Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke says forceful action by policymakers in the United States and abroad during the financial crisis allowed the global economy to dodge a second Great Depression.

Bernanke, a scholar of the Great Depression, says policymakers learned from the mistakes of their predecessors in the 1930s.

In remarks prepared for a speech Thursday to Washington's Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress, Bernanke acknowledges the severity of the recent financial crisis. But he says the world was spared an even greater economic meltdown that would have rivaled or even surpassed the Great Depression.