Financial Regulation

Editor’s Note: Afra Afsharipour is Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and professor of law at UC Davis School of Law; The Honorable J. Travis Laster is vice chancellor of the Delaware Court of Chancery.

Too Big to Fail.

Credit rating agencies are back in the public eye as the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations releases another trove of embarrassing agency e-mails and the financial reform bill nears enactment.  In this context, a proposal by two professors at NYU's Stern School of Management, Lawrence White and Matthew Richardson, to improve credit rating agency performance by having the SEC decide which agencies will rate each instrument has attracted favorable attention from commentators such as

One of the melancholy consolations of the late economic meltdown is that it has produced some pretty good second-draft journalism: here in a moment, gone in a moment, but helpful and instructive while they last. Over the past year or so I’ve found myself obscurely compelled to try to keep up on this stuff. Of course I can’t really; there aren’t enough hours in the day. But I may have done some successful cherry-picking. Here are some offerings: