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Morgan Ricks

@morganricks1.bsky.social
3.1K followers 179 following 57 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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Morgan Ricks @morganricks1.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
And the accompanying statutes-and-rules volume is here (/End): a.co/d/04rc239K
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Morgan Ricks @morganricks1.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
Feel free to reach out to me if you're an instructor who wants to learn more. The book is available here: a.co/d/0ct2B231
a.co
Enterprise Organizations: Law, Theory, and Practice: Ricks, Morgan: 9798183922509: Amazon.com: Books
Enterprise Organizations: Law, Theory, and Practice [Ricks, Morgan] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Enterprise Organizations: Law, Theory, and Practice
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Morgan Ricks @morganricks1.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
For instructors, PowerPoint slides (including lecture notes with Socratic Q&A) and sample syllabi are available, and the updated teacher's manual will be released in July.
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Morgan Ricks @morganricks1.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
As with the first edition, the book continues to feature:
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Morgan Ricks @morganricks1.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
The second edition includes:
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Morgan Ricks @morganricks1.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
The first edition was the #1 bestseller in corporate law on Amazon during both of the past year's casebook-buying seasons. I'm grateful for the (enthusiastic) feedback and suggestions I have received from adopters.
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Morgan Ricks @morganricks1.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
I'm pleased to announce the publication of the second edition of Enterprise Organizations: Law, Theory, and Practice, a law school casebook on business organizations. As with last year's first edition, I have aimed to make it modern, accessible, practical, and affordable ($85).
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Morgan Ricks @morganricks1.bsky.social · 19/08/2025
My new casebook is the bestseller in corporate law on Amazon -->
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Morgan Ricks @morganricks1.bsky.social · 09/07/2025
Available at fine bookstores everywhere. Actually just Amazon: amazon.com/dp/B0FGQFW18W
amazon.com
Enterprise Organizations: Law, Theory, and Practice
Enterprise Organizations: Law, Theory, and Practice [Ricks, Morgan] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Enterprise Organizations: Law, Theory, and Practice
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Morgan Ricks @morganricks1.bsky.social · 09/07/2025
I have aimed to make it modern, accessible, practical, and affordable. It's priced at $85. A statutes & rules supplement is available for $25. The book includes up-to-date treatment of corporate law, which has changed quite a bit lately.
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Morgan Ricks @morganricks1.bsky.social · 09/07/2025
I published a new business organizations casebook.
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David Dayen @ddayen.bsky.social · 14/04/2025
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!
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Morgan Ricks @morganricks1.bsky.social · 11/04/2025
"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
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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 09/04/2025
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.
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Morgan Ricks @morganricks1.bsky.social · 09/04/2025
Yep. The system is completely indefensible.
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Benjamin Braun @benbraun.social · 09/04/2025
What @jomichell.bsky.social says.
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Benjamin Braun @benbraun.social · 09/04/2025
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 backstoppingboth 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).
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David Dayen @ddayen.bsky.social · 18/03/2025
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:
prospect.org
Private Equity Vultures Descend on Care Facilities for the Disabled
A new report chronicles ten years of consolidation.
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Morgan Ricks @morganricks1.bsky.social · 21/01/2025
Anyway here's how to do it scholarship.law.columbia.edu/faculty_scho...
scholarship.law.columbia.edu
Rebuilding Banking Law: Banks as Public Utilities
Under the New Deal framework for money and payments — which had its roots in the National Bank Act of 1864 — banks in the United States were governed in many respects as public utilities. Charters wer...
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Morgan Ricks @morganricks1.bsky.social · 21/01/2025
. @matt-levine.bsky.social unwittingly making the case for rate regulation in banking.
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Morgan Ricks @morganricks1.bsky.social · 20/01/2025
3/3:
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Morgan Ricks @morganricks1.bsky.social · 20/01/2025
2/3:
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Morgan Ricks @morganricks1.bsky.social · 20/01/2025
Austrian business cycle theory (1/3):
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Morgan Ricks @morganricks1.bsky.social · 20/01/2025
Interesting
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Morgan Ricks @morganricks1.bsky.social · 17/01/2025
This should have been the central organizing question during the post-2008 financial reform process, but it wasn't. No real theory of the case.
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Morgan Ricks @morganricks1.bsky.social · 17/01/2025
.@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."
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Morgan Ricks @morganricks1.bsky.social · 16/01/2025
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...
podcasts.apple.com
The Hidden History of Eurodollars, Part 2: Defending the Dollar System
Podcast Episode · Odd Lots · 01/15/2025 · 43m
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Morgan Ricks @morganricks1.bsky.social · 15/01/2025
OK, I'm already hooked.
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Morgan Ricks @morganricks1.bsky.social · 15/01/2025
Just arrived, excited to read this. @mkonings.bsky.social
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Morgan Ricks @morganricks1.bsky.social · 29/12/2024
My grandfather's 100th birthday!
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Morgan Ricks @morganricks1.bsky.social · 17/12/2024
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)
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Morgan Ricks @morganricks1.bsky.social · 13/12/2024
Up next, @stefeich.bsky.social's contribution.
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Morgan Ricks @morganricks1.bsky.social · 13/12/2024
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."
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Morgan Ricks @morganricks1.bsky.social · 13/12/2024
If we're going to be overhauling bank regulatory structure then may I humbly suggest:
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Morgan Ricks @morganricks1.bsky.social · 13/12/2024
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
t.co
https://youtube.com/shorts/dFK_u8pDV3Q?si=hgvrU0jyVDMhAok0
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Morgan Ricks @morganricks1.bsky.social · 12/12/2024
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.
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Morgan Ricks @morganricks1.bsky.social · 10/12/2024
Great event here last month with Jonathan Kanter.
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Morgan Ricks @morganricks1.bsky.social · 05/12/2024
Link to the story: www.nytimes.com/2024/11/30/b...
nytimes.com
As Cash Fades, Small Retailers Embrace Efforts to Rein In Swipe Fees
Business owners say card transaction fees are a growing monthly expense, one often passed to consumers. They’re cheering efforts to lower them.
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Morgan Ricks @morganricks1.bsky.social · 05/12/2024
The case for imposing rate regulation on credit card networks / swipe fees is very strong.
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Morgan Ricks @morganricks1.bsky.social · 05/12/2024
Good piece though: www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...
washingtonpost.com
Opinion | Democrats don’t have a working-class problem. America does.
Extreme income inequality and unchecked corporate power gave rise to FDR’s New Deal — Democrats should be no less ambitious now.
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Morgan Ricks @morganricks1.bsky.social · 05/12/2024
Actually it began in earnest in the Carter Administration, for what it's worth.
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Morgan Ricks @morganricks1.bsky.social · 03/12/2024
Also I should have included unusually high leverage as an additional factor distinguishing PE from the typical private/family ownership model.
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Morgan Ricks @morganricks1.bsky.social · 03/12/2024
Fair enough. But this isn't just about illegal conduct, it's also about an extreme focus on shareholder wealth maximization to the exclusion of other considerations. I think that's what the nursing home and hospital studies suggest.
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Morgan Ricks @morganricks1.bsky.social · 02/12/2024
The combination of extreme financial sophistication and temporary ownership horizon distinguishes private equity from most other concentrated ownership contexts.
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Ganesh Sitaraman @ganeshsitaraman.bsky.social · 28/11/2024
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...
nytimes.com
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.
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Morgan Ricks @morganricks1.bsky.social · 28/11/2024
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.
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Morgan Ricks @morganricks1.bsky.social · 28/11/2024
Onto something: www.nytimes.com/2024/11/28/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | Meet Wolfgang Streeck, the Maverick German Thinker Explaining Our World
He has a convincing theory of what has gone wrong with globalization.
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ryan cooper @ryanlcooper.com · 27/11/2024
good piece on how all the big platforms are suppressing hyperlinks, of course because they want to keep people corralled for maximum profit www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...
washingtonpost.com
Analysis | Musk admits X throttles links as ‘news influencers’ take over
Hard times for the humble hyperlink and those who depend on it.
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Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 26/11/2024
* EXCLUSIVE -- WELLS FARGO ASSET CAP LIKELY TO BE LIFTED NEXT YEAR, SOURCES SAY @reuters $WFC
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