, Max Frumes, open with a detailed examination of the personalities and transactions that preceded the Caesars bankruptcy case, leading to the second (and, for me, more interesting) part of the book, tracking step-by-step the harrowing negotiations, court proceedings, and examiner report that led to the ultimate reorganization.

There is so much to like in this book. Its primary strength is its Law & Order backstory, peeling back the onion of every major player, revealing how they got to where they were in their careers in big business management, high finance, or law, and revealing their thoughts and motivations as the deals and legal maneuvers played out. Four years of painstaking personal interviews have paid off handsomely in this fascinating account of the inner workings of big money and big law reorganization practice. On a personal note, I was treated to a bit of nostalgia, as the book opens with and later features Jim Millstein, an absolute gem of a person who taught me about EBITDA when my path fortunately crossed with his at Cleary Gottlieb in New York City in the late 1990s. It also features the Chicago bankruptcy court in my backyard, which seldom hosts such mega cases as Caesars', and the story in the second half of this book reveals part of the reason why. Cameo appearances include some of my favorite academics, such as Nancy Rapoport, as fee examiner, and Slipster, Adam Levitin, as defender of the Trust Indenture Act. On that latter point, the book alludes to (but does not particularly carefully explain) the key role of the Marblegate rulings on the TIA, which is described in a bit more depth in a vintage Credit Slips post. Again, the book's most valuable contribution is a behind-the-scenes look at the motivations and machinations behind a salient instance of collateral stripping, adding to the literature on this (disturbing) trend.

For would-be, currently-are, or has-been (like me) business managers, investment bankers, hedge fund managers, and reorganization lawyers, this book is a fascinating under-the-hood analysis of every stage of a financial business restructuring (not much about the operational side). For anyone interested in the thoughts and motivations of the Masters of the Universe who control so much of our world and its most famous companies, this book offers a brutally honest peek at how the sausage is made. It's not always pretty, but it is both entertaining and enlightening.

Of Sheep, Twyne's Case, and a Better Story

posted by Bob Lawless

Holden FieldProfessor Emily Kadens has just published a great paper that explodes the myths about Twyne's Case. We all know Twyne as the case where an insolvent farmer gave away his sheep, thereby leading to a Star Chamber decision that laid the foundation for modern fraudulent conveyance law. It turns out most all of the story we know isn't true. Even better, the actual story is much more interesting and instructive.

Kadens did an incredible amount of archival research, going through the depositions and other original records from the case. Obstacles included documents that had been partially eaten by rats, a point I need to remember the next time I want to complain about difficulties with my own research.

Pearce, who was the debtor, had resisted writs of execution from the undersheriff who had come to seize his property, which was a lot more than just a few sheep. And, it was not Pearce himself, but his laborers and community members who did the resisting. Confrontations occurred over three days.  After an unsuccessful foray to Pearce's farm on the first day, the undersheriff made somewhat of a surprise attack on the second day to seize cattle at a more distant place called Holden Field (the picture to the right, courtesy of Kadens). The undersheriff pastured the cattle overnight at Pole Meadow (pictured below the fold, again courtesy of Kadens). The next day, the undersheriff attempted to drive the cattle to market, but Pearce's allies interceded and took the cattle.

Continue reading "Of Sheep, Twyne's Case, and a Better Story" »

Back to the Future (Again): Horatio Gadfly and Those Imperial Chinese Bonds

posted by Mitu Gulati

FT Alphaville has had a long line of quirky and brilliant reporters over the years, something that I've always enjoyed (Joseph Cotterill, Tracy Alloway, Colby Smith, Cardiff Garcia and more). And I've especially liked the pieces that do deep dives into obscure and arcane sovereign debt matters.

The latest such piece is from Izabella Kaminska, on the the topic of antique imperial Chinese bonds and the possibilities for recovery (from about ten hours ago, here).  The likelihood of using purely legal methods and recovering on these today is near zero.  But near zero is not zero and periodically, as a means to get students engaged on the thorny questions of statutes of limitations and sovereign immunity, Mark Weidemaier and I will assign them the task of figuring out which of the defaulted imperial sovereign bonds have the best chance of recovery. The assignment is usually framed in terms of a set of bonds that Mr. Horatio Gadfly inherited (here) (Joseph Cotterill's hilarious piece on Mr. Gadfly's adventures is here)).

This past semester, a group of our students -- Michael Chen, Charlie Fendrych, and Andres Paciuc, dug deep and found a small subset of bonds that maybe, just maybe, had a long shot. Their fun paper, "The Emperor's Old Bonds" (soon to appear in print in the Duke Journal of Comparative and International Law) is here.

Izabella's article today makes a deeper point, which is that these legal claims -- while implausible if viewed in purely legal terms -- can acquire muscle as a function of political context.  Is this such a time?  Maybe.  Coronavirus, trade talks, election rhetoric, Taiwan, and given that some of Trump's supporters have lots of these old Chinese bonds and Trump is . . . well, Trump may have changed the equation from what it has been for the past century.  Steve Bannon, of all people, has talked about imperial Chinese bonds on his War Room show multiple times (e.g., this War Room episode at about 40:50. . . Aiyiyiyi . . . here).  

If you are intrigued and want to go down the rabbit hole, this question of politics and antique Chinese bonds has come up before -- see Tracy Alloway's piece on Bloomberg (here), Cardiff Garcia on NPR (here) and Mark Weidemaier on creditslips (here and here). 

Izabella is (I hope) not done with her writing on this topic and there might be more on Alphaville soon (today's teaser was in the main paper).  This topic connects to so many other fun topics relating to historic wrongs too -- like the fact that the British museum holds the Elgin Marbles and the British crown holds the Koh-i-Noor diamond (US museums undoubtedly have lots of these sorts of items as well). If Chinese imperial bonds need to get paid, maybe it is time to give the Elgin Marbles and the Koh-i-Noor back? Come to think of it, maybe it is time to give them back regardless of the bonds? Sovereigns are infinitely lived, which means that their obligations are too -- if someone can figure out a way to get around the statutes of limitations.

David Graeber’s Debt, The First 5000 Years

posted by Alan White

I’m just getting around to reading a 2014 book some Creditslips readers may be familiar with, Debt: The First 5000 Years. In this utterly fascinating work, Anthropologist David Graeber exhaustively recounts the history of debt and money. He begins by debunking the myth of barter, the story told in introductory economics textbooks that money was spontaneously invented to permit merchants to exchange goods and services in imaginary markets, as an improvement over primitive market economies based on barter. In fact, early human societies all relied on central planning (by kings and high priests), communism, gift-giving, redistribution, and various forms of debt, notably in Mesopotamia, Egypt and Greece, the earliest western civilizations, and probably in India and China as well. Debts and their units of account (i.e. money) arose to compensate for injuries, to seal marriages and other relationships, and to tabulate taxes paid and owed to sovereigns. Kings invented coinage both to relieve the poverty of their subjects and to provision their armies by spending coins, and as a convenient means to collect taxes. Modern monetary theorists like to cite this research to make the essential point that money and markets are created by sovereigns and states, and rarely if ever arose spontaneously. The idealized construct of a free market based solely on exchange first arose much later in economic history, in mercantilist societies and then with the liberal philosophers (Bentham, Owen, Smith, Ricardo) of the Industrial Revolution. 

Bankruptcy has always been with us. From the earliest times debt-based money led to  Screen Shot 2020-06-18 at 5.11.12 PMperiodic crises and debtor revolts, and wise rulers from the dawn of written history periodically decreed the cancellation of all debts, sometimes memorialized by the physical destruction of debt tokens. The biblical inscription on the Liberty Bell from Leviticus, “proclaim liberty throughout the land”, was the announcement of a debt jubilee including the liberation of debt slaves. The Rosetta Stone was a similar Ptolemaic royal decree announcing a tax and debt jubilee.

Capitalism had its origins not in the exchange of goods and services between free traders and workers but in slavery and debt peonage, not only in the United States but in every colonial empire.  After reminding us of Martin Luther King’s description of the founding documents as an unpaid debt to Black Americans, Graeber concludes by reminding us that the validity and morality of various debts can and should be determined democratically. Thought provoking in a moment when we hear calls for both payment of reparations and cancellation of student loan and housing debts.  

The Great American Housing Bubble

posted by Adam Levitin

My new book, The Great American Housing Bubble:  What Went Wrong and How We Can Protect Ourselves in the Future was just released by Harvard University Press. The book is co-authored with my long-time collaborator, Wharton real estate economist Susan Wachter. It's the culmination of over a decade's worth of work on housing finance that began in the scramble of fall 2008 to come up with ways of assisting hard-pressed homeowners.

Continue reading "The Great American Housing Bubble" »

American Predatory Lending and the North Carolina model

posted by Melissa Jacoby

My coauthor Ed Balleisen has co-founded a program on consumer lending of interest to Credit Slips readers. Its initial data collection is particularly useful in documenting the North Carolina experience and its implications for other states. The quote below is from Balleisen's post on Consumer Law and Policy:  

Data visualizations of statistics about the North Carolina mortgage market and consumer protection enforcement complement the oral histories, as do a set of policy timelines and memos about state- and national-level regulation of mortgage lending. Our key findings suggest that more stringent oversight of aggressive mortgage practices moderated the housing boom in North Carolina, and so partially insulated the state from the broad collapse in housing values across the country.

The Myth of Optimal Expectation Damages

posted by Mitu Gulati

Roughly eighty years ago, Lon Fuller and William Perdue (the former, then a faculty member at Duke Law, and the latter, a 3L), wrote two of the most famous articles in contract law (here). One of the puzzles they posed -- about why the law favors the expectation damages measure -- resulted in an entire body of scholarship, including the theory of efficient breach. And although there are a number of superb articles that have been written on this matter (Craswell, Scott, Goetz, Triantis, Posner, Klass and more), I confess that I have always had a strong distaste for this body of optimal damages scholarship because it was too complicated for me. I have, however, been most grateful to Fuller and Perdue because, in the wake of their famous collaboration, they set up a scholarship at Duke to fund faculty-student research collaborations that I have frequently applied for funding to. Last summer, I finally had to pay the price though, because three of my Duke students (one former and two current) asked if we could work on a legal realist examination of the Fuller-Perdue optimal damages question itself. I was resistant, but Jamie Boyle (who has written a fabulous piece linking Fuller's work in both public and private law (here)), urged that the students were right about this being a fun project. 

Jamie and the students were right about this being a fun project, in spades (we owe a special debt to Mark Weidemaier, who is a saint in terms of his generosity with comments and advice). All credit to Theresa, Amanda and Madison (errors are mine).

With thanks to Lon Fuller and William Perdue, the paper is here, and the abstract is below:

One of the most debated questions in the literature on contract law is what the optimal measure of damages for breach should be.  The standard casebook answer, drawing from the theory of efficient breach, is expectations damages.  This standard answer, once considered a major contribution of the law and economics field, has increasingly come under attack by theoreticians within that field itself. To shed an empirical perspective on the question, we look at data in one setting (prepayment clauses in international debt contracts) on what types of damages provisions parties contract for themselves. We find little evidence of a preference for the expectations damages measure.

Boer Bonds and the Doctrine of War Debts

posted by Mitu Gulati

Concentrating on just about anything during these days of the coronavirus, let alone academic writing, has been a trifle difficult.  A splendid new paper on Boer Bonds by Kim Oosterlinck and Marie Van Gansbeke (here) did, however, get me focused (for a bit).  And that’s in part because their paper has potentially turned upside down what I thought was an established part of customary international law.  That is, the law of “War Debts.”

The international law of state succession, standard treatises will tell you, is strict.  New states (and new governments) inherit the debt of predecessor states (and governments), regardless or changes in political philosophies.  One of the only exceptions to this strict rule is the doctrine of War Debts.  This doctrine, that I thought was implemented by the British Crown in 1900, in the wake of Boer War, says that debts incurred during hostilities by the losing party do not need to be taken on by the victor.  The refusal of the United States to take responsibility for the debts incurred by the Confederacy during the Civil War is another example.

The historical materials that I looked at in my prior work were lacking in clarity, to put in mildly.  And my sources – old treatises and cases -- were all secondary.  In a paper from over a decade ago, here is what my co authors (Lee Buchheit and Bob Thompson) and I conjectured that the doctrine of War Debts was (full paper is here):

The British Government did not at the time articulate the rationale for this policy. Perhaps it believed the justification to be obvious. Paying the debts of a former adversary is one thing, particularly when victory brings sovereignty over the disputed territory and resources. But paying off the very loans that both delayed and added to the cost of that victory is quite another thing.

Moreover, anyone lending to a belligerent power after hostilities have begun is placing an obvious bet—an all-or-nothing bet—on the outcome of the war. This aspect of the war-debt limitation to the doctrine of state succession is significant because it introduces into the debate the reasonable expectations of the creditor when extending the loan.

Kim Oosterlinck and Marie Van Gansbeke, both financial historians, look beyond the secondary sources to primary sources – the debates among the legal advisers to the British Crown, the archival records of the investment banks, and most importantly, the prices of the Boer bonds issuer prior to and after the hostilities with the British began. The story they conclude with is different from the one than what my co authors and I conjectured a decade ago (being careful historians, they couch their bottom line with caveats about the need for further research).

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Federal Reserve Emergency Lending as a Coronavirus Response

posted by Adam Levitin

Senator Elizabeth Warren has put out a plan for mitigating the economic fallout from the coronavirus. Of particular note is that she is proposing having the Federal Reserve use its emergency lending power to support businesses affected by the coronavirus in order to ensure that they are able to provide paid health care leave to affected employees and avoid mass layoffs.  

This post addresses whether the Fed has the legal authority for such lending, what precedent exists, how it differs materially from the 2008 bailouts, and why it's a good idea. (Full disclosure: I consulted with the Warren campaign on this plan.)  

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The Emperor's Old Bonds

posted by Mitu Gulati

Inspired by Tracy Alloway's recent piece on antique Chinese bonds (here), a group of my students has gone deep down the rabbit hole of the question of how one might recover on them (or, from the Chinese government’s perspective, how one would block recovery).  If I’m reading Michael, Charlie and Andres correctly, they think that the probability of recovery via litigation is near zero on almost all of the antique Chinese bonds.  All except one special bond issue that no one has brought litigation on yet.  I'm not saying that there is a real possibility of recovery here (if one is a legal realist, one would be deeply skeptical), but we are in the era of Trump.

I love their title, "The Emperor's Old Bonds".  But there is much more to this fun paper (here) than the title. The abstract is below:

Tracy Alloway’s recent article in Bloomberg has suggested that Trump’s trade war may finally provide relief to American holders of defaulted, pre-1950s Chinese bonds. Here, we examine the hurdles set before these bondholders, namely establishing jurisdiction over the People’s Republic of China as sovereign and the long-lapsed statute of limitations. We also evaluate the Chinese government’s possible recourse. 

The key takeaways from our investigation: To establish jurisdiction in the U.S., the bond must be denominated in U.S. Dollars or state a place of performance within the country. To overcome the long-expired statute of limitations, and win an equitable remedy, it must be shown that the PRC not only violated an absolute priority or pari passu clause, but also that they are a “uniquely recalcitrant” debtor. Finally, despite China’s commitment to the odious debt doctrine, the doctrine is unlikely to provide meaningful legal protection in the event of an otherwise successful suit. 

Overall, it is a difficult suit to bring, but through our investigations we have discovered one issue in particular which holds the greatest danger—or perhaps the greatest promise: the 1919 Gold Bond.

216 Jamaica Avenue and the Prospect of Breathing Life Into Antique Chinese Bonds

posted by Mitu Gulati

One of the more fun discussions we have had in my international debt class this term has been the question of whether a clever plaintiff's lawyer might be able to breathe life into defaulted Chinese bonds from the period 1911-1948. (Our thanks to Tracy Alloway's delightful piece in Bloomberg on this matter (here)).

Part of our inspiration for this discussion, however, was also reading an enormously fun 2008 Sixth Circuit opinion from Judge Jeff Sutton, in the 216 Jamaica Avenue case (here). The context of the case was the abrogation of gold clauses 1933 that we've discussed before on this site (here, here and here).  What we have not talked about, however, is what impact the removal of that 1933 prohibition on the use of gold clauses in 1977 had.  For long-term contracts that were written in the early 1900s that then had their gold clause index provisions abrogated in 1933, the 1977 law arguably re activated them.  Congress tried to stop most of the attempts at reactivation.  But for the cleverest of lawyers, there was always going to be a way.  For these contract arbitrageurs, scouring old contracts for lottery tickets through the re activation of these old clauses that everyone else has long forgotten is fun. It certainly was fun for us to read about (Congrats, Cooper & Kirk, who note their victory in this case on their website (here)).

As a general matter, courts don't tend to be very sympathetic to lawyers trying to reactivate old clauses to earn giant lottery payouts.  But in 216 Jamaica Avenue, that's precisely what happened. The opinion is an absolute delight, not only because of the wonderful facts and analysis of basic contract law matters such as "meeting of the minds" that befuddles most first-year students (and me), but also because it is written in a style that is reminiscent of the classic Richard Posner opinions; short, incisive and witty.   

I'm hoping that my students, if they find interesting ways in which to overcome the significant barriers to bringing suit on the antique Chinese bonds -- namely, the statute of limitations and jurisdictional hurdles -- will post about them in the comments.  The barrier is high though, despite Mr. Horatio Gadfly's optimism some years ago (here and here).

I do wonder though whether the Chinese (and Russian) governments will some day soon decide that they should just enter into global settlement with the owners of these antique bonds for pennies on the dollar and stop the periodic pesky lawsuits. Otherwise there will come a day where someone somewhere figures out a way to do a set off or restart the statute of limitations. 216 Jamaica Ave points in that direction.

Daniel Schwarcz on the Evolution of Insurance Contracts

posted by Mitu Gulati

I shudder even as I write these words, but I’m increasingly fascinated by insurance contracts.  If you are interested in the processes by which standard form contracts evolve – which I am -- then you can’t help but be sucked into this world. Coming from the world of sovereign bonds, the insurance world strikes as bizarre. Among the wonderful authors whose worked has sucked me in are Michelle Boardman (here), Christopher French (here) and Daniel Schwarcz (here).

There are a handful of major players who dominate the insurance industry and everyone seems to use the same basic boilerplate terms tied a core industry-wide form. Further, courts aggressively use an obscure doctrine, contra proferentem (basically, construing terms against the drafter/big bad wolf), that is often ignored in other areas such as the bond world where figuring out who did the actual drafting is a near impossible task.  Finally, while contracts in this world are often sticky and full of long buried flaws, they are also sometimes highly responsive to court decisions. In other words, there is much to be learned about the how and why of contract language evolution as a function of court decisions (a process about which most law school contracts classes make utterly unrealistic assumptions and assertions) by examining insurance contract evolution and comparing it to contract evolution in other areas that don’t share the same characteristics.

My reason for this post, is to flag a wonderful new paper by Daniel Schwarcz of U. Minnesota Law. The paper, “The Role of Courts in the Evolution of Standard Form Contracts” (here) is on the evolution of insurance contract terms in response to court decisions.  Unlike much of the prior literature on standard form contracts where each paper examines no more than a handful of terms and often finds that contracts are not very responsive to particular court decisions, Daniel examines a wide range of terms (basically, everything) over a long period of time (a half century) and finds a great deal of responsiveness to court decisions.  The question that raises is whether there are features of the insurance industry that are different from, for example, the bond world.  Or whether Dan just studied a lot more changes than anyone before this had done; and, therefore, he was able to see further than prior scholars.

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Buybacks as a Sovereign Debt Restructuring Strategy: Why the Disfavor?

posted by Mitu Gulati

The ideas in this post are drawn from work with Stephen Choi.  Errors are mine.

Last week was the first session in our International Debt Finance class, both at Duke and at NYU.  This is an exciting time to be teaching this material, given the many sovereign and quasi sovereign issuers that are struggling with over indebtedness.  Among them are Argentina, Lebanon, Venezuela, Italy (maybe) and, locally, Puerto Rico.

For day one, inspired by the provocative recent article by Julia Mahoney and Ed Kitch on the possible need to restructure the multi-trillion dollar US debt stock, we assigned both the Mahoney-Kitch (2019) piece (here) and Alexander Hamilton’s 1790 Report on Public Credit (here).

Hamilton’s Report on Public Credit is an astonishing document, since it is essentially a proposal to do a brutal debt restructuring (see here) for a new nation that, while significantly reducing the nation’s debt stock, would (hopefully) also serve as a building block for a solid reputation for this new debtor.  Somehow, it worked.  In what follows, we focus on only one aspect of Hamilton’s report: Hamilton’s views on the possibility of reducing the US debt stock--some of which was trading at pennies on the dollar--by doing a market buyback prior to the announcement of his plan.  In discussing possible strategies to reduce the public debt, he flags the possibility of doing a buyback of the debt at the current market prices.  Hamilton writes of this strategy:

Fourthly. To the purchase of the public debt at the price it shall bear in the market, while it continues below its true value. This measure, which would be, in the opinion of the Secretary [i.e., Hamilton, speaking of himself in the third person], highly dishonorable to the government, if it were to precede a provision for funding the debt, would become altogether unexceptionable, after that had been made. (emphasis added).

In other words, Hamilton says that doing a buyback before the government makes public its plan to fund the debt, would be wrong.  Why?  We don’t know exactly why.  But reading between the lines, AH would perhaps explain that the sovereign debtor should not be the beneficiary of its own misconduct (the default), particularly at the expense of its own citizens (the sellers of the paper at a discount). 

Question is, given that we have an additional 200 years plus of experience of sovereign restructurings since Hamilton, was he right to disfavor the buyback strategy? As a practical matter, in terms of the playbook of the modern sovereign debt restructurer, Hamilton’s admonition seems to have held sway. That is illustrated by this 2019 IMF publication on “How to Restructure Sovereign Debt: Lessons From Four Decades” which mentions buybacks only in a footnote (note 3, here) that suggests that prevailing economic wisdom is that they don’t work particularly well as a restructuring strategy.

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"Middle Class Faux"?

posted by Adam Levitin

I did some digging into Joe Biden's previously unexplored roll call vote on floor amendments to BAPCPA. They were ugly then and have not improved with age. My full take is in The American Prospect

Hinrichsen on Iraq’s Debt Restructuring

posted by Mitu Gulati

Iraq’s debt restructuring a decade and a half ago was one of the few things that went right with the US incursion into that country in 2003.  Thanks to a combination of an expensive war with Iran, mismanagement and corruption on the part of Saddam and his henchmen, and the debilitating effect of international sanctions on the economy, Iraq in 2003 found itself with one of the largest sovereign defaulted debt stocks in history.  Worse, thanks to the sanctions regime, much of the unpaid debt had, by the time of Saddam’s removal, matured into judgements and attachment orders.  That makes a debt restructurer's job much more difficult than in a normal sovereign restructuring.  And unlike other defaulting sovereigns in the past, who had precious few assets available for creditors in foreign jurisdictions to seize, the new Iraq had oil revenues that it desperately needed to use in order to try and get back to some semblance of normalcy and growth.

The fascinating story of how the debt was accumulated and then restructured has been told in bits and pieces.  But economic historian Simon Hinrichsen is the first, to my knowledge, to attempt to tell the full story. His draft article, “Tracing Iraqi Debt Through Defaults and Restructurings”, hot off the presses, is available on the LSE Econ History website here.  Among the most interesting aspects of the story are the use of UN Security Council Resolutions and US Executive Orders to immunize Iraqi oil assets (hence, neutralizing the risk of attacks by holdout creditors) and the attempted resuscitation of the ancient doctrine of Odious Debts. The former succeeded and the latter failed.  Many of these same issues are going to come up again when Venezuela embarks on its post-Maduro restructuring (see here and here).  I wonder how they will play out.

Simon's abstract is as follows:

In 1979 Iraq was a net creditor to the world, due to its large oil reserves and lack of external debt. Fifteen years later, its government debt-to-GDP was over 1,000%. At the time of the U.S. invasion in 2003, Iraq was saddled with around $130 billion in external debt that needed to be restructured. How does a country incur so much debt, so fast, and how does it get out of it? In answering this question, the paper makes two key contributions. First, I reconstruct the build-up of Iraqi debt through the 1980s and 1990s using mainly secondary sources. This paper is the first to create a debt series going back to 1979. The rise in Iraqi indebtedness was a consequence of global geopolitical trends in the 1980s where political lending trumped solvency concerns. Second, through primary sources and interviews with key actors involved, I use oral history to tell the story the Iraqi restructuring. It was one of the largest in history, yet no clear and detailed historical account exists. The restructuring was permeated by politics to inflict harsh terms on creditors at the Paris Club, at a time when creditor-friendly restructurings were the norm. In going for a politically expedient deal, however, the restructuring missed an opportunity to enshrine a doctrine of odious debt in international law

 

Elizabeth Warren's Work in the CMC Heartland Case

posted by Adam Levitin

Elizabeth Warren’s bankruptcy work continues to be in the news, now with a Washington Post article on her work in the CMC Heartland case. Unfortunately, the Washington Post completely misses the point about why Elizabeth decided to work on this case. Let me correct the record about Elizabeth’s (very limited) role in the CMC Heartland case.

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How to Deal with a $3 Trillion Bully

posted by Adam Levitin

I don't like bullies.  And I just ran into a $3 trillion one.  JPMorgan Chase Bank, armed with six partners at two AmLaw 100 firms (Wilmer Hale and McGuire Woods) took the truly unusual step of filing an objection to an amicus curiae brief I filed in a 9th Circuit case called McShannock v. JPMorgan Chase Bank N.A. in support of neither partyChase objects because the brief is late (which it is) and supposedly irrelevant to the disposition of the case. So why is Chase spending thousands of dollars on attorneys fees to object to an irrelevant brief, particularly when it claims no prejudice from the late filing?

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The Puzzling Pricing of Venezuelan Sovereign Bonds

posted by Mitu Gulati

by Mark Weidemaier & Mitu Gulati

Venezuela’s sovereign bonds differ in ways that should, in theory, be reflected in market prices. For example, depending on the bond, the vote required to modify payment terms through the collective action clause (CACs) varies from 100% (requiring each holder to assent), to 85%, to 75%. Bonds with higher voting thresholds are harder to restructure and one would think prices would reflect this. Two bonds issued by state oil company PDVSA also have legal features that one might expect to have pricing implications. One bond benefits from a pledge of collateral (the PDVSA 2020) and, in consequence, should be priced higher than otherwise-comparable bonds. A second was issued at a particularly large original issue discount (OID); this is a potential legal defect that should lower its price. This is the so-called “Hunger bond” (PDVSA 2022 —see here, here and here for more)).

Although these differences seem like they should matter, reports from the European markets (where the bonds can still be traded) indicate that bid prices for Venezuelan sovereign bonds range from around 13.0 to 13.5 cents on the dollar, while ask prices range from about 14.5 to 15.5. Moreover, prices on the bonds with different voting thresholds are identical. That is, the bonds that cannot be restructured except with each creditor’s assent are trading the same as bonds that allow a creditor majority of 85% or 75% to force restructuring terms on dissenters. But why? Venezuela is in full-fledged default, when legal protections should matter the most.  Shouldn’t these non-US investors (US investors can’t buy, given OFAC sanctions) be offering higher prices for bonds with better terms?

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Amicus Brief on Valid-When-Made

posted by Adam Levitin

I have filed an amicus brief regarding "valid-when-made" in Rent-Rite Super Kegs West, Ltd. v. World Business Lenders, LLC. The brief shows pretty conclusively that there was no such doctrine discernible in the law when either the National Bank Act of 1864 or the Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act of 1980 were enacted, and that subsequent cases consistent with the doctrine are based on a misreading of older law. 

Trump, Denmark and Greenland:  What Next?

posted by Mitu Gulati

(This post draws directly from ideas from co authored work with Joseph Blocher; and particularly the numerous discussions we have had about the incentives that a market for sovereign control might create for nations to take better care of their minority populations in outlying areas (e.g., the US and Puerto Rico).  Mistakes in the discussion below, however, are solely mine).

It seems like forever ago, but it has only been a few weeks since the news came out that our esteemed chief executive wanted the US to purchase Greenland.  The notion was widely ridiculed in the press and provided wonderful fodder for comics around the globe.  But as people looked beneath the surface, it quickly became apparent that there was nothing in international law that prohibited the purchase and sale of sovereign control over a territory.  Where Trump was wrong was in his assumption that he needed to purchase Greenland from the Danes.  Under post World War II international law, however, a former colony such as Greenland has the right of self determination.  To quote the Danish prime minister, responding to Trump, “Greenland is not Danish. Greenland belongs to Greenland.”

The Danish PM also said “I strongly hope that this is not meant seriously.”  And, from her perspective of apparently wanting to keep the status quo of Greenland being part of Denmark, it makes sense that that’s what she hopes.  But let us focus on the words “Greenland is not Danish. Greenland belongs to Greenland.” If one thinks about those words just a little, they mean that Trump’s purchase (and maybe he should start calling this a “merger”, since that seems more polite) is perhaps a lot easier to execute than he initially thought.

Trump and any other suitors that Greenland might have (Canada, China, Iceland, Russia, etc.) need to only focus their attention on making the Greenlanders happy; they don’t need to worry about the Danes. No need for Trump to do diplomatic trips to Copenhagen. Trips should be to Nuuk instead. After all, it is the approval of the 55,000 Greenlanders that he needs.

How many Greenlander votes, specifically? (assuming that there would need to be a referendum first). International law doesn’t clearly say; but surely more than a majority – and ideally with a voting mechanism designed in such a way that the rights of the minority that might not want to be part of the merger being appropriately protected.

The point is that if DJT and his supporters remain committed to the Greenland strategy – and it appears they do (see here) – the next step is will be to persuade the people of Greenland that this merger is in their interest. That way, the next time Trump offers a merger deal to the roughly 55,000 Greenlanders, they will react with enthusiasm rather than horror.  One would expect, therefore, to see the US taking steps to mount the charm offensive in Greenland. And, as it turns out, preliminary steps in this direction have already been announced with the US planning to open a consulate in Greenland and engage in various outreach programs as part of its broader arctic charm strategy (here).

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Anderson and Nyarko's Cool New Papers on Contract Evolution

posted by Mitu Gulati

Two of the contracts papers I’ve been most looking forward to this fall have just been posted on ssrn. They are are Rob Anderson’s “An Evolutionary Perspective on Contracting: Evidence From Poison Pills” (here) and Julian Nyarko’s “Stickiness and Incomplete Contracts” (here).

Both papers aim at deepening our understanding of how contracts evolve and, in particular, why they evolve in ways so very different from the standard model used in law schools where parties are assumed to negotiate for an optimal set of terms for their relationships.

One would predict a very different set of contract terms for parties if one takes the contract production process seriously and thinks of contract provisions as products (ala Barak Richman, here) or product attributes (ala Doug Baird, here).  Specifically, Rob and Julian both use models of contract production where new contracts are constructed by building on pre-existing templates.

In this world, one should expect a high degree of path dependence in the data.  And that is precisely what Rob and Julian demonstrate, looking at two very different areas of commercial contracting – poison pill and choice-of-forum provisions. The implications of their papers, both of which are studying the most sophisticated and well-heeled of all contracting parties, for the one of the core exercises in contract law – how should judges interpret contracts – are considerable.  That said – and this is not meant to take away from the two papers at all -- these papers are more about empirically documenting and understanding the phenomena than normative questions of what judges should be doing.

There is an enormous amount of new material in both papers and I will not do more than scratch the surface in terms of their respective contributions.  Here, however, are a couple of things about each of the papers that stood out to me.

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My Favorite Contract Metaphors: Skeuomorphs, Sea Squirts, Barnacles and Black Holes

posted by Mitu Gulati

I love contract metaphors. I’m especially fond of metaphors for the phenomenon of antiquated and useless contract provisions that find a way to persist over the decades in boilerplate contracts.  Philip Wood, the legendary English lawyer, uses the metaphor of barnacles on a ship’s hull to describe how more and more of these useless provisions can accumulate over the years, eventually severely impacting the efficiency of the ship. If you like boats and hate barnacles (perhaps because one of your most hated chores in the summers was for you to attempt to scrape barnacles off the hull of your uncle’s fishing boat), this metaphor may work especially well for you (sorry, Uncle Marvin). Another favorite of mine, that does not bring up memories of unpleasant chores, is Doug Baird’s skeuomorph.  To quote Douglas, who in the course of his explaining why we should not be surprised that suboptimal contract terms both emerge and then persist, has some wonderful examples:

To take a[n] . . .  example, maple syrup is often sold in a glass bottle with a small handle that serves no discernable utilitarian purpose. This is a relic of the time when maple syrup came in jugs and the handles were large enough to be useful. This phenomenon—of a product feature persisting when incorporated in a new environment in which it no longer serves a function—is well known and has a name: skeuomorph.

Douglas goes on to explain that these skeuomorphs can bizarrely become desired features of the product in question (and remember he is drawing an analogy to contract drafting). He writes, while continuing with the maple syrup bottle example:

Buyers of maple syrup want to see a small handle on the bottle. It serves no purpose, but it is what consumers have come to expect. Blue jeans are no longer made for working men who carry pocket watches, but buyers of blue jeans want a watch pocket all the same, even though they have no idea of the purpose it serves and have no use for it. Everyone expects Worcestershire Sauce bottles to come wrapped in paper even though the reason for doing this has long disappeared. Tagines took a particular shape for functional reasons when they were made of clay, and they retained this shape when made of aluminum even though there was no longer a functional reason for doing so. Skeuomorphs can be found everywhere on the “desktops” of personal computers

In short, the idea that a clause could be added to a contract and remain there merely because everyone expected it to be there suggests nothing special about either pari passu clauses in particular or contract terms more generally. The same forces are at work as with ordinary product attributes. Crafting legal prose is hard, and few contracts are ever written from scratch. Lawyers almost always start with a template taken from someplace else. For this reason, those who draft contracts are likely to import features from earlier contracting environments, even when they serve no purpose, merely because they are familiar. To give another example involving financial instruments, the first railway bonds were based on real estate mortgages. They still bear some of the attributes of real estate mortgages, and not always for the better.

If you like this topic, I recommend Douglas’ piece “Pari Passu Clauses and the Skeuomorph Problem in Contract Law” (you should of course ignore all the bits of this brilliant piece that are critical of my paper with Bob Scott and Steve Choi on Contractual Black Holes (yes, another metaphor I’m very fond of) that Douglas’ piece was a comment on).

Last but not least is the Sea Squirt, a close cousin of the barnacle.  This one comes from M&A guru, Glenn West who was speaking on a panel at UT in 2018 on M&A Contracting.  The title of his presentation was: “Have Sea Squirts Invaded Your Contract?—Avoiding Mindless Use of So Called ‘Market’ Terms You May or May Not Understand”.  Below I’ve excerpted some priceless language from an August 2017 blog post by Glenn on MAC clauses in M&A agreements.  And yes, Glenn is talking about M&A contracts containing brainless bits of language; the contracts drafted by the most elite among all transactional lawyers.

As an aside, there are a number of excellent recent papers arguing over how brainless M&A contracts are; see here (Anderson & Manns) and here (Coates, Palia & Wu).

From Glenn’s blog post, here goes:

The sea squirt is an animal that begins life with a brain and a tail.  Immediately after it is born, it uses its brain and tail to propel itself through the water until it finds some rockto attach itself.  Once it attaches itself to that rock it consumes its brain, absorbs its tail, and thereafter never moves again; it lives out its remaining life as a brainless water filter.

Many of the standard terms of M&A agreements also began their existence with a brain—the brain of a smart lawyer who perceived an issue that needed to be addressed and drafted a clause to address it.  And then other smart lawyers recognized the value of that newly drafted clause, and adapted and improved it until it became a standard part of most M&A agreements.  But once that clause became attached to the “market” it became divorced from the brain or brains that created it, and soon everyone was using it regardless of whether they truly understood all the reasons that prompted its draftingEven worse, market attachment is so strong that even after a standard clause has been repeatedly interpreted by courts to have a meaning that differs from the meaning ascribed to that clause by those who purport to know but do not actual know its meaning (mindlessly using the now brainless clause), it continues to be used without modification.  Such is the case for many with the ubiquitous Material Adverse Change (“MAC”) or Material Adverse Effect (“MAE”) clause.

My friend at UNC Chapel Hill, John Coyle, has an article coming out soon on “Contract as Swag”.  I’m eager to see how that metaphor will work. I like swag and I want learn how to get more of it.

Private Equity's Abuse of Limited Liability

posted by Adam Levitin

One of the central features of the Stop Wall Street Looting Act that was introduced by Senator Elizabeth Warren and a number of co-sponsors is a targeted rollback of limited liability.

This provision, more than any other, has gotten some commentators’ hackles up, even those who are willing to admit that there are real problems in the private equity industry and welcome some of the other reforms in the bill. (See also here and here, for example.)

The idea that limited liability is a sine qua non of the modern economy is practically Gospel to most business commentators.  These commentators assume that without limited liability, no one will ever assume risks, such that any curtailment of limited liability is a death sentence for the private equity industry.

They're wrong. Limited liability is a substantial, regressive cross-subsidy to capital at the expense of tort creditors, tax authorities, and small businesses. Limited liability is a relic of the underdeveloped financial markets of the Gilded Age and operates as an implicit form of leverage provided by law. But it’s hardly either economically efficient or necessary for modern business activity. It's a fairly recent development in the western world, there are numerous exceptions to it, and a number of notable firms have prospered without it (JPMorgan & Co., Lloyds of London, American Express, and many leading law law firms).

In any event the Stop Wall Street Looting Act rolls back limited liability solely for private equity general partners in a surgical manner such that doesn’t affect limited liability more broadly. All the Stop Wall Street Looting Act will do is reveal which private equity firms have real managerial expertise, and are thus able to thrive without limited liability, and those that don’t and require the legal subsidy to be profitable. Far from undermining the private equity industry, it is a restoration of a central tenet of honest American capitalism: reward should be commensurate with risk.

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Coyle on Studying the History of a Contract Provision

posted by Mitu Gulati

The way many of us teach interpretation in Contract Law, there is little role for history (admittedly, this is just based on casual observation). The meaning of a clause is a function of the words that make up that clause.  The parties to the transaction are assumed to have drafted it to document the key aspects of their transaction, to balance risks and rewards blah blah.  If a dispute arises, we might have an argument as to whether a strict textualist reading of the words accurately represent what the parties really meant by them or whether we need to also examine the context of the relationship. What we do not ever do, however, is to delve into the history of the clause from before these parties contemplated using it – that is, of what prior drafters of the original versions of this clause might have meant in using it.

The foregoing makes sense in a world in which the contracts for each deal are drafted from scratch. But does anyone draft contracts from scratch?  What if we live in a world where 99.9% of contracts are made up of provisions cut and paste from prior deals; provisions that are assumed to cover all the key contingencies, but not necessarily understood (or even read)? In this latter world, where there are lots of provisions that the parties to the transaction never fully focused on (let alone understood), might there be an argument – in cases where there are interpretive disputes -- for the use of a contract provision’s history? Might that history not sometimes be more relevant than the non-understandings of the parties as to what they did or did not understand they were contracting for? (Among the few pieces that wrestle with this question are these two gems: Lee Buchheit's Contract Paleontology here and Mark Weidemaier's Indiana Jones: Contract Originalist here)

I’m not sure what the answer to the foregoing question is. But it intrigues me.  And it connects to a wonderfully fresh new body of research in Contract Law where a number of scholars have been studying the production process for modern contracts.  The list of papers and scholars here is too long to do justice to and I’ll just end up making mistakes if I try to do a list.  But what unites this group of contract scholars is that for them it isn’t enough to assume that contracts show up fully formed at the time of a deal, purely the product of the brilliant minds of the deal makers who anticipate nearly every possible contingency at the start.  Instead, understanding what provisions show up in a contract, and in what formulation, requires understanding the contract production process. (Barak Richman's delightful "Contracts Meet Henry Ford" (here) is, to my mind, foundational).

It is perhaps too early to tell whether this research will catch on and revolutionize contract law. I hope it does, but I’m biased.

One of my favorite papers in this new body of contract scholarship showed up recently on ssrn. It is John Coyle’s “A History of the Choice-of-Law Clause” (here). I have rarely found a piece of legal scholarship so compelling.  The paper is not only a model of clarity in terms of the writing, but it is brave. It is completely unapologetic in not only taking on an entirely new mode of research (a painstaking documentation of the historical evolution of the most important terms in any and every contract), but in coming up with a cool and innovative research technique for unpacking that history (this project would have been impossible to do without that innovation).

Continue reading "Coyle on Studying the History of a Contract Provision" »

Ramming Bow Contracts

posted by Mitu Gulati

Have you heard of Ramming Bows? Or did you know that they describe a category of boilerplate contract provisions?  Until a couple of weeks ago, I had not either.  That was when I came across Glenn West’s two delightful blog posts at the Weil Gotshal & Manges site (here and here). Glenn is a senior partner in the Private Equity/M&A practice at Weil. And in his spare time, he writes wonderfully witty blog posts and articles about wide range of legal issues; many of which are about the bizarre world of sophisticated boilerplate contracting.  Even if you have no interest in contract law, let alone boilerplate contracts, I suspect that you will enjoy his writing.  It is insightful about the way in which contracts get produced and evolve in the real world and, even better, is funny.

Continue reading "Ramming Bow Contracts" »

What Is "Credit"? AfterPay, Earnin', and ISAs

posted by Adam Levitin
A major issue in consumer finance regulation in mid-20th century was what counted as “credit” and was therefore subject to state usury laws and (after 1968) to the federal Truth in Lending Act. Many states had a time-price differential doctrine that held that when a retailer sold goods for future payment, the differential between the price of a cash sale and that of credit sale was not interest for usury law purposes. State retail installment loan acts began to override the time-price doctrine, however, and the federal Truth in Lending Act and regulations thereunder eventually made clear that for its purposes the difference was a “finance charge” that had to be disclosed in a certain way. 
 
Today, we seem to be coming back full circle to the question of what constitutes “credit.” We’re seeing this is three different product contexts: buy-now-pay-later products like Afterpay; and payday advance products like Bridgit, Dave, and Earnin’; and Income-Sharing Agreements or ISAs (used primarily for education financing). Each of these three product types has a business model that is based on it not being subject to some or all “credit” regulation. Whether those business models are well-founded legally is another matter.
 
Let me briefly recap what is “credit” for different regulatory purposes and then turn to its application to the types of products.

Continue reading "What Is "Credit"? AfterPay, Earnin', and ISAs" »

Elizabeth Warren & the Dow Corning Bankruptcy: Nothing to See

posted by Adam Levitin

The Washington Post has a story about Senator Elizabeth Warren’s involvement in the Dow Corning bankruptcy that implies that Senator Warren was somehow working against the interests of personal injury victims. That’s rubbish, and it’s frankly irresponsible reporting that fundamentally fails to understand the bankruptcy process and leaves out a critical fact.

Bankruptcies are complicated, so let me relate the Dow Corning story and then what we know of Senator Warren’s minimal involvement. Bottom line is that this is a complete nothing burger, much like the previous Washington Post story with the shocking headline (much mocked, and now amended) that then-Professor Warren had billed [a below-market] rate of $675/hr for her legal work

Here's the properly related story in a nutshell: Senator Warren did some minimal work in support of a deal to ensure compensation for tort victims that was supported by the overwhelming majority (94%) of those tort victims and that was approved by a federal court. That’s a good thing that deserves praise, not some implicit shade.  Alas, the Post doesn't bother to mention the tort victim support for the plan. 

Continue reading "Elizabeth Warren & the Dow Corning Bankruptcy: Nothing to See" »

Reparations Claims by the Herero and Nama Against Germany

posted by Mitu Gulati

About two years ago, in 2017, an intriguing lawsuit was filed under the Alien Tort Claims Act in New York. It was filed by members of the Herero and Nama tribes for the genocide of their ancestors that took place in what is now known as Namibia. In March this year, Judge Laura Taylor Swain, who readers of this blog may know from the Puerto Rican financial drama, ruled that the claims against Germany were barred by that nation’s right of sovereign immunity. As an aside, having oversight of the Puerto Rican debt debacle is not Judge Swain’s only connection to sovereign debt lore – she also sits in the judgeship vacated by none other than Judge Thomas Griesa of pari passu infamy. For accounts of the above mentioned class action by the Herero and Nama, see here and here. (Lawsuits on roughly similar grounds had been attempted earlier as well; see here).

This outcome is probably not surprising for anyone who has followed the fate of human rights litigation over the past few years brought under the Alien Tort Claims Act. Basically, under the direction of the Supreme Court, the possibilities for victims of human rights violations that took place overseas to foreigners with no more than minimal connections to the US (in terms of the claims themselves) have been severely curtailed.

My reason for bringing this up is that this is a history that I knew little about until I started coming across references to the genocide in Namibia in accounts of the Congo where, similar horrors were taking place in the 1890s and early 1900s under King Leopold of Belgium (Joseph Blocher and I have been working on the question of contemporary implications for international law of the transfer of control that took place after the genocide in the Congo (here)). Still though, these references didn’t give me anything close to a sense of how horrific things had been there.

That is, until I came across this case and began reading the filings in more detail. And one of the most interesting pieces I’ve found is by German scholar Matthias Goldman that both uses original archival research to describes the events that took place and uses them to question our contemporary understanding of the law of sovereignty. The law of sovereignty, as with all of customary international law, is based on assumptions (often faulty – as Matthias shows in this case) about history. The article, “The Entanglement of Property and Sovereignty in International Law”, is short and eminently readable (here). Matthias, who many slipsters know because of his work on sovereign debt matters, has not only been writing on the topic of the genocide in South Western Africa but has also been involved in the court case (he filed an affidavit in the Herero and Nama lawsuit).

I hope that Judge Swain’s decision is not the end of the road for the claims of reparations by the Herero and Nama. Maybe they will have better fortune with a filing in a German court?

Home Contract Financing and Black Wealth

posted by Alan White

A remarkable new quantitative study finds that over two decades, African American home buyers in Chicago lost between $3 and $4 billion in wealth because of credit apartheid. The study authors from research centers at Duke, UIC and Loyola-Chicago reviewed property records for more than 3,000 Chicago homes. During the 1950s and 1960s, up to 95% of homes sold to black buyers were financed with land installment sale contracts rather than mortgages. Mortgage loans were largely unavailable due to continued redlining by banks and the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). Instead, a limited group of speculators bought homes for cash and resold them with large price markups to newcomers in the Great Migration. The interest rates for  land installment contracts were several points higher than comparable mortgage loans offered to whites. Thus, black home buyers were overcharged for the home price and the interest rate they paid compared with similar white home buyers. The authors quantify this as a 141% race tax on housing.

Buyers financing homes with installment land contracts also face greater risks of losing their homes and accumulated equity than buyers with a deed and mortgage purchase, for reasons we teach, or ought to teach, in any Property Law or Real Estate class in law school. A missed payment on a land contract can mean quick eviction, while a homeowner behind on a mortgage is protected in many states by foreclosure procedures and redemption rights. More importantly, when a bank, FHA or other lender finances a home, the lender has strong incentives to protect the buyer and itself from defective home conditions or title problems. Those protections are missing from the installment land contract financing structure. The Duke study did not include the cost of premature evictions, home repairs, and title problems experienced by black contract buyers, all of which would further magnify the wealth gap between white and black home buyers. 

The Curious Persistence of Plan B (Bankruptcy Lite)

posted by Jason Kilborn

I've come across a phenomenon numerous times over the years, again recently, that reveals the purpose of and resistance to discharge as the ultimate solution/relief for bankruptcy. In a discussion of the Chinese Supreme People's Court's struggles with "the enforcement difficulty" (执行难), the writers observe that, if a judgment debtor is found by the court enforcement division to have no available assets against which to collect a judgment, the enforcement action is terminated ... but "the court will automatically check every six months whether the involved judgment debtors have new property." On the one hand, the termination of fruitless enforcement actions sounds something like bankruptcy relief. Assuming the process actually works like this, and assuming the court enforcement division is not overly aggressive in pursuing "new property," this seems to me to take some of the pressure off of the Chinese system to adopt a proper bankruptcy discharge to alleviate the suffering of insolvent judgment debtors. On the other hand, without a discharge, the "checking for new property" part ensures that debtors' incentives to be productive will remain perpetually depressed, and official resources will be perpetually wasted in interminable pursuit of phantom new assets. These debtors' productivity and entrepreneurialism is forever lost to Chinese society in an era in which global competition continues to heat up.

Continue reading "The Curious Persistence of Plan B (Bankruptcy Lite)" »

New (From the Archives) Paper on Determinants of Personal Bankruptcy

posted by Melissa Jacoby

This working paper is a longitudinal empirical study of lower-income homeowners, including a subset of bankruptcy filers, produced with an interdisciplinary team of cross-campus colleagues, including Professor Roberto Quercia, director of UNC's Center for Community Capital. We just posted this version on SSRN for the first time yesterday in light of continued interest in its questions and findings. The abstract does not give too much detail (see the paper for that), but here it is:

Personal Bankruptcy Decisions Before and After Bankruptcy Reform

Abstract

We examine the personal bankruptcy decisions of lower-income homeowners before and after the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act (BAPCPA). Econometric studies suggest that personal bankruptcy is explained by financial gain rather than adverse events, but data constraints have hindered tests of the adverse events hypothesis. Using household level panel data and controlling for the financial benefit of filing, we find that stressors related to cash flow, unexpected expenses, unemployment, health insurance coverage, medical bills, and mortgage delinquencies predict bankruptcy filings a year later. At the federal level, the 2005 Bankruptcy Reform explains a decrease in filings over time in counties that experienced lower filing rates.

New Paper: Consumer Protection After the Global Financial Crisis

posted by Melissa Jacoby

Historian Ed Balleisen and I have just posted a paper of interest to Credit Slips readers who are interested in consumer protection, financial crises, and inputs into post-crisis policymaking more generally. I will let the abstract speak for itself:

Consumer Protection After the Global Financial Crisis

Edward J. Balleisen & Melissa B. Jacoby

Abstract

Like other major events, the Global Financial Crisis generated a large and diffuse body of academic analysis. As part of a broader call for operationalizing the study of crises as policy shocks and resulting responses, which inevitably derail from elegant theories, we examine how regulatory protagonists approached consumer protection after the GFC, guided by six elements that should be considered in any policy shock context. After reviewing the introduction and philosophy of the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection, created as part of the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010, we consider four examples of how consumer protection unfolded in the crises’ aftermath that have received less attention. Our case studies investigate a common set of queries. We sought to identify the parties who cared sufficiently about a given issue to engage with it and try to shape policy, as well as the evolving nature of the relevant policy agenda. We also looked for key changes in policy, which could be reflected in various forms—whether establishing an entirely new regulatory agency, formulating novel enforcement strategies, or deflecting policy reforms.


The first of our case studies focuses on operations of the Federal Trade Commission in the GFC’s aftermath. Although the Dodd-Frank Act shifted some obligations toward the CFPB, we find that the FTC continued to worry about and seek to address fraud against consumers. But it tended to focus on shady practices that arose in response to the GFC rather than those that facilitated it. Our second case study examines the Congressional adoption of a carveout from CFPB authority for auto dealers, which resulted from strong lobbying by car companies worried about a cratering sales environment, and the aftermath of the policy. Here, we observe that this carveout allowed a significant amount of troubling auto lending activity to continue and expand, with potentially systemic consequences. Loan servicer misbehavior, particularly in the form of robosigning, is the focus of our third case study. Although Dodd-Frank did not explicitly address robosigning, the new agency it created, the CFPB, was able to draw on its broad authority to address this newly arising problem. And, because the CFPB had authority over student loan servicers, the agency could pivot relatively quickly from the mortgage context to the student loan context. Our fourth and final case study is the rise and fall of Operation Choke Point, an understandably controversial interagency program, convened by the U.S. Department of Justice, which, with the GFC fresh in mind, attempted to curtail fraudulent activities by cutting off access to online payment mechanisms. Here, we see an anti-fraud effort that was particularly vulnerable to a change in presidential administration and political climate because its designers had invested little effort in building public awareness and support for the program.

The Article concludes with an overall assessment and suggestions for other focal points for which our approach would be useful. The examples span a range of other domestic and global policy contexts.

 

 

 

Congolese Elections and the Opportunity for the International Community to do the Right Thing

posted by Mitu Gulati

The Congo held elections yesterday; elections that the ruling party has kept finding excuses to postpone over the past two years.  International pressure though, forced them to be held (albeit in an incomplete fashion).  Now, the question is whether the vote counts will be done with some modicum or propriety and whether the current kleptocrats will nevertheless find some way to hold on to power in this resource rich nation with a tragic history.  The latest reports are telling us that there is already chaos and that the internet has been shut down (from the Washington Post, see here).

My interest in the Congo was spurred by a question about its sovereign debt (of course). My Duke colleague and frequent co author, Joseph Blocher, who has worked in Africa and knows my obsession with sovereign debt–and particularly the question of what is to be done about the sovereign debts incurred by despotic leaders (the “Odious Debts” problem)--got me hooked on the history of the Congo some years ago by telling me the story of the debt of the Congo Free State from the late 1800s. The debt was incurred by, and proceeds subsequently stolen by, one of the worst despots in history–King Leopold of Belgium.  He issued bonds in the millions of francs in the name of the Congo Free State and then, in 1908, when the international community forced him out because of the genocide he had engineered, the debts he had incurred in the name of his vassal state were put by the international community on to the backs of the Congolese people. When it comes to the Congo, the rest of the world has so much to be ashamed about (there is a super episode from the BBC’s The Foreign Desk here). But maybe we will do the right thing this time?

Drawing from work that Joseph and I have been doing on the Congo and the infamous 1908 forced transfer of sovereignty (here), here are some thoughts on the parallels between the events of today and of a century ago.

The scene in the Congo today is, sadly, is familiar. An unaccountable leader treats Congo as personal property, enriching himself as untold millions of Congolese labor to extract resources needed for the world’s latest technological boom. What will the international community do?

Today, the despot holding power is Joseph Kabila, the resource is coltan (used in cell phones), and the international response remains uncertain. Kabila has agreed to hold elections and step down, but he and his henchmen seem to keep finding excuses to postpone the transfer of power. 

In 1908, the leader was King Leopold, the resource was rubber (made valuable by the development of vulcanization), and the international response was extraordinary: On November 15, 1908, in response to intense pressure, Belgium bought the Congo Free State from its own king.

Today, as the world is understandably focused on the present and the future of the Congo, we should not forget the lessons of its past.

Continue reading "Congolese Elections and the Opportunity for the International Community to do the Right Thing" »

Almost Citizens -- by Sam Erman

posted by Mitu Gulati

For those of you, who like me have been following the Puerto Rican debt drama, this wonderful new book by Sam Erman of USC might be of interest.  There are many wonderful and insightful stories in this book that I was altogether unaware of, despite having spent a lot of time reading about Puerto Rico's bizarre constitutional status.  Ultimately though, the most intriguing and insightful aspect of the book, to me, was the connection that Sam draws between the strange "foreign in a domestic sense" status of Puerto Rico and the events surrounding Reconstruction from the same period of time.

Sam was supposed to come to Duke last year to present this to the seminar that I run on Race, Law & Politics with Guy Charles, but we got hit by a snow storm on the day of his talk.  My initial thought had been to cancel the discussion and move on to the next paper.  But the students in the seminar (and Guy) had liked the draft of the book so much that they asked whether we might have a session to discuss it despite the fact that Sam was not going to be able to make it to Durham any longer.  We ended up having a fun discussion with my two wonderful con law colleagues, Walter Dellinger and Joseph Blocher. Indeed, that was perhaps our best session of the term (notwithstanding my general distaste for con law discussions). 

Next week, I hope to -- after talking to Walter and Joseph more -- do a little post on the recent oral argument in the first circuit about the constitutionality of the Puerto Rican Control Board.  That case, if it comes out the way I think it might, could turn the apple cart upside down.  But I need to listen to that oral argument tape again.

Here is the official book blurb for Sam's book:

"Almost Citizens lays out the tragic story of how the United States denied Puerto Ricans full citizenship following annexation of the island in 1898. As America became an overseas empire, a handful of remarkable Puerto Ricans debated with U.S. legislators, presidents, judges, and others over who was a citizen and what citizenship meant. This struggle caused a fundamental shift in constitutional jurisprudence: away from the post-Civil War regime of citizenship, rights, and statehood and toward doctrines that accommodated racist imperial governance. Erman’s gripping account shows how, in the wake of the Spanish–American War, administrators, lawmakers, and presidents, together with judges, deployed creativity and ambiguity to transform constitutional law and interpretation over a quarter century of debate and litigation. The result is a history in which the United States and Latin America, Reconstruction and empire, and law and bureaucracy intertwine."

Seeking nominations for the Grant Gilmore Award

posted by Melissa Jacoby

GilmoreThe American College of Commercial Finance Lawyers seeks nominations for scholarly articles to be considered for the Grant Gilmore Award. It is not awarded every year, but when it is, the main criteria is "superior writing in the field of commercial finance law."  I am chairing the award committee this year, so please email me or message me on Twitter before December 14 to ensure your suggestion is considered. Especially eager to get suggestions of articles written by newer members of the academy that might otherwise be missed.

Reflections on the foreclosure crisis 10th anniversary

posted by Alan White

Before it was the global financial crisis, we called it the subprime crisis. The slow, painful recovery, and the ever-widening income and wealth inequality, are the results of policy choices made before and after the crisis. Before 2007, legislators and regulators cheered on risky subprime mortgage lending as the "democratization of credit." High-rate, high-fee mortgages transferred income massively from working- and middle-class buyers and owners of homes to securities investors.

After the crisis, policymakers had a choice, to allocate the trillions in wealth losses to investors, borrowers or taxpayers. U.S. policy was for taxpayers to lend to banks until the borrowers had finished absorbing all the losses. The roughly $400 billion taxpayers lent out to banks via the TARP bailout was mostly repaid, apart from about $30 billion in incentives paid to the mortgage industry to support about 2 million home loan modifications, and $12 billion spent to rescue the US auto industry. The $190 billion Fannie/Freddie bailout has also returned a profit to the US Treasury.  Banks recovered quickly and are now earning $200 billion in annual profits. Of course, equity investors, particularly those wiped out by Lehman and many other bankruptcies, or by the global downturn generally, lost trillions as well. The long-term impact, however, was to shift corporate debt to government balance sheets, while leaving households overleveraged.

Thomas Herndon has calculated that 2008-2014 subprime mortgage modifications added $20 billion to homeowner debt (eroding wealth by $20 billion). In other words, all the modification and workout programs of the Bush and Obama administrations did not reduce homeowner debt by a penny. In fact, mortgage lenders added $20 billion (net) fees and interest onto the backs of distressed homeowners. During the same period, $600 billion in foreclosure losses were written off by private mortgage-backed securities investors, implying a similar or greater loss in wealth for foreclosed homeowners. These data include only the private-label side of the housing finance market; adding the debt increase and wealth losses for Fannie and Freddie homeowners could conceivably double the totals.

Nearly 9 million homes were foreclosed from 2007 to 2016. While some were investor-owned, even those often resulted in the eviction of tenant families. Four and one-half million homeowners still remain underwater, i.e. owe more mortgage debt than the value of their home.

 While baby boomers' housing wealth was decimated by foreclosures and increasing mortgage debt, millennials piled on student loan debt, closing the door to home buying and asset building. A recovery built on incomplete deleveraging, and new waves of consumer debt buildup, contains the seeds of the next crisis. While various pundits bemoan the resurgent federal fiscal debt, we would do well to address policies that continue to stoke unsustainable household debt.

Trump socialism and housing finance

posted by Alan White

Various tax law scholars have commented on the tax fraud allegations in the recent New York Times story. Equally important is the story's reminder that our housing finance system, and the real estate fortunes it has spawned, have depended for nearly a century on the largess of government.

Fred Trump, the president's father, built the fortune that Donald Trump inherited after avoiding or evading millions in estate and gift taxes.  Fred's fortune was almost entirely due to his savvy exploitation of federal government housing subsidies. When Roosevelt's New Dealers struggled to put the economy back on its feet, they invented the FHA mortgage insurance program, and Fred Trump was one of FHA's first profiteers. As recounted in Gwenda Blair's wonderful book, Fred went from building one house at a time to building Huge middle-class apartment complexes when he was first able to tap into government-backed FHA loans.  Screen Shot 2018-10-15 at 10.40.49 AM

 In his fascinating 1954 testimony before the Senate Banking Committee (begins at p. 395), Fred Trump explains how he purchased the land for the Beach Haven apartments for roughly $200,000, put the land in trust for his children and paid gift taxes on a $260,000 land valuation, and then obtained a a $16 million FHA mortgage to build the apartments.  Fred's corporation owning the buildings netted $4 million from the loan proceeds above and beyond the construction costs, and the land belonging to the Trump childrens' trust was valued by the City tax assessors at $1.3 million as a result of the FHA mortgage transaction and apartment construction. In other words, Fred Trump parlayed his $200,000 investment into a $4 million cash profit for his business and a $1.3 million ground lease producing $60,000 annual income for his children. In his testimony he conceded that this would have been impossible without the FHA government loan guarantee.

Peter Dreier and Alex Schwartz have written a nice exposé of the irony in President Trump's proposals to slash the very government housing finance subsidies to which he owes his personal fortune.

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