From Franklin National Bank in 1974 to Citigroup, AIG, Morgan Stanley and others in 2008, the rescue of banks and financial institutions has played a key role in preventing recessions from developing into full-blown Great Depressions.

Curiously, however, nowhere in The General Theory does John Maynard Keynes, analyst par excellence of recessions, even mention the importance of bank rescues. It is not that the "father of macro-economics" was so busy expounding questions of theory that he did not have time for mere practical matters. He did attempt to analyse the cause of the Great Depression. And this is what he had to say:

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