Cornell Law Professor Assists Sen. Bernie Sanders with 'Too-big-to-fail' Legislation

By Katherine Heaney, Puneet Velidi and John Monkovic

Excerpt:

A Cornell law professor recently helped craft a legislation with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and says that his work on financial institutions was obscure when he started teaching — right before the 2008 financial crisis. Prof. Robert Hockett, Edward Cornell Professor of Law, whose primary research interests are organizational, financial, and monetary law and economics, contributed to Sanders’ “Too-big-to-fail” legislation, which unveiled on Oct. 3. The bill, which was introduced on the 10th anniversary of the Wall Street bailout, calls for large financial institutions to downsize if their total asset portfolio comes out to be about three percent of the U.S. GDP. Until this downsize occurs, they would also be denied access to federal bailout facilities.

“This legislation is really at the core of what I do. I have done a lot of work with Bernie Sanders, as well as with Elizabeth Warren. I helped draft Elizabeth Warren’s bill ‘Accountability in Capitalism’, which she introduced in August. Both senators’ work align with my own academic work,” he said.

Hockett said that if he is “lucky” he will get to continue working with both Sanders and Warren.

“Because Sanders and Warren are both possible presidential candidates, we can view their legislation as good indicators of what they believe the biggest issues will be going forward. These are the issues they determined that people care enough about to vote on the basis of,” Hockett said. “Both believe that the way we organize corporations and banks are both important subjects, likely to be big topics of debate in the midterms and 2020 election.”

https://cornellsun.com/2018/10/16/cornell-law-professor-assists-sen-bernie-sanders-with-too-big-to-fail-legislation/


Erin Schaff / The New York Times