Apparently I've been challenged to a duel wager. I say apparently, because this challenge was never delivered to me. Instead, it was posted to a website almost a month ago, which is a little odd for a serious bet.
So what is this about? Slips readers will be familiar with [...]
Over the long holiday weekend, we have been treated to a series of increasingly breathless stories about Dubai World's decision to seek a six-month moratorium on some $60 to 80 billion of debt. How Dubai World, a corporation owed by the government of Dubai, will resolve its debt [...]
Some of the news reports on the White House dinner crashers (Tariq and Michaela Salahi) have noted that they own a winery that filed for Chapter 11 (reorganization) bankruptcy and then converted to Chapter 7 (liquidation) bankruptcy. My prurient interest was engaged, so I tracked down the petitions and [...]
FDIC-sponsored haircuts have become a hot item in the blogosphere. My wife used to work for the FDIC, and I smile every time I hear the term as I think about the building on F Street with a big barber pole in front of it. Here, the term is not [...]
The New York Times ran a story on the impact of interchange regulation in Australia. Calling it interchange regulation is somewhat of a misnomer. The Reserve Bank of Australia in fact acted to bust up anticompetitive private regulation of interchange. Payments are an area with intense regulation, but that [...]
More fun with the Code, or "Bankruptcy Nerdcore," {my attempt at nerdy humor -- "nerdcord" -- apparently lost on one and all} as one recent commentator has described it.
It is the reality of current academia that we don't do much in the way of "close readings" of the Bankruptcy [...]
As Credit Slips readers may know, a group of key Philadelphia newspapers are currently in chapter 11. The debtor that owns the papers owes its secured lenders north of $290 million. It wants to sell itself under a plan to a group of buyers that include some insiders. The deal [...]
Lehman has sued Barclays over the incredibly rushed sale of Lehman's key brokerage assets to Barclays a year ago. No doubt the financial industry crowd will use this to further promote their argument that chapter 11 does not work for large financial firms, thus supporting the need to [...]
Today I'm speaking (along with my co-blogger, Adam) at the ABI's conference on chapter 11 reform at Georgetown. I'll be making the case for the repeal of the derivative safe harbors in the Code -- my paper can be found here. I should point out that I suggest [...]
While the loan origination fraud is largely shut down, the foreclosure crisis has spawned a whole new consumer fraud in the form of foreclosure rescue and loan modification scams. These companies offer to help consumers get a loan modification or to fend off a foreclosure in return for high, upfront [...]
Yes, I went back to D.C. for more congressional bankruptcy brouhaha, this on the rising incidence of medical bankruptcies. C-SPAN decided to broadcast the proceedings in all their glory. Sen. Franken (D-MN) was armed with statistics on Swiss medical bankruptcies -- very well prepared, I must say. Here's the [...]
Former Credit Slips guestblogger Max Gardner is always trying to understand the real mechanics and economics of mortgage servicing. At one of his infamous bootcamps, he had an employee at a now-deceased mortgage servicer share an insider’s perspective on default mortgage servicing. The employee used some terms of art [...]
A couple of weeks ago I wrote a short critique of one piece of a long study written by David Evans and Joshua Wright about the Consumer Financial Protection Agency and funded by the American Bankers Association. The related blog post is here. Evans and Wright [...]
The daily bankruptcy filing rate in October hit 6,200, setting a new record since the 2005 changes to the U.S. bankruptcy law. There were about 130,200 total filings spread over the 21 business days in October. The October filing rate [...]
This just in from our Washington, DC, bureau: the Supreme Court has granted certiorari in Hamilton v. Lanning, No. 08-3009 (10th Cir. Nov. 13, 2008), where the Tenth Circuit adopted the "forward-looking test" for how much a chapter 13 debtor has to pay creditors. The alternative is the "mechanical [...]
By way of Underbelly comes this story from the Seattle Times chronicling the many failures at the now defunct WaMu. Among the stories was that a WaMu banker gave O.J. Simpson a second mortgage on his Florida home despite the existence of a huge judgment lien against Simpson [...]
Adam Levitin, Bob Lawless, Stephen Lubben, John Pottow, Katie Porter
