“This publication could not be more timely. Little more than a decade after the global financial crisis of 2008, governments are once again loosening the reins over financial markets. The authors of this volume explain why that is a mistake and could invite yet another major crisis.” —Benjamin Cohen, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA “Leading political scientists from several generations here offer historical depth, as well as sensible suggestions about what reforms are needed now.” —John Kirton, University of Toronto, Canada, and Co-founder of the G7 Research Group “A valuable antidote to complacency for policy-makers, scholars and students.” —Timothy J. Sinclair, University of Warwick, UK This book examines the long-term, previously underappreciated breakdowns in financial regulation that fed into the 2008 global financial crash. While most related literature focuses on short-term factors such as the housing bubble, low interest rates, the breakdown of credit rating services and the emergence of new financial instruments, the authors of this volume contend that the larger trends in finance which continue today are most relevant to understanding the crash. Their analysis focuses on regulatory capture, moral hazard and the reflexive challenges of regulatory intervention in order to demonstrate that financial regulation suffers from long-standing, unaddressed and fundamental weaknesses.

In Misalignment: The New Financial Order and the Failure of Financial Regulation, Joel Seligman provides a broad account of banking, insurance, and securities regulation from the beginning of the United States through the 2007-2009 financial crisis and concludes with a plan for a fundamentally different approach to financial regulation that is more likely to avoid financial meltdowns in the future and minimize financial perturbations. The history of financial regulation in the United States is a history of crisis reaction. Before the New Deal, uncoordinated regulatory systems were established in banking and insurance. In the New Deal period, the U.S. achieved a long-stable model of financial regulation that atomized financial firms and substantially increased investor and depositor protection. After World War II, the New Deal financial regulatory model deteriorated and vast areas of finance evolved outside of regulation. No event better crystalized this deterioration than the financial debacle of 2007-2009. How was such a debacle possible in a nation whose financial regulatory system was long considered the finest in the world? More than any other cause, the misalignment of the Treasury, Federal Reserve System, and regulatory systems designed in earlier crises to address specific industries was overwhelmed by a New Financial Order, financial supermarkets that operated in several financial fields simultaneously. The 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 was at best a partial response to the greatest financial calamity in our history since the 1929-1932 stock market crash. The failure of Dodd-Frank to address the structure of financial regulation was its most conspicuous weakness. Misalignment proposes a plan for a different approach to financial regulation designed to avoid economic failures in the future and minimize financial disorder.

The Future of Financial Regulation is an edited collection of papers presented at a major conference at the University of Glasgow in spring 2009, co-sponsored by the Economic and Social Research Council World Economy and Finance Programme and the the Australian Research Council Governance Research Network. It draws together a variety of different perspectives on the international financial crisis which began in August 2007 and later turned into a more widespread economic crisis following the collapse of Lehman Brothers in the autumn of 2008. Spring 2009 was in many respects the nadir since valuations in financial markets had reached their low point and crisis management rather than regulatory reform was the main focus of attention. The conference and book were deliberately framed as an attempt to re-focus attention from the former to the latter. The first part of the book focuses on the context of the crisis, discussing the general characteristics of financial crises and the specific influences that were at work this time round. The second part focuses more specifically on regulatory techniques and practices implicated in the crisis, noting in particular an over-reliance on the capacity of regulators and financial institutions to manage risk and on the capacity of markets to self-correct. The third part focuses on the role of governance and ethics in the crisis and in particular the need for a common ethical framework to underpin governance practices and to provide greater clarity in the design of accountability mechanisms. The final part focuses on the trajectory of regulatory reform, noting the considerable potential for change as a result of the role of the state in the rescue and recuperation of the financial system and stressing the need for fundamental re-appraisal of business and regulatory models.

Financial regulation can fail when it is needed the most. The dynamics of asset price bubbles weaken financial regulation just as financial markets begin to overheat and the risk of crisis spikes. At the same time, the failure of financial regulations adds further fuel to a bubble. This book examines the interaction of bubbles and financial regulation. It explores the ways in which bubbles lead to the failure of financial regulation by outlining five dynamics, which it collectively labels the "Regulatory Instability Hypothesis." . The book concludes by outlining approaches to make financial regulation more resilient to these dynamics that undermine law.

An “intriguing plan” addressing shadow banking, regulation, and the continuing quest for financial stability (Financial Times). Years have passed since the world experienced one of the worst financial crises in history, and while countless experts have analyzed it, many central questions remain unanswered. Should money creation be considered a “public” or “private” activity—or both? What do we mean by, and want from, financial stability? What role should regulation play? How would we design our monetary institutions if we could start from scratch? In The Money Problem, Morgan Ricks addresses these questions and more, offering a practical yet elegant blueprint for a modernized system of money and banking—one that, crucially, can be accomplished through incremental changes to the United States’ current system. He brings a critical, missing dimension to the ongoing debates over financial stability policy, arguing that the issue is primarily one of monetary system design. The Money Problem offers a way to mitigate the risk of catastrophic panic in the future, and it will expand the financial reform conversation in the United States and abroad. “Highly recommended.” —Choice

The 2008 crash was the worst financial crisis and the most severe economic downturn since the Great Depression. It triggered a complete overhaul of the global regulatory environment, ushering in a stream of new rules and laws to combat the perceived weakness of the financial system. While the global economy came back from the brink, the continuing effects of the crisis include increasing economic inequality and political polarization. After the Crash is an innovative analysis of the crisis and its ongoing influence on the global regulatory, financial, and political landscape, with timely discussions of the key issues for our economic future. It brings together a range of experts and practitioners, including Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize winner; former congressman Barney Frank; former treasury secretary Jacob Lew; Paul Tucker, a former deputy governor of the Bank of England; and Steve Cutler, general counsel of JP Morgan Chase during the financial crisis. Each poses crucial questions: What were the origins of the crisis? How effective were international and domestic regulatory responses? Have we addressed the roots of the crisis through reform and regulation? Are our financial systems and the global economy better able to withstand another crash? After the Crash is vital reading as both a retrospective on the last crisis and an analysis of possible sources of the next one.

The depositor run on the Northern Rock bank in September 2007, which led to the bank's subsequent nationalization was the first run on a UK bank for nearly 150 years and was a seminal moment in the unfolding global financial crisis. This book provides a detailed legal analysis of the role played by financial law and regulation during this event, and the impact the episode made on the law. The contributors to the book explore and elaborate upon the legal technique of securitization, and how Northern Rock itself created and employed securitized financial assets. There is also in-depth discussion and analysis of the origin of the problems experienced in the wholesale interbank markets surrounding the Northern Rock crisis. Chapters focus on risk-based financial regulation, depositor protection, and bank rescue and resolution mechanisms in the UK before and after the Northern Rock crisis. State aid implications of the nationalization of Northern Rock, and the future of financial regulation are also considered. This timely new book will appeal to academics, postgraduate and undergraduate students in law and business schools as well as practitioners, regulators and lawmakers.