Until the recent crisis, economists were talking up the “great moderation”: economic fluctuations were supposedly becoming milder, and many concluded that economic stabilization policy had reached new heights of effectiveness. As of 2005, just before the onset of the financial crisis, the Harvard econometricians James Stock (now a member of President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers) and Mark Watson concluded that the advanced economies had become both less volatile and less correlated with each other over the course of the preceding 40 years.
在最近的危机之前，经济学家一直在大谈“大稳健”（great moderation）：经济波动将趋缓，许多人认为经济稳定政策效果达到了新的高度。2005年，金融危机爆发前夕，哈佛计量经济学家詹姆斯·斯托克（James Stock，现为奥巴马总统经济顾问委员会成员）和马克·沃森（Mark Watson）指出，在此前的40年中，发达经济体的波动变得更低，相互间的相关性也变得更小。