Advanced Legal Studies @ Westminster

Saturday, 6 February 2010

European Money Market Funds: Definition in the Heart of Darkness

The 41th Session of the Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance on Friday, February 12th will focus on the evolution of money market funds and their significance to the normal functioning of global capital markets. MMFs have been around for more than 35 years representing about 1/3 of assets under management of collective investment schemes, or mutual funds in the U.S. language, and yet, remained largely unknown to the general public. Not until September 2008, when a run on the third world-largest MMF triggered a global liquidity squeeze resulting in the Great Recession.

We will take a bird-view of the money market fund landscape on the both sides of the Ocean. A symbolic reading of the title contrasts between light and dark, portfolio transparency and a lack of information. Comparisons will be also made between MMF regulation in the U.S. and conflicting views on what constitutes a money market fund among European regulators.

We will review MMF definitions that are currently in effect along with various MMF industry proposals, including those put forward by the SEC in the U.S. and IMMFA, EFAMA, and CESR in Europe. There is a high level of cooperation amongst all interested parties in supporting the primary goal of establishing a common definition of European MMFs. Will the regulators arrive to a solution equally workable for investors and the industry is remained to be seen.

The CESR Consultation Paper “A common definition of European money market funds” is available at http://www.cesr-eu.org/popup2.php?id=6141

Friday, 5 February 2010

Tesco Law in a Wig and Gown

Are solicitors endangered? James Dunning has an insightful post on this at his blog, An Inside Take from the Outside.

He advances his argument on the basis of the changes made in the regulation of barristers. Dunning says:

Last week though, in my humble opinion, the earth moved as the Bar Standards Board voted to allow barristers

to work in partnership with other barristers

to work in partnership with lawyers

to invest in law firms

to practice in more than one capacity

to investigate and collect evidence, take witness statements in civil and criminal case, advise suspects at the police station and conduct correspondence

The Law Society is busy considering the relative merits and demerits of referral fees. Meanwhile the Bar Council has just voted to allow barristers to steal a sizeable proportion of law firms’ daily sustenance.

I agree with Dunning the earth is moving and solicitors should be checking their earthquake insurance.

565NPCXDCPAW

More from Entertainment and Sports Law

The Editors of the Entertainment and Sports Law Journal thought you might be interested in two initiatives. Please pass on to anyone else you think might be interested. Incidentally the Winter 2009 issue of ESLJ is now available online

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/law/elj/eslj/issues/volume7/number2/

1) The ESLJ jisc mailing list. By joining this you will be able to send and receive posts in a group interested in the many intersections of law and popular culture. Posts might include details of conferences, issues of interest, etc.

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/law/elj/eslj/news/?newsItem=094d43f621350a7501219be2622a4fdc

B) the Dispatches from the Frontline of Law and Popular Culture blog. This blog has covered issues as diverse as music censorship, children in art, intellectual property, filesharing, plagiarism, and featured stars as diverse as Edwyn Collins, The Sex Pistols, The Smiths and Magazine. The more the merrier so please consider joining and posting

http://populaw.blogspot.com/

Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance - 41st Weekly Meeting

NOTE: CHANGE OF VENUE, last update 10 February

Dear all

We are well in 2010 and it is high time to recommence gathering for the Philosophical Foundations of Law and Finance. The next 40-lecture cycle – yes, we are turning to the 41st – will start on Friday 12 February and will be inaugurated by Viktoria Baklanova presenting a paper on

“European Money Market Funds: ‘Definition in the Heart of Darkness’”

Viktoria is a PhD Candidate at the University of Westminster, School of Law and Senior Director at Fitch Ratings, New York.

The meeting will take place from 6.00 to 8.00pm, in room 358, 309 Regent Street (University of Westminster). We will adjourn at Vapiano (19-21 Great Portland Street, W1W 8QB) at 8.00pm for meal and drinks.

I look forward to seeing you in one week!

Warm regards,
Laura

Entertainment and Sports Law Journal

The winter 2009 issue of the Entertainment and Sports Law Journal (vol 7(2)) is now available via http://go.warwick.ac.uk/eslj.

This issue's contributions include:

Narnia Bohler-Muller, 'The Justice of the Heart in Little Brother'
Bettina Lange, 'Governing Celebrity: Multiculturalism, Offensive Television Content and Celebrity Big Brother: A Response'
Dino Numerato and Thomas Persson, 'To Govern or to Dispute? Remarks on the Social Nature of Dispute Resolution in Czech and Danish Sports Associations'
Anastassia Tsoukala, 'Combating Football Crowd Disorder at the European Level: An Ongoing Institutionalisation of the Control of Deviance'
Ian Blackshaw, 'Protecting Major Sporting Events with Particular Reference to the 2012 London Olympic Games'
Daniel Geey, 'Third Party Player Ownership: the Regulations for Premier League and Football League Clubs for the 2009/10 Season'

We are also pleased to announce that, from February 2010, all previous and future issues of ESLJ will be available via HeinOnline.

Also, we have an ESLJ mailing list set up via jiscmail, feel free to subscribe, see

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/law/elj/eslj/news/?newsItem=094d43f621350a7501219be2622a4fdc

Thursday, 4 February 2010

Find Us on Twitter and Facebook

Advanced Legal Studies @ Westminster is now posting to Twitter (follow us at twitter.com/ALSWestminster) and our own Facebook page.

We aim to publish our posts as widely as possible. And we welcome your comments on how we can improve this. Social networking is one way of achieving a wider audience, and a responsive one, we hope.

"What Can't Logic Do--Part 2: Theoretical Responses to Ruchir Verma, Laura Niada and Sandy Singh"

1. This is in reply to the astute observations by Ruchir, Laura and Sandy to my wicked 10 claims of "What Logic Can't Do" filed as a note in my Facebook.

2. Leibniz believed that we could have a pure calculative language that would have necessary and sufficient premises for a complete description of the entire universe--the famous Mathematica Universalis (MU--or in my previous note referred to as "Moo"). The hopes for a calculative language reducible to a few logical premises called axiomatics grew in the early part of the 20th century. Problem was it was cumbersome--Russell and Whitehead in their Principia Mathematica (very unpopular which they had to privately publish and sold about 7 copies) took 157 pages of pure symbolic logic to prove a couple trivial existence relations and never got going to prove anything of any use or consequence to normal arithmetic operations. And then Kurt Godel in the 1930s with his incompleteness theorem showed how it was logically impossible (sic!) to have both a consistent set of premises and no danggling infinitudes for a simple arithmetic system. (All systems theorists -- Luhmanists should beware of their outrageous claims in light of Kurt's supreme and god-like clarity!) Logicians however grew very clever with Zermelo and later Tarski showing how an axiomatic system could be developed with powerful applications--much of our current computation goes back to them. Despite huge formal advances, however, the limitations of logic are stark. Although I personally like Leibniz' MU--I don't think it is doable within any standard interpretation of how our universe works. This does not prevent any mystical bent and encourages me to search for solutions and translations of the quotidien law and finance into group theoretic and category theoretic terms. My goal is to give "traders' talk" a voice in Platonic Heaven under risk symmetric invariance. After all, physics is the ultimate option since its reference asset is reality.