Nexus: Chapman's Journal of Law and Public Policy

The NeXus Symposium was a huge success! All in attendance were intellectually challenged, enjoyed great company, and were well fed. The event featured a number of exceptional panelists: all with very original, innovative thoughts.

Here are a few highlights:

1. The first panel set the tone for the day’s discussions as Dr. Michael Intriligator explained how the recent market crash came about, where the economy is heading, and how we will likely get there. I was particularly intrigued by Dr. Intriligator’s comments regarding how despite the swelling of the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet, we should be more concerned ...

The 2009 Nexus Symposium is now done and behind us. As we reflect upon the discussions of the day, a couple highlights come to mind.

First Professor Pierre-Louis from the St. Thomas University Law School highlighted some very interesting points about economic downturns and the lessons that we have learned. Though her points were well supported by empirical data, I found her references to economist John Maynard Keynes most enlightening. The quote "Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone." As editor in chief ...

As the Managing Editor of NeXus: Chapman’s Journal of Law and Public Policy, it was my most distinct honor and privilege to attend our Symposium last Friday. Entitled, “The 80th Anniversary of the Great Crash of 1929: Law, Markets, and the Role of the State,” this event certainly provided an incredible amount of insight regarding the current financial climate—how we got here and what to do now that we’ve arrived. As I expected, the distinguished speakers provided just as many questions to their attentive audiences as they did answers. And, because intelligent minds will sometimes disagree, the ...

• In the current financial climate, which is replete with myriad discussions about the efficacy of bailouts and necessity of saving institutions that are too big to fail, many commentators and lots of politicians have expressed concern about the financial compensation paid to executives of under-performing firms. Lost in much of the discussion is a sense of balance. Balance has been lost with respect to three things: (1) a sense of proportion about executive compensation; (2) the failure to offer a sustainable metric for measuring appropriate levels of compensation and (3) the unintended consequences of government efforts to rein in pay ...

California’s recurring fiscal crisis, the worst since the Great Depression, is reminiscent of the movie “Ground Hog Day” in which Bill Murray’s character wakes up every day in the same strange reality. Just weeks after closing a $40 billion budget deficit, California is once again facing a multi-billion dollar gap. The Schwarzenneger administration has already forecast a $7.4 billion deficit the next fiscal year. Others are expecting the gap to grow to more than $20 billion.

This is the fourth time in the past year and a half in which we wake up to a huge budget ...

The debt blanket is smothering the federal government, small businesses and many households. How do we know when we reach the upper limits on borrowing? When we can't make the monthly payments on the debt.

Personal bankruptcies will hit 1.4 million families in 2009, small businesses are declining in numbers at annual rates exceeding 10%, and personal bankruptcies will impact over 1.4 million in 2009. China-Russia-OPEC have served notice they are decreasing their purchases of U.S. government debt and/or have created regional non-dollar trading blocs in 2009. As a consequence, as the federal government debt-buyer ...

Today on the "Today" show, a story aired on the Dow breaking 10,000 for the first time since 2008, and recently-bailed out Wall Street investment houses once again paying massive bonuses to employees. Michael Moore is, of course, offended. How can executives of firms so nearly dead just months ago be worth this much? At first blush, it's hard to imagine that anyone who can't hit a curve ball out of a baseball park, sing like Beyonce Knowles, or perhaps turn water into wine should be entitled to eight-figure pay. Is the "marginal revenue product" of such ...

Below is a Great article by Dr. Michael Intiligator, a presenter for the forthcoming Nexus Symposium.
The article can be found HERE The projections presented in this paper estimate that the GDP of $14.26T achieved in 2008 will not be achieved again until 2013 on an inflation-adjusted basis and that unemployment will not fall back to a level of 6.25% until 2016. Our recommendations for speeding this recovery are presented in the conclusion.

This recent evidence includes the large increases in unemployment in virtually every state; the major and growing fiscal deficits in many states, counties, and cities ...

The Student Blog Section is up and running. Check it out Here

Also- Don't forget about the Nexus Symposium on Friday, October 30th, 2009 from 10am-5pm at Chapman University School of Law. More info can be found HERE

Between the morning of October 19, 1987 and the closing bell of October 20, 1987, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 25%. Shunning the drastic remedy of closing the markets (akin to FDR’s “bank holiday” of March 1933), the regulatory response ultimately took the form of ‘circuit breakers,’ crudely fashioned trading halts that some critics described as “throwing sand in the gears.”

The trigger points for these market shutdowns remained constant from their implementation in April 1989 until April 1998. At that time, the calibration of the decline prompting a trading halt was changed from an absolute number to ...

THE 80th ANNIVERSARY OF THE GREAT CRASH OF 1929: LAW, MARKETS, AND THE ROLE OF THE STATE

As Editor in Chief of Nexus: Chapman’s Journal of Law and Policy, I am pleased to announce our 15th edition entitled “The 80th Anniversary of the Great Crash Of 1929: Law, Markets, and the Role of the State.” This year’s journal promises to offer an interesting and timely topic. While the United States economy struggles through hard times, references are continuously being made to the Great Crash of 1929. Thus, Nexus asks the question: in the eighty years since Black Tuesday ...