McKinsey: What Matters: Getting history right

I agree that a Great Depression is much less likely today than in the post World War period. This article does a good job of describing the political drivers of the Great Depression. While today’s recession is not so much politically driven, we still face a wide ranging failure of financial instruments independent of any single economic driver (i.e. Word War). As such, the main question is what adjustments can now be made to still maintain an appropriate balance between interconnectiveness and national autonomy. This could very well result in a new world of predominately national banks (we are already seeing this) and a stronger IMF & World Bank.