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Articles by Morgan Ricks
Regionalism and the Federal Reserve Banks
Download PDF Regionalism is central to our country’s central banking system. Rather than rely on a single organization to set monetary policy and oversee banks, Congress created a multiplicity of bodies including twelve Federal Reserve Banks (FRBs), each designed to operate in a different part of the country. These FRBs are an early and undertheorized example of how the federal government uses regional bodies to formulate and administer federal policy.
Rebuilding Banking Law: Banks as Public Utilities
Under the New Deal framework for money and payments—which had its roots in the National Bank Act of 1864—banks in the United States were governed in many respects as public utilities. Charters were available only where they were consistent with public convenience and need, the usual standard for utilities. Banks enjoyed an exclusive privilege to augment the money supply, maintaining deposit account balances that house-holds and businesses could use as a means of payment and store of value.
Money and Banking in the United States: A Guide to the Policy Landscape
Introduction In March and April 2023, the American system of money and banking teetered on the brink of collapse. Several large banks failed—including Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), Signature Bank, and First Republic Bank—but the real story was the extent of the ad hoc government interventions required to prevent a wider unraveling.
The Business of Bank Fees: How Public Alternatives Can Ensure Equitable Economic Participation
Introduction The financial costs of banking lock out millions of Americans from full economic participation. Nearly 5 percent of households in the United States—disproportionately Black, brown, and/or low-income—have no bank account at all, and another 14 percent must still rely on costly, nonbank alternatives at least some of the time.
What Centuries of Common Law Can Teach Us About Regulating Social Media
This morning, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in the most anticipated cases of the year for the future of regulating tech platforms, NetChoice, LLC v. Paxton and Moody v. NetChoice, LLC. At the core of these two cases is whether Florida and Texas can regulate social media platforms, including by setting rules for content moderation and exclusion of users. Much of the debate about the case focuses on the First Amendment and whether the platforms are best analogized to publishers.
Why banks should be treated as public utilities - The Washington Post
Lev Menand is a professor at Columbia Law School, a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute and the author of “The Fed Unbound: Central Banking in a Time of Crisis.” Morgan Ricks is a professor at Vanderbilt Law School and the author of “The Money Problem: Rethinking Financial Regulation.” It has been 15 years since Lehman Brothers collapsed and financial panic turned a mild recession into a great one, yet the American financial system still depends on government rescues to avoid catastrophic...
After Silicon Valley Bank, scrap the bank deposit insurance limit
Lev Menand is an associate professor at Columbia Law School and a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. Morgan Ricks is the Herman O. Loewenstein chair in law at Vanderbilt Law School. On Sunday evening, in an effort to stem a damaging financial panic, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) overrode a $250,000 cap on deposit insurance set by Congress and committed billions of dollars to rescue uninsured depositors at two failed banks, including Silicon Valley Bank.
A U.S. Digital Dollar Should Serve the Public, Not Banks
The Federal Reserve last month released a report about how the U.S. might update its currency for an "age of digital transformation." While the long overdue assessment doesn't reach a conclusion on whether a new digital dollar would be a good idea, the way it breaks down the issues repeatedly confuses the interests of the financial sector with those of the American public.
Digital Dollars" by Morgan Ricks, J. Crawford et al.
Publication Title George Washington Law Review Keywords digital currencies, privileged access, Federal Reserve Disciplines Banking and Finance Law | Law Abstract We are entering a new monetary era. Central banks around the world- spurred by the development of privately controlled digital currencies as well as competition from other central banks-have been studying, building, and, in some cases, issuing central bank digital currency ("CBDC").
Let’s Pay the Stimulus in Digital Dollars
(Bloomberg Opinion) -- The federal government is poised to send checks to Americans within weeks as part of a stimulus package to address the economic fallout from the spread of COVID-19. But lawmakers have said nothing about what the millions of people without bank accounts will do with these checks once they receive them.
Let’s Pay the Stimulus in Digital Dollars
Mar 24 2020, 4:00 PMMar 24 2020, 5:00 PMMarch 24 2020, 4:00 PMMarch 24 2020, 5:00 PM
Are Audit Committees Suffering from Overload?
Audit committee responsibilities have consistently increased, and practitioners have raised concerns that audit committees may be overloaded with duties. For example, in a 2005 interview, one audit committee member noted, “It’s becoming almost excessive. We get press releases almost weekly to review. It’s becoming a burden on my email at home. Earnings releases, litigation information, and acquisition information — something seems to always be coming my way” (Beasley et al. 2009).
SEC Proposes to Exempt More Firms from Required Attestation of Internal Controls
The Securities and Exchange Commission has proposed changes to its rules requiring companies to obtain attestation on their internal controls from an independent public accountant. The proposal rests on the idea that attestation’s costs often exceed its benefits.
Can Blockchain Create a Corporate-Governance Revolution at Public Companies?
In a new paper, we analyze the major disconnect between the theory of corporate governance, its legal expression, and the reality of corporate ownership structures, based on an “indirect holding system” (IHS), which has evolved from complex existing technological limitations. We argue that distributed ledger technology (DLT) offers the potential to redesign the company registry and securities clearing and settlement systems for public companies and realign them with theory.
Statement of Concerned Securities Law Professors Regarding Investment Advisers and Fiduciary Obligations
We circulate this statement as law professors specializing in the field of securities regulation who are concerned that the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “Commission”) has moved in a new direction that is both contrary to its past practice and harmful to the interests of investors.
Why We Shouldn’t Regulate Reputation Risk at Banks
What do payday lenders, firearms retailers, porn stars, churches, coal mines, and condom companies have in common? All have complained that regulators pressured financial institutions to close their accounts over reputation-risk concerns. In a my article (available here), forthcoming in the Georgia Law Review, I explain that broad regulation of reputation risk does not reduce bank risk and unnecessarily politicizes bank regulators.
Why Federal Reserve should offer bank accounts to everyone
The Federal Reserve is the central bank of the United States and the place where money is most secure. But since its creation in 1913, the bank has been open only for other banks—not people or businesses. Vanderbilt Professor of Law Morgan Ricks, a former U.S. Treasury Department adviser, and his co-authors argue that the general public, businesses and institutions should have the option to have an account at the Fed.
Why Federal Reserve Should Offer Bank Accounts to Everyone
The Federal Reserve is the central bank of the United States and the place where money is most secure. But since its creation in 1913, it has been closed to people or businesses that aren’t banks. Vanderbilt law professor and former U.S. Treasury Department advisor, Morgan Ricks and his co-authors argue that the general public, businesses and institutions should have the option to have an account at the Fed.
Rethinking Financial Regulation
Years have passed since the world experienced one of the worst financial crises in history, and while countless experts have analyzed it, many central questions remain unanswered. Should money creation be considered a ‘public’ or ‘private’ activity—or both? What do we mean by, and want from, financial stability? What role should regulation play? How would we design our monetary institutions if we could start from scratch?
Panic-Proofing, Not Preventing Bubbles, Should Be Focus of U.S. Financial Policy
Newswise — Complicated new regulations added to complicated old regulations won’t protect the United States’ financial system from frightening crashes like that experienced in 2008, says a Vanderbilt professor who helped the Obama administration pull the financial sector out of that morass. Instead, “a much simpler and more surgical approach is needed,” said Morgan Ricks of Vanderbilt Law School, author of The Money Problem: Rethinking Financial Regulation (The University of Chicago Press).
A Former Treasury Adviser On How To Really Fix Wall Street
Nor are the dangers of short-term borrowings a recent discovery.
The Money Problem: Rethinking Financial Regulation
In my book, The Money Problem: Rethinking Financial Regulation, recently published by the University of Chicago Press, I offer a novel take on the “shadow banking” problem—arguably the central challenge for modern financial stability policy. I contend that financial instability is, and always has been, largely a problem of monetary system design. Structural monetary reform could pave the way for a dramatic reduction in the scope and complexity of modern financial stability regulation.
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