Over at the New Rambler Review (which I'm really enjoying), I've got a review of Philip Wallach's legal history of the financial crisis.  The kick-off offers a riff on the crisis:

The government’s response to the financial crisis was an example of messy policymaking that occasioned a happy ending, although not everyone sees it that way. Some are unsure about the ending – they have decried the very modest meting out of punishment that followed the recovery of the economy. Others are unsure that the policymaking was messy – they are likely to think of the government’s response to the financial crisis as an inevitable manifestation of executive preeminence as the doer of last resort, institutionally capable of acting when courts and legislatures cannot.

But I will take a stable economy over a few prison sentences, especially when it is possible that you can’t have both at the same time. And you won’t convince me that the things government officials did during the crisis – last minute deals, concluded late at night and paired with creative reimaginings of underused statutes and regular resorts to Congress for more legislation – was the mark of the smooth progress of an imperial presidency.

Go over there and read the whole thing!

Administrative Law, Finance, Financial Crisis, Financial Institutions | Bookmark