Wasting a Crisis : Why Securities Regulation Fails / Paul G. Mahoney.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Mahoney, Paul G., Author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Securities industry--Law and legislation--United States.

Securities industry.

Securities industry--Law and legislation--United States--History--20th century.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (215 p.)

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, [2015]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

The recent financial crisis led to sweeping reforms that inspired countless references to the financial reforms of the New Deal. Comparable to the reforms of the New Deal in both scope and scale, the 2,300-page Dodd-Frank Act of 2010-the main regulatory reform package introduced in the United States-also shared with New Deal reforms the assumption that the underlying cause of the crisis was misbehavior by securities market participants, exacerbated by lax regulatory oversight. With Wasting a Crisis, Paul G. Mahoney offers persuasive research to show that this now almost universally accepted narrative of market failure-broadly similar across financial crises-is formulated by political actors hoping to deflect blame from prior policy errors. Drawing on a cache of data, from congressional investigations, litigation, regulatory reports, and filings to stock "es from the 1920s and '30s, Mahoney moves beyond the received wisdom about the financial reforms of the New Deal, showing that lax regulation was not a substantial cause of the financial problems of the Great Depression. As new regulations were formed around this narrative of market failure, not only were the majority largely ineffective, they were also often counterproductive, consolidating market share in the hands of leading financial firms. An overview of twenty-first-century securities reforms from the same analytic perspective, including Dodd-Frank and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, shows a similar pattern and suggests that they too may offer little benefit to investors and some measurable harm.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1. Long before the New Deal

Chapter 2. The Blue Sky Laws: A Tale of Progressives and Interest Groups

Chapter 3. What the Securities Act Got Right

Chapter 4. What the Securities Act Got Wrong

Chapter 5. Did the SEC Improve Disclosure Practices?

Chapter 6. Was Market Manipulation Common in the Pre- SEC Era?

Chapter 7. Regulation of Specific Industries

Chapter 8. The Old Is New Again: Securities Reform in the Twenty- First Century

Appendix A

Appendix B

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 24. Apr 2020)

ISBN:

9780226420998

022642099X

9780226236650

022623665X

OCLC:

904398368