former Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke examines why many forecasters failed to anticipate the severity of the Great Recession and what really drove the economy into such a tailspin.
Bernanke’s research, which is rooted in quantitative analysis of how the 2007-2009 financial crisis affected the economy, argues that the housing bust, while significantly damaging, can’t on its own explain why the Great Recession was so bad. To understand fully the depth and timing of the economic downturn, we should look instead to the subsequent financial panic—including the run on short-term wholesale funding for financial institutions and the subsequent fire sales of credit-related assets—that sharply constrained the supply of credit.
If Bernanke’s findings are correct, then policymakers were right to implement some of the most controversial policies of the financial crisis, including efforts to rescue the big banks and re-start credit markets. By bringing the panic under control relatively quickly, those policies prevented a still deeper and more protracted recession.
