Paul Krugman.
The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008.
New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., December 2008.
Book information: Publisher; Google Books; Amazon.com; book webpage at author's website; Wikipedia on the book.
What Krugman refers to by a "return of depression economics" is that since the 1980s financial crises have become relatively frequent, crises which initiate periods of economic recession and depression; this is in contrast to the period 1940s-1960s when few abrupt financial crises occurred.
(Update 15 Jan 2013: A theme that I overlooked while reading the book but which Krugman makes clear in Part Two of his LSE lecture series (slides 10-14) when comparing the recessions of 1981-82, 1991, and 2001 is how the period of depressed employment has gotten longer and longer with each successive recession (which trend has continued with the 2007-2008 recession, though it was too soon to observe this when Krugman gave his talk in 2009), and how that how that phenomena of lengthening unemployment is associated with interest rates.)
During the 1970s financial crises were viewed as external shocks rather than as endemic or endogenous to the financial system (1973 oil price shock, 1979 oil price shock) despite the presence of gradual adverse financial phenomena (inflation, prolonged stock market decline).
During the 1980s financial crises could still be viewed as the result of aberant phenomena: Mexico (1982); La Década Perdida; Latin American debt crisis; U.S. Savings and Loan crisis.
This book is revised from a book originally published in 1999 after the 1997 Asian financial crisis, the most notable event during a decade that also saw Japan's Lost Decade following the collapse of its late 1980s asset price bubble, and financial crisis in Sweden (1992), Mexico (1994), Russia (1998), and the collapse of Long-Term Capital Management (1998). The 1990s period of financial crises ended with financial crisis in Argentina (1999-2002) and the collapse of the Dot-com bubble.
The 2000s saw the collapse of a U.S. housing bubble (notable real estate bubbles also occurred in Spain, U.K., Ireland, and elsewhere) which precipitated the financial crisis of 2007-2008 which in turn has had prolonged and unexpected world-wide effects. Krugman's book provides a survey of this economic history with a few chapters at the end written in late 2008 on the most recent crisis. It is hard to generalize on the causes of these crises since they each have their own particular contexts and characteristics. However, in addition to the usual speculative excesses of careless lending and excessive debt associated with asset price bubbles, we can observe that many of the recent crises were associated with some kind of derangement of regulation and supervision at the national or international level: over-regulation (fixed exchange rates associated with currency crises); de-regulation (S&L crisis); and the lightly- or never-regulated (the sub-prime mortgage industry; the shadow banking system).
Video:
Paul Krugman, "The Return of Depression Economics Part 1: The sum of all fears," London School of Economics, 08 June 2009.
Slides are available at the event webpage for this talk here.
Paul Krugman, "The Return of Depression Economics Part 2: The eschatology of lost decades," London School of Economics, 09 June 2009.
Slides are available at the event webpage for this talk here.
Paul Krugman, "The Return of Depression Economics Part 3: The night they reread Minsky," London School of Economics, 10 June 2009.
Slides are available at the event webpage for this talk here.
Paul Krugman, "The Return of Depression Economics?" Princeton University, 18 April 2009.
Watch it on YouTube.
Paul Krugman, "The Return of Depression Economics," Princeton University, 21 October 2009.
Watch it on YouTube.
"New Dynamics of Globalization," National Association for Business Economics, Washington DC, C-SPAN, 06 October 2008.
Speakers: Edmund Phelps; Paul Krugman.
Paul Krugman, "Economic Crisis," Luncheon Speech, National Press Club, C-SPAN, 19 December 2008.
"U.S. Economy," Washington Journal, C-SPAN, 15 February 2009.
Paul Krugman interview and view call-in.
"Economic Crisis and How to Deal with It," PEN World Voices Festival, C-SPAN, 30 April 2009.
Moderator: Jeff Madrick. Panelists: Bill Bradley; Niall Ferguson; Paul Krugman; Nouriel Roubini; George Soros; Robin Wells.
Paul Krugman information:
Paul Krugman, Wikipedia.
Paul Krugman, www.KrugmanOnline.com, a website created by his publisher.
Paul Krugman, The New York Times.
The Conscience of a Liberal, Paul Krugman, his blog at The New York Times.
Paul R. Krugman, Princeton University.
Paul Krugman, "Incidents from my career" (an intellectual autobiography), no date.