High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! A Failure of Capitalism (more fully entitled A Failure of Capitalism: The Crisis of `08 and the Descent into Depression) is a major 2009 nonfiction book by Judge Richard Posner, the most-cited American legal scholar in history, among the most respected judges in the United States (as of 1999), and a major proponent of the economic analysis of law. The book is significant in Posner`s criticism of President George W. Bush and his administration`s policies and the response to the fiscal crisis, as well as his movement away from his past well-known advocacy of free-market capitalism. The book has been primarily noted not for his criticism of progressive government policies (which he attacks again for good measure), but rather his critique of laissez-faire capitalism and its ideologues.