This should put things in perspective…

To try to exorcise the Great De- pression, President Herbert Hoover deployed fiscal and monetary stimulus equivalent to 8.3% of gross domestic product (i.e., GDP for 1933, the year the Depression officially ended). To banish the demons of 2008-9, successive administrations have spent, or encouraged to be printed, the equiva- lent to 28.9% of GDP. A macroeconomist from Mars, judging by these data alone, would never guess how much more severe was that depression than this recession. The decline in real GDP from August 1929 to March 1933 amounted to 27%; that from December 2007 to date, just 1.8% (?just 1.8%? is the phrase to use if one is still employed). So for a slump 1/15th as severe as the Depression, our 21st century economy doctors have admin- istered a course of treatment more than three times as costly.

From Grant’s Interest Rate Observer.