Morgan Ricks
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morganricks1.bsky.social
Morgan Ricks
@morganricks1.bsky.social
3K followers 180 following 50 posts
Vanderbilt law professor. Formerly U.S. Treasury (crisis team), Citadel (merger arbitrage), Merrill Lynch (financial institutions investment banking), Wachtell (M&A).
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morganricks1.bsky.social
My new casebook is the bestseller in corporate law on Amazon -->
August 19, 2025 at 3:44 PM
morganricks1.bsky.social
I published a new business organizations casebook.
July 9, 2025 at 7:14 PM
Reposted by Morgan Ricks
ddayen.bsky.social
There is no need to be maximalist anti-tariff, which can be a useful tool to allow infant industries to thrive. That's especially true when praising an industrial policy that used tariffs!
April 14, 2025 at 1:10 PM
morganricks1.bsky.social
"We spent the last 30 years coming to a new understanding as a country about what we need to do. And sometimes that means tariffs." -- Buttigieg
April 11, 2025 at 11:51 AM
Reposted by Morgan Ricks
jamellebouie.net
me this morning www.nytimes.com/2025/04/09/o...
There is a hypothetical president with a hypothetically similar agenda who could answer these questions. This actual president cannot. He did not reason himself into his preoccupation with tariffs and can neither reason nor speak coherently about them. There is no grand plan or strategic vision, no matter what his advisers claim — only the impulsive actions of a mad king, untethered from any responsibility to the nation or its people. For as much as the president’s apologists would like us to believe otherwise, Trump’s tariffs are not a policy as we traditionally understand it. What they are is an instantiation of his psyche: a concrete expression of his zero-sum worldview. The fundamental truth of Donald Trump is that he apparently cannot conceive of any relationship between individuals, peoples or states as anything other than a status game, a competition for dominance. His long history of scams, hostile litigation — not to mention his frequent refusal to pay contractors, lawyers, brokers and other people who were working for him — is evidence enough of the reality that a deal with Trump is less an agreement between equals than an opportunity for Trump to abuse and exploit the other party for his own benefit. For Trump, there is no such thing as a mutually beneficial relationship or a positive-sum outcome. In every interaction, no matter how trivial or insignificant, someone has to win and someone has to lose. And Trump, as we all know, is a winner.
April 9, 2025 at 1:16 PM
Reposted by Morgan Ricks
benbraun.bsky.social
What @jomichell.bsky.social says.
jomichell.bsky.social Jo Michell @jomichell.bsky.social · Apr 9
Also: the fact that the trigger is entirely policy-driven doesn’t mean that having a financial system built around huge leveraged systemically important financial institutions, largely outside of regulatory oversight and doing a lot of stuff that is not obviously socially useful, is sensible.
April 9, 2025 at 9:49 AM
Reposted by Morgan Ricks
benbraun.bsky.social
Time really is a circle. Leveraged hedge funds make billions; bets blow up; dash for cash; the Fed steps in; repeat. Here's what I wrote four years ago about central banks as guarantors of this unjust and inefficient (some might say: stupid) system.
benjaminbraun.org/assets/pubs/...
Consider the turmoil, in late 2019, in the US repo market, wherefinancial firms borrow and lend cash against securities, pledged as col-lateral. A major cause of this turmoil was liquidity demand from hedgeand private equity funds. These funds are typically levered — in ordermaximize their returns, they borrow large sums in the shadow bankingsystem, often pledging the assets they acquire as collateral. In order tostabilize the repo market, the Federal Reserve increased its balance sheetby 10 percent, or USD 400 billion, between September 2019 and Janu-ary 2020. The question “What is the social value of levered hedge fundsand private equity buyouts?” was not asked.The same pattern recurred — on a much larger scale — in the wakeof the COVID outbreak in early 2020. In order to prevent the economicshock caused by the pandemic from leading to another systemic financialcrisis, central banks across the world chose to backstop not only banksbut also the broader shadow banking system. The most audacious meas-ures — in both size and scope — have been implemented by the Fed-eral Reserve. By purchasing so-called “junk bonds” — bonds issued bycorporate debtors with lower credit ratings — the Federal Reserve againbackstopped private equity funds, which routinely transfer debt to theirbuyout targets, forcing the latter to issue junk bonds. By backstopping both the money market and the (high-risk) capital market, the FederalReserve effectively protects both the liability side and the asset side oflevered investors’ balance sheets.In other words, the Federal Reserve ensures that the arsenal of themost predatory actors in the financial system is fully stocked and readyto be deployed — for further financializing currently distressed sectorsof the economy, such as elderly care. Shareholders understand — thestock price of firms such as Blackstone and Apollo bounced back spec-tacularly after the Federal Reserve announced its measures. Unless gov-ernments take swift and decisive action to curb the ability of hedge andprivate equity funds to gobble up assets, COVID will become a majormilestone in the long history of central bank-facilitated financialization.The upshot is that while central bank planning already exists, it iscurrently geared toward propping up a system in which the planning ofinvestment is in private hands. This system is both unfair and inefficient.Central banks have become the lenders of last resort for a manifestly un-sustainable status quo (Fontan, Claveau, and Dietsch 2016; Jacobs andKing 2016; Streeck 2014).
April 9, 2025 at 8:11 AM
Reposted by Morgan Ricks
ddayen.bsky.social
You may see care for the intellectually and developmentally disabled as a moral imperative. Private equity has been consolidating the field for the last decade because, well, because of money. Dan Boguslaw reports on a new study of PE's lucrative rollup, and the consequences:
Private Equity Vultures Descend on Care Facilities for the Disabled
A new report chronicles ten years of consolidation.
prospect.org
March 18, 2025 at 2:15 PM
morganricks1.bsky.social
. @matt-levine.bsky.social unwittingly making the case for rate regulation in banking.
January 21, 2025 at 1:53 PM
morganricks1.bsky.social
Interesting
January 20, 2025 at 3:47 PM
morganricks1.bsky.social
.@matt-levine.bsky.social on Eurodollars.

The most fundamental question in all of finance is -- and for hundreds of years has been -- "who gets to issue money [dollars in this case] and subject to what constraints."
January 17, 2025 at 4:52 PM
morganricks1.bsky.social
I haven't listened to part 3 yet but you absolutely cannot miss parts 1 and 2 of this podcast. Incredible stuff.
podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t...
The Hidden History of Eurodollars, Part 2: Defending the Dollar System
Podcast Episode · Odd Lots · 01/15/2025 · 43m
podcasts.apple.com
January 16, 2025 at 6:16 PM
morganricks1.bsky.social
Just arrived, excited to read this. @mkonings.bsky.social
January 15, 2025 at 7:44 PM
morganricks1.bsky.social
My grandfather's 100th birthday!
December 29, 2024 at 12:04 AM
morganricks1.bsky.social
Musk's apparent flouting of Exchange Act § 13(d) in 2022 without any legal repercussions tells you a lot about elite impunity in America.

(clip from recent @matt-levine.bsky.social newsletter)
December 17, 2024 at 6:55 PM
morganricks1.bsky.social
Konings's introductory essay here is deep and has given me a lot to think about. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in finance and economic policy. Parts of it relate to what Lev Menand and I have called "the monetary-financial complex."
December 13, 2024 at 11:25 PM
morganricks1.bsky.social
If we're going to be overhauling bank regulatory structure then may I humbly suggest:
December 13, 2024 at 7:57 PM
morganricks1.bsky.social
It's amazing that the mainstream retail payment system is controlled by a duopoly, basically free from meaningful economic regulation.

It would be nice to see some leadership from the Fed in this area.

t.co/2qGESBLwBy
https://youtube.com/shorts/dFK_u8pDV3Q?si=hgvrU0jyVDMhAok0
t.co
December 13, 2024 at 5:22 PM
morganricks1.bsky.social
I'm looking for readings re: whether changes in US equity market structure from ~1997 to 2005 (order handling rules, regulation ATS, regulation NMS, etc.) contributed to the near-demise of the IPO market -- would be very grateful for any suggestions.
December 12, 2024 at 8:04 PM
morganricks1.bsky.social
Great event here last month with Jonathan Kanter.
December 10, 2024 at 4:33 PM
morganricks1.bsky.social
The case for imposing rate regulation on credit card networks / swipe fees is very strong.
December 5, 2024 at 7:25 PM
morganricks1.bsky.social
Actually it began in earnest in the Carter Administration, for what it's worth.
December 5, 2024 at 7:13 PM
Reposted by Morgan Ricks
ganeshsitaraman.bsky.social
Frequent flyer programs have changed — and people are rightly wondering if they are a good deal - but this piece doesn’t spend much time on the lack of transparency and unfair practices that are also in these programs. www.nytimes.com/2024/11/28/b...
Are Airline Loyalty Programs Worth It?
Some travelers, frustrated with changing airline rewards programs, have stopped chasing status and adopted different strategies when booking flights and using credit cards.
www.nytimes.com
November 28, 2024 at 1:51 PM
morganricks1.bsky.social
There's an important question about whether the combination of limited liability and concentrated ownership / high-powered incentives is good for society. It puts a lot of pressure on the guardrails.

See e.g. the studies on effects of private equity ownership of nursing homes and hospitals.
November 28, 2024 at 12:55 PM