Believing in the tooth fairy

I just finished The Return of Depression Economics by Paul Krugman. The first edition of the book was written in the 1990's and published in 1999. It was updated in the midst of the current crisis. It is very readable and very instructive. Mr. Krugman reviews the previous crises back to the Depression in an attempt to understand and provide analysis and recommendations for the present. He makes the conclusion that this crisis is like everything we've seen before, all at once. Trading one bubble for another and ignoring the risk of acting outside of the regulated banking system, "the shadow banking system," only led to the failure that had been seen many times before in Asia, Japan, South America, and here.