This view made it perfectly possible for mainstream economists in the 2000s to talk about "the elimination of the business cycle" while living in a period of "Great Moderation," where the volatility of the past had been tamed by good central bank policies. And then, of course, the world blew up, right in the middle of this supposed Great Moderation, just as the Austrians would have predicted. And while everyone seemed to know that the explosion had something to do with asset bubbles and banks, at the start of the crisis few had a convincing story about how the banks had caused it. This is where the Austrians came back in. Their writings from the 1930s seemed to describe the 2008 financial crisis perfectly.

Mark Blyth, Austerity, loc. 387