Paul Krugman: A Return of That ’70s Show?

Which decade is it, anyway?

Not long ago it seemed as if everyone watching the carnage in financial markets was drawing scary parallels with the 1930s.

This time, however, Ben Bernanke and his colleagues at the Federal Reserve did what their predecessors failed to do during the banking crisis of 1930-31: they acted forcefully to avert a collapse of the financial system. And their efforts seem, provisionally, to have worked. While things are far from normal in the financial markets, over the last few months the sense of panic has been gradually subsiding.