IPO ETFs: An Aggressive Play For Ambitious Investors
Professor Tom Lin is quoted in this article from The Street. Read the Full Article
Author: Tom Lin
Financial Weapons of War
A new type of warfare is upon us. In this new mode of war, finance is the most powerful weapon, bullets are not fired, financial institutions are the targets, and almost everyone is at risk. Instead of smart bombs, improvised explosives, and unmanned drones –– economic sanctions, financial restrictions, and cyber programs are the weapons of choice. This is the reality of modern financial warfare. This Article offers an early examination of this new mode of war. It explores the new financial theater of war, analyzes the modern arsenal of financial weapons, highlights emerging legal tensions, and proposes key recommendations for current and future financial warfare. The Article begins with a general survey of the modern financial infrastructure, the emerging battlefield of modern warfare. Next, it provides a more detailed inventory of the financial weapons of war. It accounts for traditional weapons like economic sanctions, anti-money laundering regulations, and banking restrictions, as well as cyber weapons like distributed denial-of-service attacks, data manipulation hacks, and destructive intrusions. It also explains how these weapons are used in …
Infinite Financial Intermediation
Intermediation is a fundamental fact of finance. Intermediaries like commercial banks, investment banks, stockbrokers, mutual funds, and stock exchanges form the fabric of modern finance. Yet despite all these financial links, entrepreneurs and innovators continue to endeavor towards the possibilities of fundamentally disrupting and disintermediating these existential financial ties, breaking apart from the financial main, and building new financial islands. This Article offers a studied commentary of those financial links and those disengaging endeavors, the ties that thread the fabric of modern finance and the efforts to tear those threads asunder. It presents an examination of the functional evolution of financial intermediation, explains the difficulties of true financial disintermediation by revealing the underappreciated links that remain when traditional links are decoupled, and highlights potential implications and recommendations arising from such a revelation. Building upon a rich literature that spans law, economic, finance, and sociology, it seeks to explain the strong adhesiveness of financial intermediation and explore the looming challenges presented by future financial intermediation. Collectively, this Article provides a different perspective for thinking about financial …
