Regulating Wall Street

Experts from NYU Stern School of Business analyze new financial regulations and what they mean for the economy The NYU Stern School of Business is one of the top business schools in the world thanks to the leading academics, researchers, and provocative thinkers who call it home. In Regulating Wall Street: The New Architecture of Global Finance, an impressive group of the Stern school’s top authorities on finance combine their expertise in capital markets, risk management, banking, and derivatives to assess the strengths and weaknesses of new regulations in response to the recent global financial crisis. Summarizes key issues that regulatory reform should address Evaluates the key components of regulatory reform Provides analysis of how the reforms will affect financial firms and markets, as well as the real economy The U.S. Congress is on track to complete the most significant changes in financial regulation since the 1930s. Regulating Wall Street: The New Architecture of Global Finance discusses the impact these news laws will have on the U.S. and global financial architecture.

The Wall Street meltdown in 2008 brought the country to its knees and spawned nationwide protests against the lack of regulation and oversight in the financial industry. But the average American still fails to fully grasp what was--and still is--happening: that the inmates run the asylum. Larry Doyle exposes how financial executives, politicians, and even the regulators charged with overseeing the banks have conspired for personal gains while deceiving largely unprotected investors, consumers, and American taxpayers. He details the shocking corruption of the SEC, FINRA, and other "financial police, " painting them as meter maids who assess nominal fines and look the other way at even the most egregious abuses. Most importantly, he unveils the revolving door of Wall Street, where countless regulators (and plenty of legislators) are former or future employees of the very firms they're tasked with overseeing. Recent bombshells--such as multi-billion dollar trading losses at JP Morgan Chase, the manipulation of interest rates via the LIBOR scandal, and money laundering with North American drug cartels and rogue nations such as Iran--are symptomatic of this corrosive culture, which has decimated consumer and investor confidence. As the big banks fight tooth and nail to avoid real reforms, this book is a timely, important, and shocking look at a hopelessly compromised system, still defenseless against the next great crash.--From publisher description.

In spite of its key role in creating the ruinous financial crisis of 2008, the American banking industry has grown bigger, more profitable, and more resistant to regulation than ever. Anchored by six megabanks whose assets amount to more than 60 percent of the country’s gross domestic product, this oligarchy proved it could first hold the global economy hostage and then use its political muscle to fight off meaningful reform. 13 Bankers brilliantly charts the rise to power of the financial sector and forcefully argues that we must break up the big banks if we want to avoid future financial catastrophes. Updated, with additional analysis of the government’s recent attempt to reform the banking industry, this is a timely and expert account of our troubled political economy.

This White Paper is the joint work of more than a dozen faculty members of the NYU Stern School of Business and the NYU School of Law. Stern and Law School faculty have published several books in recent years on regulatory reform, including a comprehensive assessment of the Dodd-Frank Act.The goal of the authors remains to contribute thoughtfully to the public discussion about ensuring a safe and efficient financial system. This White Paper, which builds on earlier Stern faculty publications, assesses the strengths and weaknesses of the Financial CHOICE Act proposed by the House Financial Services Committee. The CHOICE Act is the most comprehensive proposal for financial reform since Dodd-Frank and would, if enacted, dramatically alter the regulatory regime established by Dodd-Frank.

The financial crisis that began in 2008 has made Americans keenly aware of the enormous impact Wall Street has on the economic well-being of the nation and its citizenry. How did financial markets and institutions-commonly perceived as marginal and elitist at the beginning of the twentieth century-come to be seen as the bedrock of American capitalism? How did stock investment-once considered disreputable and dangerous-first become a mass practice? Julia Ott tells the story of how, between the rise of giant industrial corporations and the Crash of 1929, the federal government, corporations, and financial institutions campaigned to universalize investment, with the goal of providing individual investors with a stake in the economy and the nation. As these distributors of stocks and bonds established a broad, national market for financial securities, they debated the distribution of economic power, the proper role of government, and the meaning of citizenship under modern capitalism. By 1929, the incidence of stock ownership had risen to engulf one quarter of American households in the looming financial disaster. Accordingly, the federal government assumed responsibility for protecting citizen-investors by regulating the financial securities markets. By recovering the forgotten history of this initial phase of mass investment and the issues surrounding it, Ott enriches and enlightens contemporary debates over economic reform.

In this volume, what are thought to be some of the more important aspects of the Dodd-Frank Act are discussed from a number of perspectives, including that of industry scholars who have been actively involved in evaluating financial regulation, regulators who are responsible for implementing the reform, financial policy experts representing think tanks and banking trade associations, congressmen and congressional staff involved with developing the legislation, and legal scholars. The volume summarizes the act, evaluates how the new regulations are being implemented and how the implementation process is progressing, and discusses modifications that, in the views of the authors, might be needed to more effectively achieve the stated goals of the legislation.

The former FDIC Chairwoman, and one of the first people to acknowledge the full risk of subprime loans, offers a unique perspective on the greatest crisis the U.S. has faced since the Great Depression.

Wall Street Women tells the story of the first generation of women to establish themselves as professionals on Wall Street. Since these women, who began their careers in the 1960s, faced blatant discrimination and barriers to advancement, they created formal and informal associations to bolster one another's careers. In this important historical ethnography, Melissa S. Fisher draws on fieldwork, archival research, and extensive interviews with a very successful cohort of first-generation Wall Street women. She describes their professional and political associations, most notably the Financial Women's Association of New York City and the Women's Campaign Fund, a bipartisan group formed to promote the election of pro-choice women. Fisher charts the evolution of the women's careers, the growth of their political and economic clout, changes in their perspectives and the cultural climate on Wall Street, and their experiences of the 2008 financial collapse. While most of the pioneering subjects of Wall Street Women did not participate in the women's movement as it was happening in the 1960s and 1970s, Fisher argues that they did produce a "market feminism" which aligned liberal feminist ideals about meritocracy and gender equity with the logic of the market.

Theft of a Nation is a powerful criminological examination of Wall Street's recent financial meltdown. Through the lenses of white collar crime and victimology, the book presents a critical assessment of the economic and political elites who were responsible, shows how Americans were victimized, and assesses the resulting regulation.

In the depths of the Great Depression, Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s administration set out to radically remake America’s financial system—but Wall Street was determined to stop them. In 1933, the American economy was in shambles, battered by the 1929 stock market crash and limping from the effects of the Great Depression. But the incoming administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, elected on a wave of anxiety and hope, stormed Washington on a promise to save the American economy—and remake the entire American financial system. It was the opening salvo in a long war between Wall Street and Washington. Author Richard Farley takes a unique and detailed look at the pitched battles that followed—the fist fights, the circus-like stunts, the conmen and crooks, and the unlikely heroes—and shaped American capitalism. With a disparate cast of characters including Joseph P. Kennedy, J.P. Morgan, Huey Long, Babe Ruth, and Henry Ford (who refused to bail out his son’s bank, thus precipitating the meltdown of the entire banking system), Farley vividly traces the history of modern American finance and the establishment of a financial system still bitterly debated on Capitol Hill.