Lessons from The Great Depression

What are top economists saying about what lessons should have been learned from The Great Depression and what we should and should not do now? Mark Thoma has collected and republished diverse views in a forum going on right now here. Not surprisingly, one focus of attention is what Christina Romer (to be head of Obama's Council of Economic Advisors) may think about certain policy options. Something I had not heard before is that in the late 1930s there was a large influx of foreign money into the US as Europeans sought safe investments, and that this was an important stimulus to the US economy before 1942.