And even if there are similarities, is there a danger of neglecting important differences that, if understood and learnt from, would help improve the recovery process that is still under way and help avoid an early recurrence?
In some important respects, it is the similarities between the two episodes that jump out: spending patterns that exceeded the economy’s ability to generate output that could pay for what was spent; policy errors based on exaggerated reliance on bowdlerised versions of simplistic paradigms (a naïve caricature of Keynesianism in the first instance, a credulous adoption of intensive financialisation in the second); an almost reckless disregard for the fiscal consequences of policy decisions.