What pundits commonly call the “Great Recession” of 2008-09 was the most severe economic downturn experienced by the advanced capitalist countries of Western Europe and North America since the 1930s. According to the OECD, American GDP declined by 3.9% from the end of 2007 to the end of 2009. The UK fared worse than the US (-5.5%), France better (-2.8%) and Germany just about the same (-4.0%). Economic growth recovered in 2010, but the recovery has been weak by comparison to previous postwar recessions. As newspaper headlines remind us daily, sovereign-debt problems associated with global imbalances have held growth back, especially in the Euro-zone. We are certainly not “out of the woods” yet. Indeed, it seems likely that the recession of 2008-09 will in retrospect be seen as the beginning of a period of protracted stagnation and political as well as economic instability, in much the same way that the international recession of 1974-76 is commonly viewed. Current uncertainties notwithstanding, we consider this to be an opportune time to step back and take stock of how governments in the advanced capitalist countries responded to the Great Recession. In particular, it strikes us as useful to ask, “how is this time different?” The Great Depression provides an obvious reference point, but much has changed since the 1930s. In our view, it makes more sense to compare government responses to the Great Recession with government responses to the international recession of 1974-76 and structural economic problems in the second half of the 1970s. In pursuing this problematic, we will consider the experiences of France, Germany, Sweden, the UK and the US. With Sweden treated as a model of social-democratic capitalism, these five countries figure prominently in the comparative political economy literature (e.g., Gourevitch 1986).