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 nat…

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: @leerein…

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 Me…

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/ W…

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 O…

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: @leereine…

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…

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 c…

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 sec…

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…

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 Regulat…

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. …

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 …

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 t…

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 ignore…

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 t…

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 ge…

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 …

Art Wilmarth is Professor Emeritus at The George Washington University Law School. In this episode, Art discusses his new paper, “It’s Time to Regulate Stablecoins as Deposits and Require Their Issuers to Be FDIC-Insured Banks.” Specifically, Art explains why he believes that stablecoin issuers and distributors should be required to become FDIC-ins…

Hilary Allen is a professor of law at the American University Washington College of Law and author of “Driverless Finance: Fintech’s Impact on Financial Stability.” In this episode, Hilary discusses the financial stability risks associated with the rise of crypto-assets, fintech payments, and machine learning; and why she believes regulators should…

Sara Greene is a sociologist and legal scholar whose research utilizes qualitative empirical methods to study the relationship between law, poverty, and inequality. In this episode, Sara discusses her recent paper “Stealing (Identity) From the Poor.” Sara discusses why low-income individuals are particularly vulnerable to identity theft, why the ex…

In this special look-back episode, Tim Swanson breaks down major developments in the cryptocurrency market in 2021. Tim is head of market intelligence at London-based blockchain company Clearmatics and is the founder and director of research at tech advisory firm Post Oak Labs. Tim’s Twitter: @ofnumbers GFMC’s Twitter: @DukeGFMC Lee’s Twitter: @lee…

Costas Stephanou and Matteo Aquilina from the Financial Stability Board (FSB) discuss the fragilities in the non-bank financial intermediation sector that were revealed in March 2020 with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and the work of the FSB to address these risks. Non-bank financial intermediaries include money market mutual funds, other open…

Chris Giancarlo served as the thirteenth Chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission. While leading the CFTC, Chris earned the nickname “CryptoDad” for his call on Congress to respect a new generation’s interest in cryptocurrency, an experience he details in his excellent new book “CryptoDad: The Fight for the Future of Money.” Chris …

Laura Parisi is team lead at the European Central Bank Climate Change Center and Spyros Alogoskoufis is a financial stability and stress test expert at the European Central Bank. Together, they spearheaded the ECB’s economy-wide climate stress test which was released in September. The exercise tested the impact of climate change on more than four m…

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 discusses the first time he encountered cryptocurrency a…

Winston Ma is the author of “The Digital War: How China's Tech Power Shapes the Future of AI, Blockchain and Cyberspace.” The book details the profound global implications as China's digital economy moves from a consumer-focused phase to an enterprise-oriented one, with a focus on the Internet of Things, AI, blockchain, cloud computing, and data an…

Liam Vaughan is a senior reporter with Bloomberg and Businessweek magazine in London. His article, ‘Most Americans Today Believe the Stock Market Is Rigged, and They’re Right,’ appeared on the October 4th cover of Bloomberg Businessweek. Liam is a returning guest to the podcast and joins Lee to discuss his new article that examines the disturbing b…

Alicia Seiger is Managing Director of the Stanford University Sustainable Finance Initiative and Lynn Schenk is Director at the Business and Environment Initiative at Harvard Business School. They both served on the California Climate-Related Risk Disclosure Advisory Group. In this episode, Alicia and Lynn discuss the advisory group’s recent report…

Tariq Fancy is Founder and CEO of The Rumie Initiative and the former Chief Investment Officer for Sustainable Investing at BlackRock. His recent three-part series, “The Secret Diary of a Sustainable Investor”, argues that ESG/sustainable investing is intellectually bankrupt and is damaging to the most important causes it purports to support. Tariq…

Pat Parkinson is a senior fellow at the Bank Policy Institute and project director for the Group of Thirty’s Working Group on Treasury Market Liquidity. In this episode, Pat discusses the Treasury market meltdown in March 2020 and the Group of Thirty’s recommendations to address key Treasury market fragilities. Specifically, Pat explains why the Fe…

Mike Konczal is Director of Macroeconomic Analysis and Progressive Thought at the Roosevelt Institute. His recent article “Completing the Revolution in Macroeconomic Policy,” is part of a three-part series from Roosevelt Institute staff that lay out their agendas for the next Federal Reserve term across three different issues: corporate power, clim…

Art Wilmarth is Professor Emeritus at The George Washington University Law School. In this episode, Art discusses his new paper “The Pandemic Crisis Shows that the World Remains Trapped in a 'Global Doom Loop' of Financial Instability, Rising Debt Levels, and Escalating Bailouts.” Art explains the consequences of the Federal Reserve’s backstop of t…

Congressman Mike Levin is one of the leading voices on climate policy in the U.S. Congress. He serves on the House Committee on Natural Resources as well as the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis, and in this episode, he talks about the findings from the latest UN climate report, the climate provisions he would like to see in the proposed…

Zach Neumann is the co-founder and executive director of the COVID-19 Eviction Defense Project in Denver, Colorado. Zach is also the co-author of a recent paper from the Aspen Institute titled “With Federal Moratorium Expiring, 15 million people at Risk of Eviction.” In this episode, Zach discusses the innovative model his organization developed to…

The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) is a cooperative effort among 11 northeastern and mid-Atlantic states to cap and reduce carbon dioxide emissions from the power sector. In this episode, RGGI Vice Chair and Maryland Secretary of the Environment, Ben Grumbles, breaks down RGGI’s origins and what it takes for states to join the initiative…

LIBOR has been called the world’s most important number, which is why getting the entire financial system to move away from LIBOR is such a herculean effort. In this episode, Manuel Frey and Jane O’Brien discuss the role of regulators in facilitating an orderly transition away from LIBOR, the strengths and weaknesses of regulators’ preferred altern…

Thomas Vartanian is the author of the recently released book: 200 Years of American Financial Panics: Crashes, Recessions, Depressions, and the Technology that Will Change It All. In this episode, Vartanian reflects on his experience responding to the S&L crisis and how that informed his view on the role of government in contributing to financial r…

President Biden plans to pay for his $2 trillion infrastructure package by raising corporate tax rates and imposing a global minimum tax of 21%. In this episode, Peter Barnes breaks down how a global minimum tax would work in practice and the challenges involved in negotiating an international tax agreement. Peter is a senior lecturing fellow at Du…

Investor Bill Hwang set off a storm in the stock market in March when his firm, Archegos Capital Management, and its banks, began liquidating huge positions in blue-chip companies that left their counterparties with $10bn in losses. In this episode, Duke Law professors Gina-Gail Fletcher, Elisabeth de Fontenay, Jim Cox, Lee Reiners, and Lawrence Ba…

Financial services regulatory reform will continue to be active these next three plus years, with the Biden administration focused on activity at the intersection of financial regulation and social policy. However, the pace and tenor of change under the Biden administration will be heavily influenced by the leadership of and senior personnel at the…

For 18 years, Kerry Killinger was CEO of Washington Mutual - a lender in the Pacific Northwest that he grew into the sixth largest bank in the country prior to its collapse in September of 2008. Kerry, along with his wife Linda, recently published “Nothing is Too Big to Fail: How the Last Financial Crisis Informs Today.” In this episode, the Killin…

While the pandemic has devastated minority communities, a small handful of wealthy, billionaire landlords are cashing in to the tune of millions. In this episode, Sara Myklebust from Georgetown University’s Kalmanovitz Initiative and Patrick Woodall from Americans for Financial Reform discuss the findings from their new report: “Cashing in Our Home…

At $1.9 trillion dollars, the recently signed American Rescue Plan is the largest spending bill in U.S. history and it provides much needed direct relief to millions of Americans who have been struggling for over a year while Covid-19 wreaked havoc on our health and our economy. In this episode, Vanguard's global chief economist, Joe Davis, talks a…

David Berger is a partner at Wilson Sonsini in Silicon Valley, where he specializes in corporate governance and M&A litigation as well as rapid response shareholder activism. More importantly for this conversation, David served on the Commission responsible for developing the Framework for Inclusive Capitalism which was released in February. David …

The recent GameStop fiasco has given new momentum to the concept of a financial transactions tax. In this episode, Lenore Palladino explains why we need a financial transactions tax and sheds insights on recent state and federal proposals to tax financial transactions. Lenore is an assistant professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts…

Ant Group, operator of Chinese payment behemoth Alipay, was set to have the largest IPO in history last November before Chinese regulators suddenly pulled the plug. In this episode, Martin Chorzempa from the Peterson Institute for International Economics, talks about the Chinese government’s response to the emergence of fintech, the evolution of An…

GameStop has captured the public’s imagination in a way no other finance-related story has since the financial crisis. In this special double episode, we cover GameStop and its broader implications from all angles. In part one, Ty Gellasch discusses the potential legal liability some of the folks on Reddit’s Wall Street Bets forum may be facing, th…

Jeff Naimon and Sasha Leonhardt from Buckley LLP break down the likely course of consumer financial regulation under the Biden administration. In this episode they spoke about President Biden’s nominee to lead the CFPB, what the Bureau’s priorities are likely to be in the short and long-term, and what it’s like for financial services firms to have …

Special Purpose Acquisition Companies, or SPACs, have become one of the hottest things in finance over the past year. In this episode, Shami Patel talks about why SPACs have become an attractive option for private companies that want to go public, how a typical SPAC is structured, and his thoughts on some of the more common SPAC critiques. Shami ha…