The FinReg Pod

Professor Anat Admati, co-author of The Bankers' New Clothes, discusses the new and expanded edition of her groundbreaking book. Anat and Lee reflect on the persistent fragility of the banking system, the Federal Reserve's Basel Endgame proposal, and the future of international regulatory coordination. Anat also shares her insights on why stronger bank equity requirements are essential and how myt...

Yasmin Farahi and Lucia Constantine from the Center for Responsible Lending discuss the promises and perils of Earned Wage Access programs. Discover how these fintech products operate, the financial traps they can create, and the regulatory debates shaping their future. Related Links: A Loan Shark in Your Pocket: The Perils of Earned Wage Advance Paying to be Paid: Consumer Protections Needed for...

Justin Sherman is the founder and CEO of Global Cyber Strategies, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, and an adjunct professor and senior fellow at Duke University's Sanford School of Public Policy, where he founded and leads its data brokerage research project. He joins Lee to discuss how data brokers obtain and use sensitive data, the role they play in financial services, and th...

Dan Berkovitz and Laurian Cristea discuss the regulatory and ethical challenges surrounding political event contracts. They explore the history, recent legal developments, and the future implications of betting on political outcomes, especially as the CFTC tightens its stance on these controversial markets. Lee's X: @leereiners Related Links: CFTC proposed amendments to its rules concerning event...

Ed DeMarco is president of the Housing Policy Council and former acting director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency. He discusses the rise of nonbank mortgage companies and what the Financial Stability Oversight Council's recent report on nonbank mortgage servicing gets right and what it gets wrong. Ed also offers his thoughts on the FHFA's Title Insurance Waiver Pilot Program, Freddie Mac's pr...

Graham Steele is the former Assistant Secretary for Financial Institutions at the U.S. Department of the Treasury. He discusses insights from his latest paper for the Roosevelt Institute, "The End of Banking History? Finishing the Unfinished Business of Financial Reform." From the impact of the 2018 deregulatory "tailoring" project, which weakened post-crisis reforms, to the cascading failures of...

Kathryn Judge is a professor at Columbia Law School and Aaron Klein is a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. They discuss the origins of the Federal Home Loan Banks, the role they played in propping up failing banks in the 2023 regional banking crisis, and their ideas for how the FHLBs can be reformed to better fulfill their public mission to promote housing and community development. Kate...

John Coates is the John F. Cogan, Jr. Professor of Law and Economics at Harvard Law School and author of "The Problem of Twelve: When a Few Financial Institutions Control Everything." According to John, a problem of twelve arises when a small number of institutions acquire the means to exert outsized influence over the politics and economy of a nation. In this episode, John discusses insights from...

Art Wilmarth, Professor Emeritus of Law at the George Washington University Law School, reflects on the regional banking crisis of spring 2023 and how decisions made by regulators to resolve Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank, First Republic Bank, and Credit Suisse reveal that we have still not solved the Too Big to Fail problem. Lee's X: @leereiners Lee's Website: www.leereiners.com Related Link...

Eric Spitler, former Director of the Office of Legislative Affairs at the FDIC, discusses his paper on the history of bank runs and how he would reform deposit insurance to address the weaknesses revealed by last spring's regional banking crisis. Lee's X: @leereiners Related Links: Yelling 'Fire' in the Financial Theater: Bank Runs in the Social Media Age and the Threat to Financial Stability: htt...

Danny Cullenward is a distinguished Senior Fellow with the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. He joined Lee to discuss the current state of voluntary carbon credit markets and efforts in the U.S. and abroad to regulate carbon credits. Lee's X: @leereiners Related Links: Danny's website: https://www.ghgpolicy.org/ Webinar: What Role Will Carbon Removal Play Under A...

Sean Vanatta is a lecturer in US Economic and Social History at the University of Glasgow and author of the new book "Plastic Capitalism: Banks, Credit Cards, and the End of Financial Control." Sean sits down with Lee to discuss the history of credit cards in the United States and how this history informs current policy debates, including Capital One's proposed acquisition of Discover and the Cred...

Jonah Crane, a partner at Klaros Group and former Treasury Department official, breaks down the recent collapse of fintech company Synapse, which has left thousands of customers without access to their funds. Crane also reflects on the regulatory response and the broader impact Synapse's failure will have on Banking as a Service. Lee's X: @leereiners Jonah's X: @JonahCrane Related Links Klaros Gro...

Prometheum is the one firm that other crypto firms love to hate. This is because the firm's founders and co-CEOs, brothers Aaron and Ben Kaplan, have consistently and publicly argued that most cryptocurrencies are investment contracts subject to SEC registration requirements. In this episode, Aaron Kaplan joins Lee to discuss the process Prometheum followed to receive regulatory approve to operate...

Well Fargo was an iconic and respected American Brand. But then, in September 2016, in a settlement with the City of Los Angeles, the OCC, and CFPB, it was revealed that approximately 5,300 Wells Fargo employees had been terminated between 2011 and 2016, for sales practice violations that included opening over two million unauthorized deposit and credit card accounts. Earlier this year, Kevin Wack...

James Wigginton has thought deeply about economic power and the role cooperatives can play in ensuring Web3 lives up to its stated potential of sharing ownership with users in digital networks. James joins Lee to discuss how cooperatives can be used by Web3 firms to engage with their users, strengthen digital networks, and remain compliant with securities laws. James also talks about the potential...

Alicia Seiger is a lecturer at Stanford Law and the managing director of Stanford's Sustainable Finance Initiative. And Marc Roston is the founder of investment advisory firm MNR Capital and a senior research scholar at Stanford University's Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance. In this episode, Alicia and Marc offer their perspective on the problems with the current method of corpor...

Tony McLaughlin is Managing Director for Emerging Payments & Business Development at Citi Treasury & Trade Solutions. In this episode, Tony offers his thoughts on the latest developments in payments, including stablecoins, central bank digital currency, and FedNow. He also breaks down an exciting new project he's been working on, called the Regulated Liability Network (RLN). RLN envisions a regula...

Joe Davis is chief economist at Vanguard as well as the global head of Vanguard Investment Strategy Group. In this episode, Joe offers his thoughts on what's driving inflation, how the Federal Reserve is likely to respond at their upcoming policy meeting and beyond, and how investors can insulate their portfolio from inflations pernicious effects. Joe and Lee also reflect on key lessons learned fr...

Ari Redbord is the head of legal and government affairs for the blockchain intelligence firm, TRM Labs. Prior to joining TRM Labs, Ari held public sector roles involving cryptocurrency and national security at the Department of Justice and U.S. Department of the Treasury. In this episode, Ari and Lee break down President Biden's executive order on cryptocurrency. Ari Redbord's Twitter: @ARedbord T...

Barbara Haya directs the  Berkeley Carbon Trading Project . Barbara joins Lee to explain what carbon offsets are and the considerations that must be addressed to ensure that offset credits entering into commerce reflect real, verifiable reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Specifically, Barbara details why most offset programs issue more credits than they should, and recent policy efforts to br...

Jeremy Kress is Assistant Professor of Business Law at Michigan Ross and Co-Faculty Director of the University of Michigan's Center on Finance, Law & Policy. Jeremy joins Lee to discuss how policymakers' long-standing approach to bank antitrust—premised on consumer welfare—has reduced the cost and availability of basic financial services and ignores numerous non-price harms stemming from bank cons...

Mike Bloomberg is the Public Infrastructure Fellow at the NewCities Foundation and a Visiting Researcher with the Urban Tech Hub at Cornell Tech. In this episode, he examines the dark side of U.S. cities embracing cryptocurrency. Mike and Lee discuss how MiamiCoin and NYC Coin actually work, the nebulous legal relationship between these coins and the cities of Miami and New York, and why anyone wo...

Jay Brown and Kathleen Hamm are former board members of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, or PCAOB. Jay and Kathleen join Lee to discuss the origins of the PCAOB and the ongoing challenges the agency faces. Specifically, they discuss the role of auditors in overseeing non-financial reporting such as ESG disclosure, the difficulty in getting US-listed Chinese companies to comply with A...

On January 20th, the Federal Reserve released a discussion paper that examines the pros and cons of a potential U.S. central bank digital currency, or CBDC. In this episode, Marcelo Prates joins Lee to breakdown the paper's findings and the future of CBDCs in the U.S. and elsewhere. Marcelo is a lawyer at the Central Bank of Brazil and a columnist at cryptocurrency news site, Coindesk.   Marcelo's...