The return of depression economics and the crisis of 20081999

Our newest Nobel Prize-winning economist shows how today's crisis parallels the events that caused the Great Depression and explains what it will take to avoid catastrophe.

In his 1999 book, Nobel Prize-winning economist Krugman surveyed the economic crises that had swept across Asia and Latin America, and pointed out that they were a warning: like antibiotic-resistant diseases, the economic maladies that caused the Great Depression were making a comeback. In the years that followed, as Wall Street boomed and wheeler-dealers made vast profits, the crises of the 1990s faded from memory. But when the great housing bubble of the mid-2000s burst, the U.S. financial system proved as vulnerable as those of developing countries. In this greatly updated edition, Krugman shows how the failure of...