The Roundtable
Welcome to the Roundtable, a forum for incisive commentary and analysis
on cases and developments in law and the legal system.
on cases and developments in law and the legal system.
 By Steven Jacobson
Steven Jacobson is a senior at the University of Pennsylvania studying business and history. Graduate students are anything but a core Republican constituency. Graduate degree holders backed Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee, by a 21-point margin in last November’s election. [1] Nearly a calendar year after Ms. Clinton’s surprising loss to President Donald Trump, the president’s party is looking to deal another blow to graduate students. The Republicans’ proposed tax bill, which was introduced in the House of Representatives last week, scraps a key clause that makes graduate tuition more affordable. The new bill could sink many graduate students deeper into debt, or perhaps deter them from pursuing an advanced degree at all. At issue is Section 117(d) of the tax code, which frees students from being taxed on any reductions they may receive from their institution in tuition. [2] Many students, particularly those in the STEM fields, rely on such reductions to make their graduate degrees affordable. In exchange for serving as teaching or research assistants for the university, many graduate students receive waivers that wipe out some or all of the sticker price for their degree. According to the American Council on Education, 145,000 graduate students receive such a discount, which amounts to about $15,000 on average. [3] This covers the nearly $18,000 that the average graduate student pays in tuition. [4] Under the current tax code, they need not worry about counting it as taxable income.
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 By Steven Jacobson
Steven Jacobson is a rising junior at the University of Pennsylvania studying business and history. China, with its famously smog-choked cities, jumps to mind as among the world's top coal consumers. Indeed, even with the steps the government has taken in recent years to cut consumption, nearly half of the world’s coal is burned in China. As China decreases its dependence on coal, however, its eastern neighbor continues to heavily rely on the polluting substance. Japan is the world’s fourth-largest consumer of coal, behind only China, the United States, and India, according to mining-technology.com. Despite agreeing to plans drawn up by the UN and the OECD to scale back coal consumption and investment, Japan has 27 gigawatts of new coal capacity planned and continues to be a leading financier of coal projects around the world. Resource-starved began to rely more on imported fossil fuels after it closed down most of its nuclear reactors following the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi disaster. Before the accident, the reactors had supplied about a fifth of the nations energy, according to McKinsey, a consultancy. Japan had already diversified from oil and gas in the 1970s to keep itself insulated from price fluctuations and geopolitical risks. This caused it to turn, in part, to coal, which is cheaper and less politically fraught. To save money, Japanese utilities have continued to increase their dependence on coal after the reactors switched off in the wake of the world’s worst nuclear accident since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. Thus, Japan recently gave approval to build three more coal fired plants and has forty-two more planned. Japan, unsurprisingly, scored the lowest in environmental group E3G’s May 2016 scorecard that rated G7 members on their efforts to phase out domestic consumption of coal.  By Steven Jacobson
Steven Jacobson is a sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania studying business and history. Japan became the latest country to take the once-unthinkable plunge on January 29, announcing that it would cut its interest rate below zero for the first time. The move is the latest in the world’s third-largest economy’s efforts to banish the stagnation and deflation that has plagued it for a quarter century. The Bank of Japan hopes that the risky decision will prompt savers to start spending and also devalue the currency to make the country’s exports more attractive to trading partners. The reduction to -0.1 percent will also likely boost Japan’s long-sluggish but steadily climbing property market, but could threaten to lay the groundwork for a real estate bubble. Japan’s real estate market, along with its stock market, soared during the country’s asset bubble in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The bubble burst in 1991 as Japan entered its Lost Decade, a period of economic malaise that has often been extended to 2010 by economists. Japan’s house price index, as measured by The Economist, plunged 43 percent from the first quarter of 1991 to the third quarter of 2007, at which point the market began a modest surge before crashing again during the global financial crisis. [1] The market has experienced fits and starts since bottoming out in early 2012 but has grown steadily since early 2013. [2] This three-year increase has been partially driven by an influx of capital from China’s newly wealthy into Japan’s property market. [3]  By Steven Jacobson
Steven Jacobson is a sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania studying business and history. Like their counterparts across Europe, British farmers have felt the pinch of plummeting prices for their produce in the past year. The drop has stemmed from the EU’s removal of milk quotas, weakening demand from China, and changing dietary preferences across the continent. Barring an unlikely boom in the Chinese economy, none of these downward pressures looks likely to abate soon. However, a further one might soon be added. Should Britain vote in favor of Brexit in its June 23rd referendum, its farmers will lose the benefits of both the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and free trade within the EU, which would lessen the aid that British farmers need to stay profitable and impinge their access to their most vital market. The United Kingdom’s dairy farmers have taken a 45 percent pay cut this season. [1] Grain growers and pig producers have likewise seen their incomes drop by nearly quarter and half, respectively. [2] Total farm income in Scotland decreased by 15 percent in 2015. [3] Prices are only likely to continue to fall in the short term, as warmer spring weather will bring further oversupply onto the market.  By Steven Jacobson
Steven Jacobson is a sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania studying business and history. Amidst demonstrations across the country by cabbies, truckers and air traffic controllers last week, French farmers took to the streets to protest plummeting milk and livestock prices that have been falling since early 2014. Farmers blocked roads around La Rochelle with tractors and burning tires, demanding a meeting with French Prime Minister Manuel Valls. Didier Lucas, a pig farmer and chair of the local chapter of the FDSEA, a farmers’ union, told France Info that he felt the protests were “the only way for farmers to get their voices heard,” adding that they felt the government “despised” them. These hard feelings have come despite €600 million in emergency aid that the French government extended in response to similar protests this summer and a further €290 million announced on January 26. [1] [2] The farmers have countered that these measures fail to mitigate the underlying crisis. Milk prices have dropped 17 percent and beef prices 3.5 percent in the past two years. [3] Ten percent of French farms—about 22,000 sites—are on the verge of bankruptcy, with a combined debt of €1 billion. [4] Prices have fallen so low that many farmers produce unprofitably. Jean-Michel Juhel, a pig farmer from France’s Brittany region, loses €30 on each pig he sells. 
By Steven Jacobson
Steven Jacobson is a rising freshman at University of Pennsylvania. Detroit's descent into urban decay has been well documented. Formerly a beacon of the United States' industrial might, “Motown” soon became the capital of the rust belt when US automakers outsourced their factories to cheaper manufacturing hubs. The deterioration culminated in last summer's declaration of Chapter 9 bankruptcy, a nadir reached through declining economic fortunes and years of mismanagement by city officials. It was the largest declaration of bankruptcy by an American municipality. Detroit’s ties to the auto industry have also been largely severed over the past half-century. While American carmakers have had some of their best years after their 2009 bailout, the city to which they were once inextricably linked has never been worse.  By Steven Jacobson
Steven Jacobson is a rising freshman at University of Pennsylvania. What started as a simple idea outlined in a three-page letter to President Obama mutated into over nine hundred pages of regulations. This, of course, was the Volcker Rule, a key component of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 named after the former chairman of the Federal Reserve. The idea behind ‘Volcker’ was simple—to place heavy sanctions on proprietary trading, which is when a bank trades using its own funds for its own gain. More specifically, it tries to define the role of a bank as a middleman and not a trader for its own benefit. In theory, this is a great idea. Since the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999, trades by banks have become more exotic, more harmful, and more dangerous. It wasn’t proprietary trading that directly caused the financial crisis of 2008, but because it could have a role in future meltdowns, steps to curtail excessive proprietary trading are prudent. 
By Steven Jacobson
Steven Jacobson is a rising freshman at University of Pennsylvania. "[It] was the shot heard ’round the world,” said Cornelius Hurley, director of Boston University’s Center for Finance, Law & Policy [1]. And, on June 4th, 2014, that shot was struck down as the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit overturned the November 2011 decision handed down by Southern District of New York Judge Jed S. Rakoff in the case US Securities and Exchange Commission v. Citigroup Global Markets, Inc. It was the rare case in which both sides were satisfied with the outcome; Citigroup escaped with only a minimal fine, and the SEC received more freedom to settle cases on its own terms. Yet, despite its reversal, Rakoff's decision has significantly impacted the manner in which the SEC settles cases with large corporations. The case came about when the SEC filed a lawsuit against Citigroup in October 2011. The suit alleged that in 2007, just before the height of the financial crisis, the bank had bundled negatively-projected assets into a $1 billion financial product called a collateralized debt obligation (CDO) and sold it to investors, representing it as a highly attractive investment predicted to perform well by a third-party adviser. However, the bank secretly short sold the mortgage-backed securities in the CDO. In other words, Citigroup sold something that it had actively betted against to investors. As the bank predicted, the CDO's value plummeted, its investors lost $600 million, and Citigroup's short sale made it $160 million. |
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