David Zaring on Skinny Charters and the Future of Banking

 David Zaring is legal scholar and professor at the University of Pennsylvania. In David's first appearance on the show, he discusses the role the Great Financial Crisis played in FinReg scholarship, how he came up with the term "skinny" in the new skinny Fed master accounts, the tumultuous road of Custodia vs. the Fed, a reimagined way to look at federal bank charters, whether commerce and banking are actually still separate, Fed independence and how it functions in a more corporatist model, and much more.

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Recorded on April 24th, 2026

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Timestamps

00:00:00 - Intro

00:02:04 - The Great Financial Crisis and FinReg Scholarship

00:04:58 - David's Experience with Fintech Charter Litigation

00:17:18 - Skinny Charters

00:37:16 - How to Govern the Fed

00:55:10 - Outro