Jonathan Chait compares the US recession to other financial crises:
I think that comparison has flaws of its own. But surely it tells us something — it tells us that Obama’s boast that we avoided total disaster is not meaningless. The steps the administration and the Federal Reserve undertook in face of the recession — quantitative easing, some degree of fiscal stimulus, banking bailouts, reorganizing the auto industry rather than letting it collapse in the face of frozen credit markets — prevented the kinds of total disaster that are the norm in the face of this kind of crisis.
