Acknowledgements -- About the authors -- Introduction / Stephen Balch and Benjamin Powell -- Crisis and government power -- Crisis without leviathan? / Robert Higgs -- The rule of law during times of economic crisis / Todd Zywicki -- Fiscal crisis -- Fiscal crisis as a quality of progressivist...

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...

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...