Regulatory Cliff Effects and Systemic Risk

Systemic Risk: Changing the Regulatory Perspective

The article puts forward the view that the regulatory perspective on systemic risk should be changed drastically. The sub-prime crisis has indeed revealed many loopholes in the supervisory/regulatory framework for banks—in particular, the inability to deal with the too-big-to-fail syndrome and also the lack of resiliency of interbank and money markets. To a large extent, the contagion phenomena...

Cliff hangers

The peregrine falcon holds a special place in the minds of environmentalists and conservation biologists. The crash in its population throughout the 1950s and 60s was linked to the rapidly increasing use of agricultural organochlorine pesticides which led to a thinning of the birds’ eggshells and dramatic breeding failure. Since the widespread ban on the use of these chemicals, populations have...

Cliff hanger

The asparagus season has recently ended for northern hemisphere crops. Tradition has it that, at the summer solstice, growers stop cutting spears to allow the plant to grow and produce enough resources to generate spears for the next spring’s crop. The plant is becoming increasingly fashionable and production is increasing to meet demand. But the cultivated asparagus has a wild relative that is...

The regulatory cliff edge between contraception and abortion: the legal and moral significance of implantation

In regulating the voluntary interruption of pregnancy, English law has accorded particular significance to two biological events. First, 'viability', the moment when a fetus is said to acquire the capacity for independent life, plays an important role in grounding restrictions on access to legal abortion later in pregnancy. Second, equally significantly but far less frequently discussed, 'impla...

CLiFF Notes