Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve System, defended the Fed's role at the onset of the on-going global financial crisis in a speech in New York on April 13. He told the audience at the Russell Sage Foundation and The Century Foundation that the financial crisis was "best understood as a classic financial panic".

The Fed chairman said the most familiar type of panic typically involves runs on banks by retail depositors. These runs, however, have been rendered largely obsolete by