The FinReg Pod

Congressman Mike Levin is one of the leading voices on climate policy in the U.S. Congress. He serves on the House Committee on Natural Resources as well as the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis, and in this episode, he talks about the findings from the latest UN climate report, the climate provisions he would like to see in the proposed $3.5 trillion dollar budget reconciliation package, and what other government agencies can do to help address the climate crisis.   Congressman Levin references “Macroeconomic Consequences of the Infrastructure and Budget Reconciliation Plans” from Moody’s Analytics. That analysis is available here: macroeconomic-consequences-infrastructure.pdf (moodysanalytics.com)

Zach Neumann is the co-founder and executive director of the COVID-19 Eviction Defense Project in Denver, Colorado. Zach is also the co-author of a recent paper from the Aspen Institute titled “With Federal Moratorium Expiring, 15 million people at Risk of Eviction.” In this episode, Zach discusses the innovative model his organization developed to quickly disburse rental assistance funds, the challenges that states and local communities across the country have faced in distributing $46 billion in Congressionally appropriated rental assistance, and the steps state policymakers can take now to slow evictions and distribute rental assistance funds more quickly.   Check out Zach’s co-authored paper: “With Federal Moratorium Expiring, 15 Million People at Risk of Eviction” at https://www.aspeninstitute.org/publications/with-federal-moratorium-expiring-15-million-people-at-risk-of-eviction/   Also check out Zach’s co-authored paper from December: “Emerging Best Practices for COVID-19 Emergency Rental Assistance Programs” at https://www.aspeninstitute.org/publications/emerging-best-practices-for-covid-19-emergency-rental-assistance-programs/

The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) is a cooperative effort among 11 northeastern and mid-Atlantic states to cap and reduce carbon dioxide emissions from the power sector. In this episode, RGGI Vice Chair and Maryland Secretary of the Environment, Ben Grumbles, breaks down RGGI’s origins and what it takes for states to join the initiative, the auction process to allocate emissions allowances, and the development of a robust secondary market where allowances are continuously traded   To learn more about RGGI and other carbon markets in the U.S. and Europe, check out a recording of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s June 3rd meeting of the Energy and Environmental Markets Advisory Committee here.

LIBOR has been called the world’s most important number, which is why getting the entire financial system to move away from LIBOR is such a herculean effort. In this episode, Manuel Frey and Jane O’Brien discuss the role of regulators in facilitating an orderly transition away from LIBOR, the strengths and weaknesses of regulators’ preferred alternative to LIBOR, and the potential for rival benchmarks to gain traction. Manuel is a partner at the law firm of Paul Weiss, where he focuses on a broad-based cross-border OTC derivatives, structured products and hedge fund practice. Jane is partner and co-deputy chair of the Securities Litigation and Enforcement Group at Paul Weiss. She advises financial institutions and other market participants with respect to managing risks associated with the anticipated cessation of LIBOR.

Thomas Vartanian is the author of the recently released book: 200 Years of American Financial Panics: Crashes, Recessions, Depressions, and the Technology that Will Change It All. In this episode, Vartanian reflects on his experience responding to the S&L crisis and how that informed his view on the role of government in contributing to financial risks, what lessons the government failed to learn from the 2008 crisis, and how he would reform our current regulatory structure by reducing the number of agencies involved. Vartanian concludes by talking about the vulnerabilities in our financial infrastructure.

President Biden plans to pay for his $2 trillion infrastructure package by raising corporate tax rates and imposing a global minimum tax of 21%. In this episode, Peter Barnes breaks down how a global minimum tax would work in practice and the challenges involved in negotiating an international tax agreement. Peter is a senior lecturing fellow at Duke Law and the Duke Center for International Development as well as of counsel at Washington DC Law Firm Caplin and Drysdale. Peter spent over twenty years as senior international tax counsel at General Electric and prior to GE, Peter worked in the Office of Tax Policy at the U.S. Treasury Department.

Investor Bill Hwang set off a storm in the stock market in March when his firm, Archegos Capital Management, and its banks, began liquidating huge positions in blue-chip companies that left their counterparties with $10bn in losses. In this episode, Duke Law professors Gina-Gail Fletcher, Elisabeth de Fontenay, Jim Cox, Lee Reiners, and Lawrence Baxter explain why Archegos failed, who got hurt, and what should be done about it.

Financial services regulatory reform will continue to be active these next three plus years, with the Biden administration focused on activity at the intersection of financial regulation and social policy. However, the pace and tenor of change under the Biden administration will be heavily influenced by the leadership of and senior personnel at the federal prudential and market regulators. In this episode, Duke Law professors Sarah Bloom Raskin, Gina-Gail Fletcher, Elisabeth de Fontenay, Jim Cox, and Lawrence Baxter break down what we might expect for financial regulation under the Biden administration.

For 18 years, Kerry Killinger was CEO of Washington Mutual - a lender in the Pacific Northwest that he grew into the sixth largest bank in the country prior to its collapse in September of 2008. Kerry, along with his wife Linda, recently published “Nothing is Too Big to Fail: How the Last Financial Crisis Informs Today.” In this episode, the Killingers discuss why they believe Jamie Dimon and JPMorgan Chase schemed behind the scenes to get the FDIC to seize WaMu, why Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson wanted to eliminate the thrift industry, and what post-crisis assessments of WaMu’s collapse by the U.S. Senate and others got wrong. Want to contact the show? Reach out at reiners@law.duke.edu Interested in learning more about issues in financial regulation and policy? Check out the Global Financial Markets Center’s blog, The FinReg Blog. You can learn more about the Global Financial Markets Center by visiting our website: https://law.duke.edu/globalfinancialmarkets/

While the pandemic has devastated minority communities, a small handful of wealthy, billionaire landlords are cashing in to the tune of millions. In this episode, Sara Myklebust from Georgetown University’s Kalmanovitz Initiative and Patrick Woodall from Americans for Financial Reform discuss the findings from their new report: “Cashing in Our Homes.”  The report, produced by Bargaining for the Common Good, the Institute for Policy Studies, and the Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund, details how a handful of billionaires and corporate landlords have seen the pandemic as an opportunity to cash in on hard times. Access the report at: https://ips-dc.org/cashing-in-on-our-homes/