Shortly after Ben Bernanke stepped into the role of Fed Chairman, the Great Panic commenced. Bernanke, a relative newcomer to Washington, spent the bulk of his career in academia dissecting the Great Depression and, according to David Wessel’s account, In Fed We Trust (Crown Business, $26.99), the one thing Bernanke knew as a Depression scholar was that he would not allow history to repeat itself. Wessel gives a thorough retelling of the early days of the Great Panic as the Bernanke triumvirate—with Timothy Geithner and Henry Paulson—desperately try to keep ahead of the collapsing markets in their attempt to prevent the global meltdown from spiraling into a full-blown economic depression. Wessel’s account isn’t Indiana Jones but it is a chilling reminder of how close we came to complete economic collapse.
