Nearly every major bout of financial instability has called for some degree of monetary easing - most often only temporarily until the threat of the low-probability but high-cost economic disruption has passed. Other tools have been used occasionally, and an assessment of their costs and benefits has depended on the nature of the crisis.
Moral suasion was an element in dealing with the panicky private-sector actions associated with the sharp and apparently self-feeding market price breaks of 1987 and 1998. Lending through the discount window helped to promote an orderly unwinding of distressed institutions in the period of prolonged and widespread problems among important intermediaries in the late 1980s and early 1990s.