When Council of Economics Advisers chair Christina Romer has studied the Great Depression in her work as a professor at UC-Berkeley.  Yesterday, she drew on that past experience in a speech at the Brookings Institution, in which she talked about lessons that she and others working with and in the Obama Administration should take from the Great Depression, and from the Roosevelt Administration's response.  While she took care to point out that the economic crises of today, as "severe" as they are, do not reach the "truly horrific conditions the previous generation of Americans endured and eventually  triumphed over,"  her speech centered on the parrallels that do exist between then and now:

This similarity of causes between the Depression and today's recession means that President Obama begins his presidency and his drive for recovery with many of the same challenges that Franklin Roosevelt faced in 1933. Our consumers and businesses are in no mood to spend or invest; our financial institutions are severely strained and hesitant to lend; short-term interest rates are effectively zero, leaving little room for conventional monetary policy; and world demand provides little hope for lifting the economy. Yet, the United States did recover from the Great Depression.

Romer then laid out 6 lessons from the Great Depression that apply to today:

1) A small fiscal expansion has only small effects.

2) Monetary expansion can help to heal an economy even when interest rates are near zero.

3) Beware of cutting back on stimulus too soon.

4) Financial recovery and real recovery go together.

5) Worldwide expansionary policy shares the burdens and the benefits of recovery.

6) The final lesson: A key feature of the Great Depression is that it did eventually end.

For details on the above lessons, read Romer's speech here.