Book excerpt: Confronted with the major crisis that struck the world economy at the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, analysts, researches, and political leaders studied past experiences to avoid repeating errors of diagnosis, recommendation, or action. The disatrous experience of the Great Depression of the 1930's, which caused and social misery, messive unemployment, protectionism forms of nationalism, and led to a world war whose devastating effects were pushed to an extreme, remained in mind.