● The Courage to Act: A Memoir of a Crisis and Its Aftermath
By Ben S. Bernanke
Review via The New York Times (Michael Kinsley)
Yes, the book is a bit of a slog, but it is undoubtedly the best account we will ever have of how government and financial institutions dealt with what has come to be known as the Great Recession. It’s an odd term, isn’t it? It invokes comparisons to the Great Depression and simultaneously suggests that: “Shucks, it wasn’t all that great. Wasn’t a depression or anything.” But Bernanke is persuasive in arguing that (a) it was pretty damned great (i.e., terrible) and (b) he and his colleagues at the Fed deserve credit for the fact that it wasn’t a heck of a lot greater.
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