Category: Banking & Finance

[A few short years ago, there was a country experiencing significant prosperity.  The flow of credit within the economy was fluid, stock prices were at all time highs, and many people were becoming wealthy in due part to real estate speculation and appreciation.  As the economic outlook in the real estate market was bright, banks began granting increasingly risky loans.  Eventually the bubble burst.  Inflated real estate market values began to decline, lendees found themselves unable to pay back their risky loans, and the credit markets froze.  As a result, government intervention came in the form of subsidizing failing banks and businesses.]

 In the middle of this financial crisis facing our country, one would assume this passage is referring to the United State of America.  However, this is the very similar story of the Japanese housing bubble that burst and led to what is … Read the rest

I. Introduction

For over a century legislatures have struggled with the issue of how to curtail the efforts of corporations seeking to substantially influence political campaigns.  [1]  Although campaign finance regulation has taken numerous forms throughout the years, loopholes and exceptions inevitably surface despite the intentions of Congress.  [2]  Corporations have also wrestled with the conflict of advancing their own political interests at the expense of alienating potential consumers.  [3]  Congress and the courts have sent ambiguous and, at times, contradictory messages regarding the proper role of industry in the political arena–at times conspicuously leaving a route open for corporations to fund candidates and sometimes expressly speaking out against those very same methods.  [4]  The enactment of the Federal Election Campaign Act ("FECA") in 1971 [5] (and subsequent amendments in 1974, 1976, and 1979) [6] along with the Supreme Court's landmark 1976 decision in Buckley v. Valeo [7] drastically changed … Read the rest

I. Introduction

An estimated 11.6 million unauthorized aliens [1] are currently in the United States.  [2]  This growing population has not gone unnoticed by American financial institutions.  For years banks have offered checking and some savings accounts to aliens without requiring them to prove valid immigration status.  [3]  In recent years, however, banks have widened the scope of financial products available to aliens who do not have a Social Security Number.  [4]  While the intent of these products was to provide services to green card holders and legal nonimmigrants, fairly relaxed identification requirements and the overly general specifications of the USA PATRIOT Act ("Patriot Act") allow unauthorized aliens to take advantage of these products in many situations.  [5]  Although some have argued that banks are violating the Patriot Act's Customer Identification Program ("CIP") requirement by agreeing to accept non-traditional identification to establish new accounts, this argument does not appear to … Read the rest

    The old legal maxim proceeds, ignorantia juris non excusat or, "ignorance of the law, is no excuse!" This ancient truism, thought to have its origins in Roman law, was eventually folded into the American legal system through the early English colonialists. The maxim reflected a common reality that much of law, particularly criminal law, was understood to be based on the natural and eventually, Canon law. A knowledge of such laws was thought to be held generally by all in common, the law written on the heart, so they have no excuse, as St. Paul refers to it.[1] However, much of that common traditional understanding, and particularly the natural law, has been jettisoned by modernity. To fill the void for our pluralistic and disjointed world, we have adopted a sterile, strict, and exclusive form of legal positivism. Reams and reams of state and federal statutes, municipal codes, administrative … Read the rest