Fischer sums up the discussion and thanks the panelists, who he says staved off a second Great Depression. While applauding all these efforts, he also notes that they were not enough. “I believe there is a clear link between the populism that is seen now and the fact that we were not able to handle this crisis without major economies going through massive difficulties,” he says. “I suspect the very good results of what we did were not enough to keep the Western countries, the leading democracies, on the path they had succeeded in laying out after World War II and continued to pursue until very recently. And I very much doubt that we’d be in this position without the Great Financial Crisis and the Great Recession.”

A session from the 2008 Financial Crisis: A Ten-Year Review conference held on 8-9 November 2018 in New York.