In an interview with Vanderbilt Law magazine, Nashville partner Gary Brown discusses the 2008 financial crisis. A professor of the Practice of Law at the law school, he participated in investigations of the financial collapse at the time.

Brown still laughs about being facetiously branded a “bad Republican” in a 2010 Wall Street Journal article for seeking bipartisan solutions to financial regulation while working as a consultant for the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Brown assisted the panel, headed by Sen. Carl Levin (D–Mich.), as members examined the role of mortgage-backed securities in the market collapse. “What surprised and concerned me most was the short period of time between the 2002 financial meltdown related to WorldCom and Enron, which resulted in Sarbanes-Oxley, and the 2008 crisis,” he said.

Brown had also served as special counsel to the Senate committee that investigated the causes of the Enron debacle. “The Senate investigated six groups with oversight responsibility for Enron,” he recalled. “Only two received no additional regulation under Sarbanes-Oxley: investment banks and credit rating agencies.”

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