Author Archive | Eric Posner

It didn

A number of people have already accused Israel of breaches of international law, and even war crimes, going so far as to argue that an international tribunal should be established and assigned the task of trying suspected war criminals. If I had a dime for every imagined war crimes tribunal that never came to fruition

Click here for the source and further explanation. For Justice Roberts’ view, see here.

Tyler Cowen has a charactestically fine piece in yesterday

Some people are offended if you say

This term cropped up on in a recent NYT article which blames the financial crisis on Bush administration policies, including its advocacy of an ownership society. The article goes too far: the financial crisis is the result of bipartisan regulatory decisions going back decades and the Fed

In my view, what we are seeing today is the unwinding of multiple bubbles, starting with the stock market bubble in the late 90s, the housing bubble of the mid-2000s, and the most recent mini-bubble in commodities. These bubbles all have a common source, which was lax monetary policy coming out of central banks. These […]

Ilya says no; others say yes. The question is not a good one, however, because libertarianism, in any meaningful philosophical sense, hasn

1. Bankruptcy judge functions go to the executive. A standard feature of crisis governance, executive power rises at the expense of other branches of government

If the Senate has nixed the auto bailout bill, how can Treasury announce that it will nonetheless go ahead and bail out the automakers? The answer turns on an interpretation of TARP, which authorizes the government to purchase securities in

The recent upsurge of concern over global warming and the financial crisis has reinvigorated advocates of world government, who claim that it is the only way to solve global problems that cross state boundaries. Left to themselves, individual states might “free ride” on the efforts of others, and the issue in question might remain unaddressed. […]

Economists believe that the Smoot-Hawley tariff law of 1930 exacerbated the Great Depression. It provoked retaliation by other countries and reduction of international trade at precisely the wrong time

You probably did not notice that the auto bailout bill has such a provision. It does; it is the very provision to which Eugene drew our attention yesterday: (g) WITHDRAWAL FROM CERTAIN ACTIONS.

He says no: I never killed or injured anyone…. In 1970, I co-founded the Weather Underground, an organization that was created after an accidental explosion that claimed the lives of three of our comrades in Greenwich Village. The Weather Underground went on to take responsibility for placing several small bombs in empty offices