Investors who wished for a helping hand in pursuing claims against banks that sold them exotic debt instruments instead got a kick in the pants from the Second Circuit today.
No no-admit deals
In 2011, U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff famously refused to approve a consent decree between the Securities and Exchange Commission and Citigroup. The pact
The American jury makes a profound contribution to the very structure and fabric of American law, Ciulla v. Rigny, 89 F. Supp. 2d 97, 98 (D. Mass. 2000), and so it is here. Indeed, this particular case would be of little interest to anyone other than the litigants were it not for the remarkable
We can all agree that granting people stock options that can't lose — as Apple and lots of other (often high-tech) outfits did Not Long Ago — at least feels wrong. But who knew that accounting for them in the wrong way could expose you to a suit by the Securities and Exchange Commission?
Blawgletter
Have you heard people — okay, lawyers — talk about "the Southern District"? As if you MUST know what they mean? Surely not the Southern District of West Virginia — one of the coolest names in the entire U.S. court system.
No. Not that. This:
S.
D.
N.
Y.
Where Learned Hand sat before Calvin
You may recall that, back in the go-go days, brokers sold a lot of auction rate securities to people who wanted a bit more interest than money market funds and bank accounts yielded but desired about the same degree of safety and liquidity.
When the auctions froze up in early 2008, the chumps who bought ARS couldn't get their
John Kenneth Galbraith — the Harvard econ prof who sailed with the Kennedys, coined phrases (e.g., "conventional wisdom"), and adored big words — looked back at The Great Crash 1929 (1954) a quarter-century later and found much frenzy to marvel at and folly to lament.
One of his chapters he titled "In Goldman, Sachs We
Blawgletter's favorite Bloomberg columnist, Jonathan Weil, today takes keyboard in hand to tell us why the Securities and Exchange Commission just sued Goldman Sachs for civil fraud – "Goldman Serves One Master Better Than the Others". He teases with this:
Who knew the folks at the SEC still had it in them to accuse