The problem is not that governments are unsure about what to do. The standard checklist of what to do in a financial crisis to avoid a deep and prolonged depression has been gradually worked out over two centuries: by Bank of England Governor Cornelius Buller in 1825; by the Victorian-era editor of The Economist , Walter Bagehot; and by the economists Irving Fisher, John Maynard Keynes, Milton Friedman, among many others.