It is impossible to find parallels for the extent of this week's banking crisis since the Great Depression. But the implosions of the weekend do not even look like the American experience of depression, in which the country was swept by wave after wave of panic that wreaked widespread havoc by hitting small institutions exposed to local market conditions. Today's crisis, by contrast, is right at the heart of the financial system, and threatens a complex pattern of credit guarantees and insurance backstops that were touted as making the financial system failsafe.
在自經濟大蕭條(Great Depression)以來的這段時期，想找到能與本週銀行業相提並論的危機是不可能的。不過，上週末爆發的事件看上去甚至不同於美國經歷過的經濟蕭條。在那些蕭條中，一波又一波的恐慌席捲整個國家，衝擊受到本地市場環境影響的小型機構，從而造成大範圍的混亂。相反，今天的危機正處於金融體系的核心，並且威脅到由信貸擔保和保險最後擔保(Insurance Backstop)組成的複雜格局，該格局號稱可以使金融體系自動排除險情。