Using data from interviews with affected residents and community leaders in New Orleans after Katrina, this article explores the effectiveness of private disaster recovery efforts and whether or not there are reasons to believe that a decentralized rather than a centralized response to disasters could be more effective.

There has been a rising academic debate on the sustainability of deficit spending and accumulated debt in governments across the globe. This correlates with a growing concern that excessive government deficits and accumulated debt will lead to unstable financial environments and a devalued quality of life for future generations. Varying economies with varying fiscal behavior have increased incentives to work toward more responsible fiscal behavior through reining in deficit spending and debt accumulation. We seek to understand the process these economies undertook, the procedures they used, and the resulting effectiveness of those procedures on achieving fiscal stability.

In May 2009, the federal government forced South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford to take his state's share of federal stimulus funds and spend the money on new programs rather than on paying down debt. Many free-market advocates claimed this alarming move threatened the fiscal federalism, but fiscal federalism has been threatened for decades. The growth of the federal government and its ever-increasing number of grants and subsidies to state governments have eroded fiscal federalism and competition among states substantially.

The recent financial crisis has prompted policy makers to reassess the guidelines and structures of corporate governance and shareholder rights. The authors discuss how new shareholder powers may unintentionally affect the efficiency of corporations.

In an effort to correct problems that led to the current housing and mortgage crisis, policy makers have proposed a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA) that would have the authority to regulate the terms of credit products offered to consumers. The agency's premise is based on the assumption that subprime mortgages are faulty products in need of a recall, similar to faulty consumer products like toasters. This foundation is a simplistic, one-sided view of a dynamic situation.