I’ve avoided saying anything at all about the bailout because (1) I’m not an expert on banking, finance, etc. and (2) events are moving so fast I can’t keep up with the latest proposal. Nonetheless, since the bailout bill has just failed, this might be an opportune time to consider an alternative to the plan the House just rejected. The most intriguing alternative plan I’ve seen is that set forth by Havard Law’s Lucian Bebchuk in this paper (which was produced in record time!).

Read the full piece here.

Over and over during the last week we’ve been told that unless Congress, the Treasury, and the Fed take “bold action,” credit markets will freeze, equity values will plummet, small businesses and homeowners will be wiped out, and, ultimately, the entire economy will crash. Such pronouncements are issued boldly, with a sort of Gnostic certainty, a little sadness for dramatic effect, and only minor caveats and qualifications.

Read the full piece here.

It should be no surprise that the inventor of the poison pill is pro-director, but Marty Lipton’s remarks at a June 25 conference at the University of Minnesota Law School left no doubt that he truly believes in his heart of hearts that we’re better off with strong, unencumbered boards. According to the WSJ’s deals blog (quoted in today’s print edition), Lipton wondered aloud whether the move to shareholder-centric governance will “simply overwhelm American business corporations.”

Read the full piece here.

Sunstein and Thaler have a series of posts over at Volokh Consipiracy on their new book Nudge, which expands on their notion of libertarian paternalism (see here, here , here and here).  Something in the most recent post caught my eye.  In preparing to respond to various objections to libertarian paternalism, Sunstein argues that this sort of paternalism offers the “best of both worlds”…

Read the full piece here. 

The Financial Times reported yesterday that an embarrassed GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt had to tell GE shareholders that the 10% growth in earnings for 2008 that he had promised analysts in March was not going to be possible.  GE missed its quarterly forecasts and halved its 2008 forecast to 5% growth in earnings (as opposed to the 10% growth promised).  The Financial Times article mentioned a “sense of shock among the investor community” and noted that one analyst, after Immelt’s downward revision, “compared GE’s promise of long-term improvements to the Chicago Cubs, the US baseball club that hasn’t won a championship in 100 years.”

Read the full piece here.

On the flight back from my spring break ski trip, I had a chance to read the recent Tenth Circuit opinion reversing the insider trading conviction of former Qwest CEO, Joseph Nacchio. Mr. Nacchio had been convicted of 19 counts of insider trading, sentenced to six years in prison (plus two years’ supervised release), fined $19 million, and ordered to disgorge $52 million more. In a 2-1 decision authored by Judge McConnell, the Tenth Circuit reversed Nacchio’s conviction because of the district court’s exclusion of expert testimony by Dan Fischel (my corporations prof). The court also concluded that retrial will not constitute double jeopardy because a properly instructed jury could have found Nacchio guilty of insider trading. To reach that conclusion, the court had to delve extensively into the law of insider trading and the evidence presented at trial.

Read the full piece here. 

Todd Zywicki and Maxwell Stearns have a draft of their new textbook, “Public Choice Concepts and Applications in the Law,” available for review for profs that are interested in teaching with the manuscript this Fall 2008 or Spring 2009 term (the book is due to be published in 2009).  The book is designed for law profs along with “teachers of economics, political science, and public policy courses as well … and to be taught as either a follow-on to a traditional law and economics course or as a substitute for a traditional law and economics course.”  Zywicki & Stearns description of the project and invitation for those interested in early adoption to view the current manuscript is below the fold.

Read the full piece here. 

WSJ Deal Journal reports some important movement on the antitrust and private equity front. Specifically, Judge Richard Jones (W.D. Washington) granted the defendants’ motion to dismiss in Pennsylvania Avenue Funds v. Borey, dismissing the plaintiffs’ allegations that two private equity firms had violated the Sherman Act by bidding jointly on the target company (Watchguard Technologies) in order to “artificially fix the price … or rig the tender offer bids for WatchGuard shares” after initially submitting independent bids.

Read the full piece here. 

I promised to start by addressing some common criticisms of prediction markets. What better way to start than by attacking my friend, GW colleague, and now co-conspirator Orin Kerr? Orin has at least twice (in 2005, and earlier this month) endorsed the criticism that the election markets don’t seem to do much more than track the conventional wisdom. Orin is in good if unfamiliar company; Paul Krugman recently made a similar criticism.

Read the full piece here.