In the years since the 2008 financial crisis, U.S. federal prosecutors have brought dozens of criminal cases against the world's most powerful banks, charging them with manipulating financial indices, helping their customers evade taxes, evading sanctions, and laundering money. To settle these cases, global banks like UBS, Barclays, HSBC and BNP Paribas paid tens of billions of dollars in fines. They also agreed to extensive reforms, hiring hundreds of compliance officers, spending billions on new systems, and installing independent monitors. In effect, they agreed to become worldwide enforcers of U.S. law, including financial sanctions-sometimes despite their own governments' protests. This book examines the U.S. enforcement campaign against global banks across four areas: benchmark manipulation, tax evasion, sanctions violations, and sovereign debt. It shows that U.S. prosecutors have unilaterally carved out a new role as global bank regulators, heralding a fundamental shift in how international finance is overseen. Their ability to do so stems from U.S. control over access to vital hubs of the international financial system. In some areas, unilateral U.S. actions have ushered in important multilateral reforms, such as the rise of automatic tax information exchange and better-regulated financial indices. In other areas, such as financial sanctions, unilateralism has attracted protests from other states and spurred attempts to challenge U.S. dominance of international finance.

The Law of Financial Institutions provides the foundation for a successful course on the law of traditional commercial banks. The book’s clear writing, careful editing, timely content, and concise explanations to provocative questions make a difficult field of law lively and interesting. New to the Seventh Edition: Unified analysis of different types of financial institution under a common framework, using simple mock balance sheets as a way of vividly illustrating the similarities and differences and bringing out the features that lend stability or instability to the financial system. A new chapter dealing with the important topic of financial technology. Extensive treatment of liquidity regulation, one of the most fundamental strategies for ensuring bank safety and soundness. A clear and coherent discussion of capital regulation and provides up-to-date explanations and simple examples of the complex issues surrounding capital adequacy applicable to banks today. A clear, coherent, and interesting account of the essential nature of the banking firm as a financial intermediary that acts as a payment service provider. Text that addresses issues of compliance and risk management that have become central to the management of banking institutions in the years since the financial crisis. Professors and student will benefit from: Important new contributions from Professor Peter Conti-Brown, a nationally renowned expert in banking policy and history Completely revised and updated to reflect important regulatory initiatives and trends Answers to all problem sets available to adopting professors Focuses on topics from economic, political, and doctrinal point of view Interesting and provocative questions with explanations Extensive use of nontraditional materials and professor-written discussions and explanations Excellent organization and careful editing

Provides an in-depth overview of the Federal Reserve System, including information about monetary policy and the economy, the Federal Reserve in the international sphere, supervision and regulation, consumer and community affairs and services offered by Reserve Banks. Contains several appendixes, including a brief explanation of Federal Reserve regulations, a glossary of terms, and a list of additional publications.

Well-designed banking laws are critical for regulating the market access and operations of banks, as well as their removal from the market in case of failure. While at a financial policy level there is a broad consensus as to the content of banking laws, from a legal perspective their drafting often leaves something to be desired. In spite of what is often argued, the types of weaknesses of banking laws are hardly country-specific; many weaknesses are shared by many banking laws. This working paper discusses those weaknesses and ways to remedy them, by focusing on a selected set of legal policy principles.