Synopses & Reviews
Praise for The New Financial Deal
"While we wait and wonder what the true denouement of the Dodd-Frank Act will be, we are blessed with Professor David Skeel's timely, informative, and lucid explanation of the ins and outs of the new law. For readers trying to understand what Dodd-Frank will likely mean for Wall Street's futureand for oursSkeel skillfully dissects the Act's nuances and intricacies and provides regulators a road map for how to make sure Wall Street doesn't double-cross us again anytime soon. It's a must-read."
From the Introduction by William D. Cohan, bestselling author of House of Cards and The Last Tycoons and an upcoming title on Goldman Sachs to be published in 2011
"The New Financial Deal is mandatory reading for all those interested in the financial markets and the global economy. David Skeel is to be commended for casting sunlight, the best disinfectant, on the events preceding the enactment of the Dodd-Frank reform, its efficacy, and thepotential consequences, intended and unintended."
From the Foreword by Harvey R. Miller, Senior Partner at Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP and the lead bankruptcy attorney for Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., et al.
"In this work, David Skeel leads us through the most important elements of the complex 2,300 page Dodd-Frank Act, not just making its principal elements clear but also providing us with his own, invariably balanced, judgments. Readers might not agree with his every view, but will not be in doubt about why and how he got there."
Peter J. Wallison, Arthur F. Burns Fellow in Financial Policy Studies, American Enterprise Institute
Synopsis
What can we expect from our era's New Deal? To answer this question, The New Financial Deal will begin with an inside account of the legislative process, then outline and access its key components: the new framework for regulating derivatives, the regulation of banking and systemic risk, and the new resolution regime. It will explain the implications of the new framework, and propose correctives that would better align its ostensible objectives--such as preventing future bailouts--with the new regulatory structure. The legislation's key theme is government partnership with and regulation of large concentrated institutions in order to reduce their risk and manage their failure. In place of the decentralized pre-crisis regulation of derivatives, the new legislation will require that most derivatives be cleared through a clearing house and traded on exchanges. The stability of the derivatives market will therefore depend on a small number of potentially enormous clearing houses. For large financial institutions that encounter financial distress, the legislation gives bank regulators sweeping new authority to step in and take over the institution. Regulators, rather than negotiations among the parties themselves, will determine the outcomes. These epochal reforms are posed to change Wall Street forever, but whether they help to regulate supermarket banks or create even more moral hazard is worthy of serious debate.
Synopsis
The good, the bad, and the scary of Washington's attempt to reform Wall StreetThe Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act is Washington's response to America's call for a new regulatory framework for the twenty-first century.
In The New Financial Deal, author David Skeel offers an in-depth look at the new financial reforms and questions whether they will bring more effective regulation of contemporary finance or simply cement the partnership between government and the largest banks.
- Details the goals of the legislation, and reveals that how they are handled could dangerously distort American finance, making it more politically charged, less vibrant, and further removed from basic rule of law principles
- Provides an inside account of the legislative process
- Outlines the key components of the new law
To understand what American financial life is likely to look like in five, ten, or twenty years, and how regulators will respond to the next crisis, we need to understand Dodd-Frank. The New Financial Deal provides that understanding, breaking down both what Dodd-Frank says and what it all means.
Synopsis
After watching the government bail out Bear Stearns and AIG in 2008, and pump well over one hundred billion dollars into Citigroup, Bank of America, and the other largest banks the same year, Americans realized that the existing regulatory framework did not work. The Dodd-Frank Act, which President Obama signed into law in July 2010, was Washington's answer. The legislation created an entirely new set of rules for both the instruments and the institutions of contemporary finance. Although the reforms were desperately needed, they were drafted by the same people who designed the bailouts of 2008, and it shows.
In The New Financial Deal: Understanding the Dodd-Frank Act and Its (Unintended) Consequences, David Skeel explains where the legislation came from, tracing its assumptions back to the 2008 crisis and offering an inside account of the key moments in the legislative process. He analyzes each of the main components of the Dodd-Frank Act, explaining how they will work and showing that the new regulatory framework depends on precisely the qualities that Americans found so offensive about the bailouts of 2008: special treatment of the largest financial institutions and ad hoc intervention in the event of trouble. Skeel's assessment is not entirely pessimistic, however. He argues that a few features of the Dodd-Frank Act are genuine improvements, such as its regulation of financial derivatives, and he outlines several simple bankruptcy reforms that would curb the worst excesses of the new partnership between the government and the largest financial institutions.
About the Author
DAVID SKEEL is the S. Samuel Arsht Professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He is author of Icarus in the Boardroom: The Fundamental Flaws in Corporate America and Where They Came From; Debt's Dominion: A History of Bankruptcy Law in America; and numerous articles on bankruptcy, corporate law, and other topics. His commentary has appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Weekly Standard, Books & Culture, and elsewhere.
Table of Contents
Foreword.
Introduction.
A Few Major Characters.
Chapter 1 The Corporatist Turn in American Regulation.
The Path to Enactment.
The Two Goals of the Dodd-Frank Act.
A Brief Tour of Other Reforms.
Two Themes That Emerge.
Fannie Mae Effect.
Covering Their Tracks.
Is There Anything to Like?
Part I Relearning the Financial Crisis.
Chapter 2 The Lehman Myth.
The Stock Narrative.
Lehman in Context.
Lehman’s Road to Bankruptcy.
Lehman in Bankruptcy.
Bear Stearns Counterfactual.
Road to Chrysler.
Chrysler Bankruptcy.
General Motors “Sale”.
From Myths to Legislative Reality.
Part II The 2010 Financial Reforms.
Chapter 3 Geithner, Dodd, Frank, and the Legislative Grinder.
The Players.
TARP and the Housing Crisis.
Road to an East Room Signing.
Channeling Brandeis: The Volcker Rule.
The Goldman Moment.
Chapter 4 Derivatives Reform: Clearinghouses and the Plain-Vanilla Derivative.
Basic Framework.
Derivatives and the New Finance.
The Stout Alternative.
New Clearinghouses and Exchanges.
Regulatory Dilemmas of Clearinghouses.
Disclosure and Data Collection.
Making It Work?
Chapter 5 Banking Reform: Breaking Up Was Too Hard to Do.
Basic Framework.
New Designator and Designatees.
Will the New Capital Standards Work?
Contingent Capital Alternative.
Volcker Rule.
What Do the Brandeisian Concessions Mean?
Office of Minority and Women Inclusion.
Institutionalizing the Government-Bank Partnership.
A Happier Story?
Repo Land Mine.
Chapter 6 Unsafe at Any Rate.
Basic Framework.
Who Is Elizabeth Warren?
Toasters and Credit Cards.
The New Consumer Bureau.
Mortgage Broker and Securitization Rules.
Consequences: What to Expect from the New Bureau.
What It Means for the Government-Bank Partnership.
Chapter 7 Banking on the FDIC (Resolution Authority I).
Does the FDIC Play the Same Role in Both Regimes?
How (and How Well) Does FDIC Resolution Work?
Moving Beyond the FDIC Analogy.
Chapter 8 Bailouts, Bankruptcy, or Better? (Resolution Authority II).
Basic Framework.
The Trouble with Bailouts.
Who Will Invoke Dodd-Frank Resolution, and When?
Triggering the New Framework.
Controlling Systemic Risk.
Third Objective: Haircuts.
All Liquidation, All the Time?
Part III The Future.
Chapter 9 Essential Fixes and the New Financial Order.
What Works and What Doesn’t.
Staying Derivatives in Bankruptcy.
ISDA and Its Discontent.
Other Bankruptcy Reforms for Financial Institutions.
Plugging the Chrysler Hole in Bankruptcy.
Bankruptcy to the Rescue.
Chapter 10 An International Solution?
Basic Framework.
Problems of Cross-Border Cases.
Scholarly Silver Bullets.
Dodd-Frank’s Contribution to Cross-Border Issues.
New Living Wills.
A Simple Treaty Might Do.
Risk of a Clearinghouse Crisis.
Reinvigorating the Rule of Law.
Conclusion.
Notes.
Bibliography.
Acknowledgments.
About the Author.
Index.