The OCC FinTech Charter and the Bank Holding Company Act

The definition of a bank under the Bank Holding Company Act of 1956 (“BHCA”) has changed several times since the statute was first enacted. Congress has identified a number of underlying rationales for applying the BHCA to certain entities thus necessitating a change in the definition. Recent innovations in technology, however, have made it challenging to adapt the U.S. financial regulatory regime to these advances, particularly for the financial technology (“FinTech”) industry. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency’s (“OCC”) FinTech charter is one example of an attempt by a U.S. financial regulator to grapple with emerging technologies in financial services in a meaningful way. Despite the OCC initially suggesting that the BHCA could apply to FinTech companies chartered as special purpose national banks (“SPNBs”), these entities do not and cannot meet the definition of a bank under the BHCA because FinTech SPNBs are not permitted to take deposits. This Comment sets out a framework by which to analyze whether the definition of a bank under the BHCA should include FinTech firms who make loans and do not take deposits, i.e., “marketplace leaders.” This Comment finds that including FinTech firms, specifically marketplace lenders, in the statutory definition of a bank would serve a majority of the BHCA’s underlying policy rationales

SPATIAL SCALING OF CRUSTAL AND LITHOSPHERIC DEFORMATION IN THE WESTERN UNITED STATES

Deformation of continental lithosphere can extend great distances laterally from tectonic plate boundaries. This extent has been used to argue for a variety of constitutive laws for continental materials, based on the underlying principles in continuum mechanics that identify a relationship between characteristic spatial scale and material properties. Although the relationship between observed deformation and material models is always non-unique, quantifying one or more characteristic scales of deformation in a region can rule out some models of how the lithosphere deforms. In the western United States active deformation occurs at the plate boundary between North America and either the Pacific or Farallon plates, and extends east as far as the Rocky Mountains, a distance greater than 1000 km, hence further than any elastic dislocation plate boundary model allows. This study seeks to identify spatial patterns in the deformation as a means of quantifying characteristic scaling using two different observational datasets: topography and strain rate constructed from GPS velocities and earthquake focal mechanisms. Methods from the field of Fourier analysis are used to extract the characteristic scales of deformation and map the relative prominence of the characteristic scales spatially. Power spectra of the datasets, strain rate and topography, shows two distinct characteristic frequency bands (the inverse of spatial wavelength). Two frequency bands are identified, one covering 0.02-0.1 km-1, interpreted as an elastic frequency band, and the second covering scales from 0.004-0.006 km-1, interpreted as a viscous frequency band. A summation of power from each frequency band within a windowing function allows for the creation of power summation maps that show the relative prominence of each frequency band. From the power spectrum summation maps, dominant frequency maps are also created to show which processes are more prominent regionally. From the analysis of the power spectra and power summation maps we find that topography in the western United States is generated through a combination of elastic and viscous processes with past tectonics and erosion altering some of the elastic frequency features

Review of \u3ci\u3eImplementing the Endangered Species Act on the Platte Basin Water Commons.\u3c/i\u3e By David M. Freeman

David M. Freeman has written a landmark treatise on a landmark event-the development of the Platte River Habitat Recovery Program. The program\u27s goal. is to integrate provisions of the Endangered Species Act and the· habitat needs of four imperiled species (interior least tern, piping plover, whooping crane, and pallid sturgeon) into river basin-wide water management policy. The process was formally initiated 209 in 1997 with the signing of a cooperative agreement between the states of Colorado, Nebraska, and Wyoming and the U.S. Department of the Interior, but discussions had been under way since the 1970s. The process was completed in 2006 when the program agreement was signed by the governors of the three states and the U.S. secretary of the interior and is now nearly halfway through the first l3-year implementation increment. In addition to the signatories to the agreement, critical participants in program negotiations included state and federal agencies (e.g., U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Bureau of Reclamation, U.S. Forest Service, Nebraska Department of Natural Resources, and Nebraska\u27s Natural Resources Districts), environmental groups (e.g., Platte River Whooping Crane Maintenance Trust, National Audubon Society, National Wildlife Federation), irrigation organizations (e.g., Central Nebraska Public Power and Irrigation District), electric power generating companies (e.g., Nebraska Public Power District), and municipal water providers (e.g., Denver Board of Water Commissioners)

Harmonic, Tonal, and Formal Asynchrony in Robert Schumann\u27s \u3ci\u3eFrauenliebe und Leben\u3c/i\u3e

This thesis explores the asynchrony among form, harmony, and tonality in Robert Schumann’s Frauenliebe und Leben, Op. 42. Using several theoretical lenses, this study identifies and analyzes a selection of songs from this work that distort tonal, harmonic, and formal relationships and how the text setting may inform these distortions. This is shown through detailed analyses of several songs from the cycle that highlight areas of asynchrony. The first section of this document explores the background of Frauenliebe und Leben and draws upon other musical examples in order to establish working definitions of asynchronous elements. The following sections are divided by song, each section containing an analysis detailing which aspects of the composition contain asynchronous elements, as well as how those elements affect or are affected by one another within the context of tonality, harmony, form, and text. The final section presents an overview of asynchrony within the work based on the detailed analyses provided for each song and suggests opportunities for further exploration of asynchrony. Advisor: Stanley V. Kleppinge

President\u27s Annual Address

Address of Louden L. Bomberger, President of the Indiana State Bar Association, at the Annual Meeting of the Association, September 16, 1938