During two closed sessions before the luncheon, committee members discussed the latest in financial regulation issues. At a luncheon briefing following these sessions, SFRC members gave several statements and answered questions.

On April 5, 2012, the President signed into law the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act, which passed by a large bipartisan majority in the Congress. The Act is designed to facilitate the equity funding of new companies. Recent research has documented that from 1980 through the 2008-09 recession new companies have been main drivers of job creation in the United States. 

In his 2011 State of the Union Address, with six members of the Supreme Court present, President Obama famously attacked the Court’s Citizen’s United decision. At the center of Obama’s criticism was his completely erroneous contention that the decision opened the floodgates to foreign corporate spending in U.S. election campaigns.

When the bubble deflated in 2007, an unprecedented number of weak mortgages went into default - those that were held or guaranteed by Fannie and Freddie, and those that had been securitized by Wall Street. This drove down housing prices and threw Fannie and Freddie into insolvency. 

By next year, about two-thirds of American physicians will be working as salaried employees of large groups and hospitals. This movement has been underway for years. Over the last decade, the number of independent physicians was falling by about 2% a year. But these trends are now accelerating. 

“Independence” is a central corporate governance idea in the discussions of the Sarbanes-Oxley era. But have the SEC, public companies, mutual funds, stock exchanges, accountants, and proxy advisers gotten carried away by the pursuit of independence? What are its limitations and does it interfere with other essential elements of governance,...

Governor Romney's defenders have argued that critics of his role at Bain Capital are really attacking capitalism itself. Given the academic evidence, we would have to agree.

For any housing finance reform plan to be credible, it must do much more than wind down the GSEs. Because of the Dodd-Frank Act a number of formidable legal obstacles now exist that must be cleared away before a private securitization market will come back. If the administration is serious, its plan must address all these issues.