Sky Blog
What makes a central bank “independent?” As most central bank scholars and policy-makers would likely answer that question, “it depends” – it depends on the bank, the function it is performing, and the political-economy of the times. Still, as complicated …
On July 31, 2018 the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (“OCC”) announced it will begin accepting applications from non-depository FinTech companies for a special purpose national bank charter. [1] This announcement caps a years-long and much anticipated initiative …
In the movie Office Space, the (pretty) good guys hatch a plan to divert to themselves fractions of cents that their employer, Initech, has apparently been overcharging its customers by rounding billings upward. Had any customer discovered the scam, he …
The pendulum swung sharply back last year from 2015’s record volume of corporate non-prosecution agreements (“NPAs”) and deferred prosecution agreements (“DPAs”), but the overall yield remained generally consistent with the prosecutions we have seen since the 2008–2009 economic recession.[1]…
Following a familiar historical pattern, policy responses to the latest global financial crisis and subsequent economic and political dysfunction can be divided into three sequenced but overlapping phases. The first phase was a period of “wartime”-style emergency measures hastily fashioned …
The Division of Clearing and Risk (the “Division”) of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (the “CFTC”) recently issued no-action relief for certain treasury affiliates within non-financial companies from the clearing requirements of Section 2(h)(1) of the Commodity Exchange Act (“CEA”).
Today, the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Financial Regulatory Reform Initiative working group on Capital Markets and the Volcker Rule sent a letter to the Treasury Department and the five federal financial regulators tasked with adopting Volcker Rule regulations. The letter responds …