Constitutions in Times of Financial Crisis PDF Download

Author: Tom Ginsburg
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9781108729208
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 342

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Book Description
Many constitutions include provisions intended to limit the discretion of governments in economic policy. In times of financial crises, such provisions often come under pressure as a result of calls for exceptional responses to crisis situations. This volume assesses the ability of constitutional orders all over the world to cope with financial crises, and the demands for emergency powers that typically accompany them. Bringing together a variety of perspectives from legal scholars, economists, and political scientists, this volume traces the long-run implications of financial crises for constitutional order. In exploring the theoretical and practical problems raised by the constitutionalization of economic policy during times of severe crisis, this volume showcases an array of constitutional design options and the ways they channel governmental responses to emergency.

Author: Xenophon Contiades
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317161610
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
This book is the first to address the multi-faceted influence of the global financial crisis on the national constitutions of the countries most affected. By tracing the impact of the crisis on formal and informal constitutional change, sovereignty issues, fundamental rights protection, regulatory reforms, jurisprudence, the augmentation of executive power, and changes in the party system it addresses all areas of the current constitutional law dialogue and aims to become a reference book with regard to the interaction between financial crises and constitutions. The book includes contributions from prominent experts on Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Portugal, Spain, the UK, and the USA providing a critical analysis of the effects of the financial crisis on the constitution. The volume’s extensive comparative chapter pins down distinct constitutional reactions towards the financial crisis, building an explanatory theory that accounts for the different ways constitutions responded to the crisis. How and why constitutions formed their reactions in the face of the financial crisis unravels throughout the book.

Author: Richard Albert
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030490009
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 445

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Book Description
This book examines the problem of constitutional change in times of crisis. Divided into five main parts, it both explores and interrogates how public law manages change in periods of extraordinary pressure on the constitution. In Part I, “Emergency, Exception and Normalcy,” the contributors discuss the practices and methods that could be used to help legitimize the use of emergency powers without compromising the constitutional principles that were created during a period of normalcy. In Part II, “Terrorism and Warfare,” the contributors assess how constitutions are interpreted during times of war, focusing on the tension between individual rights and safety. Part III, “Public Health, Financial and Economic Crises,” considers how constitutions change in response to crises that are neither political in the conventional sense nor violent, which also complicates how we evaluate constitutional resilience in times of stress. Part IV, “Constitutionalism for Divided Societies,” then investigates the pressure on constitutions designed to govern diverse, multi-national populations, and how constitutional structures can facilitate stability and balance in these states. Part V, titled “Constitution-Making and Constitutional Change,” highlights how constitutions are transformed or created anew during periods of tension. The book concludes with a rich contextual discussion of the pressing challenges facing constitutions in moments of extreme pressure. Chapter “Public Health Emergencies and Constitutionalism Before COVID-19: Between the National and the International” is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

Author: Ganesh Sitaraman
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 1101973455
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 434

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Book Description
In this original, provocative contribution to the debate over economic inequality, Ganesh Sitaraman argues that a strong and sizable middle class is a prerequisite for America’s constitutional system. For most of Western history, Sitaraman argues, constitutional thinkers assumed economic inequality was inevitable and inescapable—and they designed governments to prevent class divisions from spilling over into class warfare. The American Constitution is different. Compared to Europe and the ancient world, America was a society of almost unprecedented economic equality, and the founding generation saw this equality as essential for the preservation of America’s republic. Over the next two centuries, generations of Americans fought to sustain the economic preconditions for our constitutional system. But today, with economic and political inequality on the rise, Sitaraman says Americans face a choice: Will we accept rising economic inequality and risk oligarchy or will we rebuild the middle class and reclaim our republic? The Crisis of the Middle-Class Constitution is a tour de force of history, philosophy, law, and politics. It makes a compelling case that inequality is more than just a moral or economic problem; it threatens the very core of our constitutional system.

Author: Ulrich Becker
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0198851774
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 401

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Book Description
This book examines the specific reforms in social protection that took place during the European financial crisis, while embedding them in a broader human rights and constitutional law framework of nine European countries. Analytical and comprehensive, this is a helpful tool for all legal professionals that deal with crisis-related reforms.

Author: Bethany McLean
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101551054
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Book Description
"Hell is empty, and all the devils are here." -Shakespeare, The Tempest As soon as the financial crisis erupted, the finger-pointing began. Should the blame fall on Wall Street, Main Street, or Pennsylvania Avenue? On greedy traders, misguided regulators, sleazy subprime companies, cowardly legislators, or clueless home buyers? According to Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera, two of America's most acclaimed business journalists, the real answer is all of the above-and more. Many devils helped bring hell to the economy. And the full story, in all of its complexity and detail, is like the legend of the blind men and the elephant. Almost everyone has missed the big picture. Almost no one has put all the pieces together. All the Devils Are Here goes back several decades to weave the hidden history of the financial crisis in a way no previous book has done. It explores the motivations of everyone from famous CEOs, cabinet secretaries, and politicians to anonymous lenders, borrowers, analysts, and Wall Street traders. It delves into the powerful American mythology of homeownership. And it proves that the crisis ultimately wasn't about finance at all; it was about human nature. Among the devils you'll meet in vivid detail: • Angelo Mozilo, the CEO of Countrywide, who dreamed of spreading homeownership to the masses, only to succumb to the peer pressure-and the outsized profits-of the sleaziest subprime lending. • Roland Arnall, a respected philanthropist and diplomat, who made his fortune building Ameriquest, a subprime lending empire that relied on blatantly deceptive lending practices. • Hank Greenberg, who built AIG into a Rube Goldberg contraption with an undeserved triple-A rating, and who ran it so tightly that he was the only one who knew where all the bodies were buried. • Stan O'Neal of Merrill Lynch, aloof and suspicious, who suffered from "Goldman envy" and drove a proud old firm into the ground by promoting cronies and pushing out his smartest lieutenants. • Lloyd Blankfein, who helped turn Goldman Sachs from a culture that famously put clients first to one that made clients secondary to its own bottom line. • Franklin Raines of Fannie Mae, who (like his predecessors) bullied regulators into submission and let his firm drift away from its original, noble mission. • Brian Clarkson of Moody's, who aggressively pushed to increase his rating agency's market share and stock price, at the cost of its integrity. • Alan Greenspan, the legendary maestro of the Federal Reserve, who ignored the evidence of a growing housing bubble and turned a blind eye to the lending practices that ultimately brought down Wall Street-and inflicted enormous pain on the country. Just as McLean's The Smartest Guys in the Room was hailed as the best Enron book on a crowded shelf, so will All the Devils Are Here be remembered for finally making sense of the meltdown and its consequences.

Author: John A. Allison
Publisher: McGraw Hill Professional
ISBN: 0071806784
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
The #1 Wall Street Journal Bestseller “Required reading. . . . Shows how our economic crisis was a failure, not of the free market, but of government.” —Charles Koch, Chairman and CEO, Koch Industries, Inc. Did Wall Street cause the mess we are in? Should Washington place stronger regulations on the entire financial industry? Can we lower unemployment rates by controlling the free market? The answer is NO. Not only is free market capitalism good for the economy, says industry expert John Allison, it is our only hope for recovery. As the nation’s longest-serving CEO of a top-25 financial institution, Allison has had a unique inside view of the events leading up to the financial crisis. He has seen the direct effect of government incentives on the real estate market. He has seen how government regulations only make matters worse. And now, in this controversial wake-up call of a book, he has given us a solution. The national bestselling The Financial Crisis and the Free Market Cure reveals: Why regulation is bad for the market—and for the world What we can do to promote a healthy free market How we can help end unemployment in America The truth about TARP and the bailouts How Washington can help Wall Street build a better future for everyone With shrewd insight, alarming insider details, and practical advice for today’s leaders, this electrifying analysis is nothing less than a call to arms for a nation on the brink. You’ll learn how government incentives helped blow up the real estate bubble to unsustainable proportions, how financial tools such as derivatives have been wrongly blamed for the crash, and how Congress fails to understand it should not try to control the market—and then completely mismanages it when it tries. In the end, you’ll understand why it’s so important to put “free” back in free market. It’s time for America to accept the truth: the government can’t fix the economy because the government wrecked the economy. This book gives us the tools, the inspiration—and the cure.

Author: Bill White
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 1610393449
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 576

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Book Description
What would Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Lincoln, the Roosevelts, Truman, and Eisenhower have done about today's federal debt crisis? America's Fiscal Constitution tells the remarkable story of fiscal heroes who imposed clear limits on the use of federal debt, limits that for two centuries were part of an unwritten constitution. Those national leaders borrowed only for extraordinary purposes and relied on well-defined budget practices to balance federal spending and revenues. That traditional fiscal constitution collapsed in 2001. Afterward -- for the first time in history -- federal elected officials cut taxes during war, funded permanent new programs entirely with debt, grew dependent on foreign creditors, and claimed that the economy could not thrive without routine federal borrowing. For most of the nation's history, conservatives fought to restrain the growth of government by insisting that new programs be paid for with taxation, while progressives sought to preserve opportunities for people on the way up by balancing budgets. Virtually all mainstream politicians recognized that excessive debt could jeopardize private investment and national independence. With original scholarship and the benefit of experience in finance and public service, Bill White dispels common budget myths and distills practical lessons from the nation's five previous spikes in debt. America's Fiscal Constitution offers an objective and hopeful guide for people trying to make sense of the nation's current, most severe, debt crisis and its impact on their lives and our future.

Author: Eric A. Posner
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022642023X
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
The bailouts during the recent financial crisis enraged the public. They felt unfair—and counterproductive: people who take risks must be allowed to fail. If we reward firms that make irresponsible investments, costing taxpayers billions of dollars, aren’t we encouraging them to continue to act irresponsibly, setting the stage for future crises? And beyond the ethics of it was the question of whether the government even had the authority to bail out failing firms like Bear Stearns and AIG. The answer, according to Eric A. Posner, is no. The federal government freely and frequently violated the law with the bailouts—but it did so in the public interest. An understandable lack of sympathy toward Wall Street has obscured the fact that bailouts have happened throughout economic history and are unavoidable in any modern, market-based economy. And they’re actually good. Contrary to popular belief, the financial system cannot operate properly unless the government stands ready to bail out banks and other firms. During the recent crisis, Posner agues, the law didn’t give federal agencies sufficient power to rescue the financial system. The legal constraints were damaging, but harm was limited because the agencies—with a few exceptions—violated or improvised elaborate evasions of the law. Yet the agencies also abused their power. If illegal actions were what it took to advance the public interest, Posner argues, we ought to change the law, but we need to do so in a way that also prevents agencies from misusing their authority. In the aftermath of the crisis, confusion about what agencies did do, should have done, and were allowed to do, has prevented a clear and realistic assessment and may hamper our response to future crises. Taking up the common objections raised by both right and left, Posner argues that future bailouts will occur. Acknowledging that inevitability, we can and must look ahead and carefully assess our policy options before we need them.

Author: Ben Bernanke
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691158738
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 144

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Book Description
Collects a series of lectures the chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve gave in 2012 about the Federal Reserve and the 2008 financial crisis.