ABSTRACT
The global financial crisis of 2008 brought the world to the brink of economic catastrophe. In a March 2009 speech at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington D.C., United States Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke asserted, “The world is suffering through the worst financial crisis since the 1930s, a crisis that has precipitated a sharp downturn in the global economy.” Bernanke was notionally responsible for crafting the United States’ monetary policy response to the global financial crisis, and his unique insight is telling. In fact, his acute understanding of the Great Depression, overlaid with the contemporary response to the global financial crisis, renders him perhaps the single greatest authority on the subject. In the same speech, Bernanke stated, “[The crisis’] fundamental causes remain in dispute,” but said, “[i]n my view, however, it is impossible to understand this crisis without reference to the global imbalances in trade and capital flows that began in the latter half of the 1990s.”1
