Bank Distress during the Great Depression: The Illiquidity-Insolvency Debate Revisited

During the contraction from 1929 through 1933, the Federal Reserve System tracked changes in the status of all banks operating in the United States and determined the cause of each bank suspension. This essay analyzes chronological patterns in aggregate series constructed from that data. The analysis demonstrates both illiquidity and insolvency were substantial sources of bank distress. Periods of heightened distress were correlated with periods of increased illiquidity. Contagion via correspondent networks and bank runs propagated the initial banking panics. As the depression deepened and asset values declined, insolvency loomed as the principal threat to depository institutions.

The Case for an Orderly Resolution Regime for Systemically-Important Financial Institutions

Outlines the need to give the government authority to resolve a financial institution if its failure poses serious systemic risks, examines concerns and counterproposals, and offers recommendations and considerations for designing such a system

Too far ahead of its time: Barclays, Burroughs and real-time banking

The historiography of computing has until now considered real-time computing in banking as predicated on the possibilities of networked ATMs in the 1970s. This article reveals a different story. It exposes the failed bid by Barclays and Burroughs to make real time a reality for British banking in the 1960s

'Too far ahead of its time': Britain, Burroughs and real-time banking in the 1960s

In 1969, the popular British television programme, Tomorrow's World, featured an item that predicted point of sale terminals in every high street shop ushering in the country's computerised cashless economy. The basis for the show's prediction was a succession of ambitious projects initiated by the British banks, each with the aim of introducing a new real-time computer banking system to its network of branches by 15 February 1971. The banks, threatened by state-sponsored competition, inspired by the success of SABRE, American Airlines' real-time airline reservations system, and pressured by forthcoming decimalisation, all chose 'D-Day' as their immovable deadline. And, in each case, US computer manufacturer, Burroughs, promised a B8500 central super computer linked to a nationwide network of TC500 intelligent terminal satellites. Perhaps unsurprisingly for Tomorrow's World, the programme's predicted coming of the cashless society was wildly optimistic. But so too, it turned out, were the plans of the banks. Real-time banking in Britain never materialised in the 1970s, let alone by February 1971, as one by one the banks abandoned their plans. In this paper, I revisit the case of Burroughs and Barclays Bank. Blending oral testimonies with archival sources, I explore a consumer perspective of coterminous computing labour as the two companies set about making the idea of real-time banking a reality. I reveal how a community of practice made up of Barclays' computer programmers and Burroughs' engineers was able to transgress established business boundaries in pursuit of a technical ideal, only to eventually become architect of its own fate. The co-construction and 'interpretive flexibility' of this technological failure is considered in light of the existing literature, with particular attention given to the attribution of blame. In this case, where there was attribution, it was judged to have lain with the technology, which was simply regarded as 'too far ahead of its time.ï¿

Can and Should Universal Injunctions Be Saved?

The practice of a federal district court judge halting the government\u27s enforcement of an executive action against not only the parties before the court but against anyone, anywhere, may be coming to an end. Multiple Supreme Court Justices have expressed their skepticism in the propriety of universal injunctions. The growing scholarly consensus is that there should be a brightline rule against them. If the universal injunction\u27s demise is impending and the class action\u27s demise continues unabated, obtaining systemwide relief may be difficult when such relief may be most needed. This Note considers whether universal injunctions can and should be saved. It first compares the macro-level trends and current tradeoffs between the two procedural choices for seeking systemwide relief. Then, this Note considers whether universal injunctions can be theoretically justified based on the development of issue preclusion doctrine and the drafting of the modern class action rules. Finally, this Note proposes a specialized forum to adjudicate universal injunction suits that would solve the two most pressing problems caused by such injunctions--judge shopping and preclusion asymmetry--and realign the tradeoffs that plaintiffs consider when choosing how to seek systemwide relief

Standing Room Only: \u3ci\u3eMadStad Engineering\u3c/i\u3e and the Potential to Challenge the Constitutionality of the America Invents Act\u27s First-Inventor-to-File Patenting System

In 2011, the Leahy–Smith America Invents Act (AIA) was signed into law, bringing significant changes to the Patent Act of 1952. Arguably, the most substantial change was the demise of the “American approach” to patent law: the “first-to-invent” patent filing system. Congress, by enacting the AIA, changed America\u27s patent system from “first-to-invent” to “first-inventor-to-file,” sparking controversy among patent scholars and practitioners, with some individuals arguing that this change was unconstitutional. Recently, the Federal Circuit faced an issue of first impression when an inventor challenged the constitutionality of the first-inventor-to-file provisions of the AIA, and by extension the AIA as a whole, under Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the United States Constitution in the case of MadStad Engineering, Inc. v. USPTO. While ruling against MadStad based on standing, and not on the constitutionality issue, the court gave some insight for a challenger to establish standing by showing a substantial risk of injury actually arising from the first-inventor-to-file provision of the AIA. From the MadStad ruling, it is clear that the arguments of the constitutionality of the AIA’s first-inventor-to-file provisions are far from settled

Minority rights in post-war Iraq: an impending catastrophe?

Many commentators see Iraq as divided between Sunni, Shia and Kurds – and perhaps a few Turkmen. Nothing could be further from the truth. Iraq also has significant populations of Baha'is, Christians, Faili Kurds, Mandaeans, Palestinians, Shabak and Yezidis. Some of Iraq's minority groups have been present in the region for more than two millennia. But they now face the threat of eradication in or expulsion from their ancient homeland. Since 2006, the situation has deteriorated. To make matters worse, the international law of minority and group rights has largely developed in the context of the recent history of Europe, and, perhaps, has little to contribute to the situation in Iraq. This article asks what role, if any, can international law, notably the law of human rights, minority rights and group rights, play in resolving or mitigating conflict. This is especially the case when the underlying rationale of this law is so problematic. The structure of this article is as follows. I start with an overview of the various minority groups in Iraq. There is a common theme – things have got a lot worse since 2003. Next, I explore Iraq's statehood, that it is a recent construct, a product of British imperial ambition and cynicism. In fact, Mesopotamia, the territory of contemporary Iraq, was a Persian territory for many centuries until its conquest by militant Islam, its glorious role in the Golden Age of Islam (contemporaneous with Western Europe's dark ages) and incorporation into the Ottoman Empire. Third, I reflect on Britain's disastrous adventures in the region. Mesopotamia was the scene of Britain's greatest military disaster; but Britain has been responsible for the unceasing violence and persecution which characterizes modern Iraq. Fourth, I turn to a marvellous dream, a document of extraordinary cogency and unreality: Iraq's 1932 Declaration, on admission to the League of Nations. This document is a tragic mirage: an Iraq of respect for and enjoyment of its cosmopolitan diversity. It is significant that the only two occasions on which such a vision achieved a purchase in Mesopotamia were the short periods of Kemalist and communist rule. For Britain and the United States such a trajectory was utterly impermissible. Fifth, I turn to the fact that Iraq was one of the first members of the United Nations, and ratified all the relevant human rights instruments dealing with minority rights. Iraq was until the 1990s an assiduous participant in the UN human rights mechanisms, submitting periodical reports to the treaty bodies and submitting itself to interrogation in Geneva, followed by concluding observations and recommendations. This continued despite the eight years' war with Iran, the disastrous invasion of Kuwait in 1991 and the long years of sanctions, blockade and continuous aerial attack, reminiscent of Britain's reliance on the Royal Air Force (RAF) during and after the Mandate. Finally, there is Iraq's 2005 Constitution, a joke version of the 1932 Declaration. At the same time, since 1999 Iraq has not engaged with the UN human rights mechanisms. My conclusion is not sanguine

Revolutionary syndicalist opposition to the First World War: An international comparative reassessment

It has been argued that support for the First World War by the important French syndicalist organisation, the Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT) has tended to obscure the fact that other national syndicalist organisations remained faithful to their professed workers’ internationalism: on this basis syndicalists beyond France, more than any other ideological persuasion within the organised trade union movement in immediate pre-war and wartime Europe, can be seen to have constituted an authentic movement of opposition to the war in their refusal to subordinate class interests to those of the state, to endorse policies of ‘defencism’ and to abandon the rhetoric of class conflict. This article, which attempts to contribute to a much neglected comparative historiography of the international syndicalist movement, re-evaluates the syndicalist response across a broad geographical field of canvas (embracing France, Italy, Spain, Ireland, Britain and America) to reveal a rather more nuanced, ambiguous and uneven picture. While it highlights the distinctive nature of the syndicalist response compared with other labour movement trends, it also explores the important strategic and tactical limitations involved, including the dilemma of attempting to translate formal syndicalist ideological commitments against the war into practical measures of intervention, and the consequences of the syndicalists’ subordination of the political question of the war to the industrial struggle