A Failure of Capitalism by Richard A. Posner

The distinctiveness of his case is that he is a prominent conservative thinker with the intellectual acuity to argue that the crisis is not to do with the traditional enemy of conservatism, big government, but is a consequence of decisions taken by private firms.

“The best book describing this malaise is Richard Posner’s A Failure of Capitalism. “ has the rare kind of mind that is a pure pleasure to watch in action, regardless of the subject and the argument being made. ” -Jonathan Rauch, New York Times Book Review In other words, it is only a starting point-but an indispensable one. A Failure of Capitalism clears away whole forests of cant but leaves readers at a loss as to where to go from here. By now, his dozens of books just about fill their own wing in the Library of Congress… Compact and bracingly lucid… By the last page, not a single lazy generalization has survived Posner’s merciless scrutiny, not one populist cliché remains standing. But Posner is the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s successor as the country’s most omnivorous and independent-minded public intellectual.

It might also seem odd that a federal appellate judge (and University of Chicago law lecturer) would be among the first out of the gate with a comprehensive book on the financial crisis-if, that is, the judge were any other judge. “It comes as something of a surprise that Posner, a doyen of the market-oriented law-and-economics movement, should deliver a roundhouse punch to the proposition that markets are self-correcting. But as author of some 40 books and as the most frequently cited federal appeals court jurist, he is also one of our most original and clearheaded thinkers. As a longtime University of Chicago professor and father of the free-market-based law-and-economics movement, Judge Posner makes an unlikely critic of capitalism. Judge Richard Posner’s A Failure of Capitalism: The Crisis of ’08 and the Descent into Depression is noteworthy. “Before seeking political asylum in free-market Hong Kong, consider reading a new book that critiques what went wrong with capitalism, written in order to save it. “Richard Posner is a phenomenon… He provides a very competent account of the events which led to the current crisis, with an emphasis on the political and ideological context. “A surprising volume that explains what happened to the banking system and economy in terms the lay reader can easily understand… critique is bracing, all the more so because it comes from a right-leaning thinker normally hostile to the ministrations of government bureaucrats. “Posner has managed to write a compelling book on the crash… The book has numerous worthwhile insights, including a surprisingly Keynesian analysis of the dynamics of depressions. “Lively, readable, and plainspoken… Posner has an extraordinarily sharp mind.

A Failure of Capitalism by Richard A. Posner