In the US, it began
with the Emergency Economic Stabilisation Act, enacted on 8th October 2008. On
the basis of this, the Troubled Asset Relief Programme was created. In the UK, there were
two significant bank rescue packages in 2008 and 2009, totalling at least £550 billion.
This did not represent a sudden mass conversion to Keynesianism among the
world’s elites, but a panicked attempt to prevent a complete global meltdown.
It is easy to forget in retrospect just how much panic there was about the
coming disaster.