This morning, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said that the economy “may well” already be in a recession. With record-breaking unemployment caused by the coronavirus epidemic, some are already calling this downturn is a new depression. Under Powell’s direction, the Fed has launched the largest market intervention in its history, with no limit on how many government bonds of mortgage-backed securities it is willing to buy.

One voice disagrees with Powell’s diagnosis of the problem, however. Ben Bernanke was Chairman of the Federal Reserve from 2006 to 2014, where he oversaw the 2008 financial crisis and subsequent Great Recession. Bernanke is a devoted follower of the monetary policies of economist John Maynard Keynes, and believes that his actions as Fed Chair, including multiple rounds of quantitative easing and money expansion, prevented an even worse economic downturn.

In an interview with Marketplace, Bernanke explained why he believes the economic crisis is not as apocalyptic as others have described.

“The current situation has a few superficial similarities to the Depression: A very sharp decline in output, more unemployment, stock market coming down. But, basically, it’s a very, very different kind of animal,” Bernanke said, explaining he had not anticipation that this crisis would last as long as the Great Depression of the 1930s. “And the causes of the Great Depression were very different, basically monetary and financial causes and the current situation is due to a pandemic, to a force of nature. So, it’s a different problem with different solutions.”

Neither does Bernanke believe the impact of the coronavirus is comparable to the 2008 crash he managed. “In 2008, the problems started in the financial system with the bad mortgages, with the loss of confidence in the banking system and other lenders. And then the panic on the financial system then hit the real economy, because there was no credit,” he said. “Now this situation is quite different in two ways. First of all, the problem is starting outside the financial system—it’s starting, of course, with the pandemic…The second thing, though, which is the good news, is that after the 2008 crisis, we did a lot of work to try to strengthen the financial system. And our banks have a lot more capital, they have a lot more liquidity, they’ve been stress tested.”

Bernanke continually expressed confidence in the market fundamentals he helped set as Fed Chair and believes the economy will rebound after the epidemic subsides and congress passes its stimulus package. "I have a lot of confidence in Jay Powell and his colleagues there at the Fed. This problem will eventually resolve,” he said.

“The last person on earth whose thoughts we need now is Bernanke,” commented Jeff Deist, president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute. An organization that promotes the Austrian theory of economics, it is seeing record web traffic due to its condemnation of government intervention in the economy and the Federal Reserve monetary policies promoted by men like Ben Bernanke.

Hunter DeRensis is the senior reporter for the National Interest. Follow him on Twitter @HunterDeRensis.