As recriminations fly over the world's banking crisis, the role played by flawed tax policy may not escape scrutiny for much longer. WUSTL law professor Adam Rosenzweig comments on the role tax breaks played in fueling the hedge funds' use of the derivatives market.

References:

1. Oct. 22, 2008 — Tax breaks are part of the problem in the Financial Times.com (UK)

Supporters of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac say that cutting their massive mortgage portfolios would doom the housing market. Critics say those same portfolios create the risk of an LTCM-style meltdown that would doom financial markets. They could both be wrong. One of the studies mentioned was a 2004 paper co-authored by WUSTL's real estate and finance professor Michael LaCour-Little, which found that the U.S. government-sponsored entities (GSEs) that buy and hold mortgages in an effort to keep borrowing costs low and make home-buying more affordable, gave homeowners just a 0.24-percentage-point advantage on their mortgage rates.

References:

1. March 3, 2006 — Debate over Fannie, Freddie takes place in the extremes in the Wall Street Journal

U. Pittsburgh professor Ken Lehn looks at the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act on its 10th anniversary. He mentions a recent study co-authored by WUSTL business professor Anjan Thakor which reveals a fundamental problem: The compensation investors receive in settlements of federal securities class-actions does not correspond to the harm investors incur from alleged securities fraud.

References:

1. Feb. 15, 2006 — Commentary: Private insecurities in the Wall Street Journal

Article on Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and whether or not there was anything improper when he ordered a trustee to sell all his stock in his family's hospital corporation about a month before the price dropped.
Information about the insiders' moves was publicly available through disclosures required by the SEC.
WUSTL law professor and government ethics specialist Kathleen Clark comments.

References:

1. Sept. 22, 2005 — Frist followed wave of insiders in selling hospital stock in the Associated Press

and 1 others.

Summer is when people tend to blow off their goal of paying down credit-card debt, according to the Cambridge Consumer Credit Index. The reason might be that they've tried to pay too much. People who make unrealistic financial promises to themselves do no better than people who make none at all. "And if you don't meet a goal, you're less likely to perform well in the future," says WUSTL marketing professor Amar Cheema.

References:

1. Aug. 1, 2005 — 3 Tips in the Money

Business-friendly Californian Christopher Cox was named as the new chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission.
WUSTL law school dean and SEC historian Joel Seligman comments on the direction the SEC might take under Cox.

References:

1. June 3, 2005 — Cox's nomination to run SEC signals a regulatory shift in the Wall Street Journal

and 16 others.

The Securities and Exchange Commission chairman says a landmark anti-fraud law has proved too burdensome and costly for some public companies, especially smaller ones, and his agency is considering revisions of the statute. WUSTL law school dean and SEC historian Joel Seligman comments on the future of SEC reforms.

References:

1. Feb. 10, 2005 — SEC looking at possible revisions to anti-fraud law, chairman says in the Associated Press

and 32 others.

A third class of students will start their study programme in April for an Executive MBA offered by the Olin School of Business. By teaming up with Fudan University's School of Management in Shanghai, widely regarded as one of the leading universities in the mainland, the school believes it has one of the best programmes around. Based at Fudan University, the programme runs over 18 months and to keep downtime from work to a minimum, classroom sessions are held for four consecutive days per month. James Little, EMBA academic director and professor of international economics at the Olin School of Business, says this enables those who travel from outside Shanghai to combine study with work in Shanghai. "We have students who travel in monthly from Beijing, Wuhan, Xiamen, Shenzhen, Taiwan and the United States," he says.

References:

1. Feb. 16, 2004 — Students' Experience an Important Part of the Learning Process in the South China Morning Post

and 2 others.