83,492
edits
Legal opinion: Difference between revisions
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
no edit summary
Amwelladmin (talk | contribs) No edit summary |
Amwelladmin (talk | contribs) No edit summary |
||
| Line 16: | Line 16: | ||
They will not address matters of fact — so you will find counsel drawing petulant distinctions between whether a “derivative” is a qualifying investment for a given issuer, and whether the contract you have identified, which ''calls'' itself “a derivative”, is documented under ISDA and so forth, is in fact what it says it is — nor matters of ''foreign'' law, in which the legal eagle in question has no mandate to express any opinion. | They will not address matters of fact — so you will find counsel drawing petulant distinctions between whether a “derivative” is a qualifying investment for a given issuer, and whether the contract you have identified, which ''calls'' itself “a derivative”, is documented under ISDA and so forth, is in fact what it says it is — nor matters of ''foreign'' law, in which the legal eagle in question has no mandate to express any opinion. | ||
===The now, and the future== | ===The now, and the future=== | ||
It should be obvious, upon an instant’s reflection, that a legal opinion is a necessarily historical document. From the moment the ink is wet, it addresses the forensic configuration of the world as it found it, as it was in the days and weeks leading up to its execution. It is a snapshot. It cannot help you with what the law might be tomorrow. | It should be obvious, upon an instant’s reflection, that a legal opinion is a necessarily historical document. From the moment the ink is wet, it addresses the forensic configuration of the world as it found it, as it was in the days and weeks leading up to its execution. It is a snapshot. It cannot help you with what the law might be tomorrow. | ||
| Line 22: | Line 22: | ||
The reason is obvious: [[legal eagle]]s are deeply qualified, experienced, sober, sensible, analytical folk: they deal with what they know, what they can see and what has happened. They are not fortune-tellers. But lawmakers are often none of these things. Who knows what madness the estates of sovereign government will rain upon our heads tomorrow? | The reason is obvious: [[legal eagle]]s are deeply qualified, experienced, sober, sensible, analytical folk: they deal with what they know, what they can see and what has happened. They are not fortune-tellers. But lawmakers are often none of these things. Who knows what madness the estates of sovereign government will rain upon our heads tomorrow? | ||
Not is this a fancy concern. The netting opinion — a regulatory staple that propels a hundred-million dollar industry — addresses the capital treatment of your swaps against a counterparty should it, in the future, fail based on the insolvency and resolution laws pertaining to it ''now''. But not only are these laws prone to change in the meantime — obliging you to keep your opinion updated, hence the industry — but they are most likely to change ''at the exact moment a systemically important institution is changing''. Congress enacted TARP. The Swiss confederation rewrote its insolvency laws over the weekend | |||