The FinReg Pod

At $1.9 trillion dollars, the recently signed American Rescue Plan is the largest spending bill in U.S. history and it provides much needed direct relief to millions of Americans who have been struggling for over a year while Covid-19 wreaked havoc on our health and our economy.  In this episode, Vanguard's global chief economist, Joe Davis, talks about the impact certain provisions in the stimulus bill will have on those in need and the broader economy, the potential for inflation to finally rear its head, and what he would like to see included in an upcoming infrastructure package. 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/

David Berger is a partner at Wilson Sonsini in Silicon Valley, where he specializes in corporate governance and M&A litigation as well as rapid response shareholder activism. More importantly for this conversation, David served on the Commission responsible for developing the Framework for Inclusive Capitalism which was released in February. David spoke about how the Commission came together and some of the framework’s key recommendations as well as the detrimental effects of shareholder primacy, a topic David has written extensively about and which is reflected in the framework’s recommendations to give workers a greater say in how corporations are run. Read the Framework for Inclusive Capitalism here: https://www.coalitionforinclusivecapitalism.com/workers/

The recent GameStop fiasco has given new momentum to the concept of a financial transactions tax. In this episode, Lenore Palladino explains why we need a financial transactions tax and sheds insights on recent state and federal proposals to tax financial transactions. Lenore is an assistant professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst as well as a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. Last month, Lenore wrote an article in The Appeal titled “The Case for the financial transaction tax in 2021.”

Ant Group, operator of Chinese payment behemoth Alipay, was set to have the largest IPO in history last November before Chinese regulators suddenly pulled the plug. In this episode, Martin Chorzempa from the Peterson Institute for International Economics, talks about the Chinese government’s response to the emergence of fintech, the evolution of Ant’s business model in recent years, what Ant’s scuttled IPO means for other fintech firms going forward, and the status of China’s proposed central bank digital currency. Show notes China, the United States, and central bank digital currencies: how important is it to be first?

GameStop has captured the public’s imagination in a way no other finance-related story has since the financial crisis. In this special double episode, we cover GameStop and its broader implications from all angles. In part one, Ty Gellasch discusses the potential legal liability some of the folks on Reddit’s Wall Street Bets forum may be facing, the issues around clearing and settlement as well as payment for order flow, and what GameStop means for an already crowded SEC agenda under President Biden. Ty is the executive director of Healthy Markets Association and a nonresident fellow at the Global Financial Markets Center. In part two, you’ll hear the audio from a live virtual event that features several Duke Law faculty members discussing what happened with GameStop and RobinHood and answering student questions. If you’re less familiar with the details on what happened with GameStop, you may want to skip ahead and first listen to the faculty discussion.

Jeff Naimon and Sasha Leonhardt from Buckley LLP break down the likely course of consumer financial regulation under the Biden administration. In this episode they spoke about President Biden’s nominee to lead the CFPB, what the Bureau’s priorities are likely to be in the short and long-term, and what it’s like for financial services firms to have to deal with dramatic swings in consumer financial enforcement and regulation every time the presidency changes hands.

Special Purpose Acquisition Companies, or SPACs,  have become one of the hottest things in finance over the past year. In this episode, Shami Patel talks about why SPACs have become an attractive option for private companies that want to go public, how a typical SPAC is structured, and his thoughts on some of the more common SPAC critiques. Shami has worked on multiple fintech focused SPACs during his career, including his current role as chief operating officer at Ftac Olympus Acquisition Corporation.

Liam Vaughan discusses the incredible story of how the price of oil went to negative $38 per barrel on April 20th, 2020 and the tight knit crew of suburban London traders who made a king’s ransom when it did. Liam is a senior reporter with Bloomberg and Businessweek magazine in London. His December 10th article in Businessweek, co-written with Kit Chellel and Benjamin Bain, is tilted “The Essex Boys: How Nine Traders Hit a Gusher With Negative Oil.” The Essex Boys: How Nine Traders Hit a Gusher With Negative Oil

2020 was a critical year in the continued expansion of the cryptocurrency market and not just because the year ended with Bitcoin’s price at an all-time high of close to $30,000. In this episode, Tim Swanson breaks down major developments in the cryptocurrency market over the past year; from the rise of stablecoins and central bank digital currencies, to regulatory crackdowns on crypto firms. Tim is head of market intelligence at London-based blockchain company Clearmatics and is the founder and director of research at tech advisory firm Post Oak Labs. Parasitic stablecoins | Great Wall of Numbers The Anatomy of a Money-like Informational Commodity: A Study of Bitcoin

Terri Friedline is an associate professor at the University of Michigan School of Social Work and author of the recently released book: Banking on a Revolution: Why Financial Technology Won’t Save a Broken System. The book examines how the existing financial system discriminates against the poor and people of color, and makes the case for a new, revolutionized financial system that centers the needs, experiences, and perspectives of those it has historically excluded, marginalized, and exploited. In this episode, Terri discusses how social workers can play a role in changing the financial system, the problems with traditional credit scores, how fintech, despite its claims, doesn’t automatically improve financial inclusion, and so much more.