The Past and Future of American Finance: American Experimentalism without American Exceptionalism

Tamara Lothian, Columbia Law School

Abstract

This piece introduces the distinction between financial regulatory reform and institutional reconstruction and argues that efforts in the US and other countries to reform the regulation of finance can and should serve as a first step towards institutional reconstruction. The financial crisis has revealed a series of problems that cannot be solved by mere regulation. They require innovations designed to reorganize the relation of finance to the real economy. To this end, we need a practice of legal and economic analysis attentive to institutional realities and possibilities. This piece exemplifies such a practice in the setting of US financial reform.