Systemic risk - the possibility that an individual firm's failure will result in broad damages to the economy as a whole - is the epitome of financial crisis. Bailouts of troubled firms have long been the standard response to systemic risk. Yet, bailouts suffer from problems of political...

From 1865 to 1870, a crisis atmosphere hovered around the issue of the massive public debt created during the recently concluded Civil War, leading, in part, to the passage of a Constitutional Amendment ensuring the “validity of the public debt.” However, the Civil War debt crisis was not a...

While the global economy suffered one of its worst declines in modern history, many countries actually increased their defense budgets. The U.S dramatically increased its military spending between 2007 and 2009, and the Obama administration plans large increases to follow. The State of Israel...