Congress enacted the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (“Dodd-Frank”) as a direct response to the 2008 Financial Crisis when millions of Americans lost homes due to foreclosure. (SEC). Among myriad findings, a final report on the 2008 Financial Crisis stated that investment transactions with conflicts of interest contributed to the crisis. (Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission). For example, the commission found that financial firms marketed an investment and profited off that investment product’s decline…
Read MoreThere is a long history of celebrities promoting various products and investments that did not turn out well for the individuals who acted on their advice. (Joe Mont, TheStreet). 50 Cent using Twitter to “pump” up the share price of a business he partially owned is one notable example. (Id.; Mike Masnick, TechDirt). FTX, a large crypto exchange which many celebrities publicly endorsed, collapsed in November 2022 in no small part due to fraud by its CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried. (Tietrich Knauth & Tom Hals, Reuters; Nathan Reiff, Investopedia). This public endorsement by various celebrities appears to be another example of celebrities scamming their fans...
Read MoreIn the past months, the stock market has seen the longest stretch of losses since 2001. (Tripp Mickle, New York Times). As investors adjust to the onset of a “bear market,” a market persistently declining in value, some venture-capital firms (“VC”) are changing their focus from investing exclusively within the startup industry to purchasing stocks of publicly traded companies. (Merriam-Webster; Berber Jin, Wall Street Journal). Inflation in the United States is at a 40-year high, and the Federal Reserve has continued to raise interest rates to combat it. (Nick Timiraos, Wall Street Journal). The market has been strained by the current interest rates, as well as the war in Ukraine, supply chain issues, and other factors…
Read MoreAfter a three-year legal battle, Instacart withdrew its appeal to the California Supreme Court, a decision that would potentially resolve the issue of employment classification for gig economy workers in California. (Cutler, Bloomberg Law). The gig economy is defined as economic activity that involves the use of temporary or freelance workers to perform jobs typically in the service sector, which has seen enormous growth over the last decade. (Merriam-Webster). The City of San Diego sued the grocery delivery service (via parent company Maplebear Inc.), alleging violations of the California labor code and unfair business practices through the misclassification of its workers as independent contractors instead of employees…
Read MoreGlobalization and the expansion of international trade have created an economy unlike any before. The United States (“U.S.”) has particularly benefitted from foreign trade, with many businesses dependent on it for their success. However, recent events and growing concerns surrounding the sustainability of the global business model have led to executive actions and legislative movements which may foreclose significant portions of the world for U.S. businesses and may have dramatic implications…
Read MoreAs the world's news cycle grows shorter by the day, events with wide-ranging consequences scarcely have a twenty-four-hour lifespan in the headlines. Few issues aside from COVID-19 and the Russian incursion into Ukraine exhibit staying power. Count the increasingly convoluted legal battle between the world's richest man, Elon Musk and Twitter, Inc. (“Twitter”) as one of these issues. (Forbes). Musk has been attempting for months to void his attempted Twitter takeover. (Giles Turner, Bloomberg). With new developments in the case making headlines every week, it is difficult to keep track of how the case began, where it stands, and the consequences of a ruling in what has turned into a high stakes tug of war…
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