The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report
The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report

Author: Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission

Publisher: Cosimo, Inc.

Published: 2011-05-01

Total Pages: 692

ISBN-13: 1616405414

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The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report, published by the U.S. Government and the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission in early 2011, is the official government report on the United States financial collapse and the review of major financial institutions that bankrupted and failed, or would have without help from the government. The commission and the report were implemented after Congress passed an act in 2009 to review and prevent fraudulent activity. The report details, among other things, the periods before, during, and after the crisis, what led up to it, and analyses of subprime mortgage lending, credit expansion and banking policies, the collapse of companies like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the federal bailouts of Lehman and AIG. It also discusses the aftermath of the fallout and our current state. This report should be of interest to anyone concerned about the financial situation in the U.S. and around the world.THE FINANCIAL CRISIS INQUIRY COMMISSION is an independent, bi-partisan, government-appointed panel of 10 people that was created to "examine the causes, domestic and global, of the current financial and economic crisis in the United States." It was established as part of the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act of 2009. The commission consisted of private citizens with expertise in economics and finance, banking, housing, market regulation, and consumer protection. They examined and reported on "the collapse of major financial institutions that failed or would have failed if not for exceptional assistance from the government."News Dissector DANNY SCHECHTER is a journalist, blogger and filmmaker. He has been reporting on economic crises since the 1980's when he was with ABC News. His film In Debt We Trust warned of the economic meltdown in 2006. He has since written three books on the subject including Plunder: Investigating Our Economic Calamity (Cosimo Books, 2008), and The Crime Of Our Time: Why Wall Street Is Not Too Big to Jail (Disinfo Books, 2011), a companion to his latest film Plunder The Crime Of Our Time. He can be reached online at www.newsdissector.com.

Bankruptcy of Large Firms and Exit Mechanisms in Korea
Bankruptcy of Large Firms and Exit Mechanisms in Korea

Author: Il Chong Nam

Publisher:

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 172

ISBN-13:

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This report deals with two fundamental questions that face the Korean economy: why did so many large firms go bankrupt, and what is wrong with the insolvency mechanisms in Korea? Roughly one third to one half of the medium-sized chaebols went bankrupt or fell into deep financial trouble after the onset of the crisis. In addition, essentially all of the firms belonging to the Daewoo group, one of the top five chaebols, went bankrupt. Some firms affiliated with the other top five chaebols have also fallen into financial difficulties. Massive bankruptcy of chaebol firms led to deep financial difficulties of banks and non-bank financial institutions, which in turn resulted in a massive injection of public funds. Even after the outbreak of the crisis, lack of confidence in the court-supervised bankruptcy proceedings led to the wide use of so-called workouts. The laws on court-supervised bankruptcy proceedings have recently been revised twice, but have not been able to gain full confidence of market participants. The authors claim that the most important factor behind the malfunctioning of bankruptcy proceedings in Korea is the lack of proper corporate governance in financial institutions and large firms. Banks in Korea have been run as if they were government businesses; and as a consequence, they have not been supervised by a proper governance structure that is profit-oriented. Lack of proper governance was the main reason that banks did not act properly as creditors in bankruptcy proceedings and passively followed initiatives of debtor firms and the government. This monograph also contains a chapter focusing on a comparative analysis of bankruptcy proceedings of the following six East Asian countries: Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, and Korea. The comparative analysis generally confirms that Singapore and Malaysia are equipped with superior institutional infrastructures concerning corporate governance of large firms and reallocation of resources from bankrupt firms, compared to the other four countries that have been adversely affected by the economic crisis. The monograph concludes with a set of proposals that the authors believe is needed to improve the efficiency of bankruptcy proceedings in Korea.

Debt's Dominion
Debt's Dominion

Author: David A. Skeel Jr.

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2014-04-24

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 1400828503

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Bankruptcy in America, in stark contrast to its status in most other countries, typically signifies not a debtor's last gasp but an opportunity to catch one's breath and recoup. Why has the nation's legal system evolved to allow both corporate and individual debtors greater control over their fate than imaginable elsewhere? Masterfully probing the political dynamics behind this question, David Skeel here provides the first complete account of the remarkable journey American bankruptcy law has taken from its beginnings in 1800, when Congress lifted the country's first bankruptcy code right out of English law, to the present day. Skeel shows that the confluence of three forces that emerged over many years--an organized creditor lobby, pro-debtor ideological currents, and an increasingly powerful bankruptcy bar--explains the distinctive contours of American bankruptcy law. Their interplay, he argues in clear, inviting prose, has seen efforts to legislate bankruptcy become a compelling battle royale between bankers and lawyers--one in which the bankers recently seem to have gained the upper hand. Skeel demonstrates, for example, that a fiercely divided bankruptcy commission and the 1994 Republican takeover of Congress have yielded the recent, ideologically charged battles over consumer bankruptcy. The uniqueness of American bankruptcy has often been noted, but it has never been explained. As different as twenty-first century America is from the horse-and-buggy era origins of our bankruptcy laws, Skeel shows that the same political factors continue to shape our unique response to financial distress.