The Federal Reserve's worst nightmare: The 'ghost of 1937'

The Federal Reserve's worst nightmare: The 'ghost of 1937':
"In trying to steer the economy of 2015, the Federal Reserve is fighting the foreboding spirit of 1937.
Wall Street strategists, in fact, are worried that the U.S. central bank is so cautious over not making the mistakes of a long-ago ancestor that it may miss a solid opportunity to normalize monetary policy after seven years of decidedly abnormal times.
"Many policymakers and market observers assert that the risk of the Fed raising rates too early exceeds that of moving too late.
This is the specter of 1937, when the Fed raised rates prematurely and exacerbated the Great Depression..." 
What's causing much of the consternation is fear that, like 1937, a desire to avoid bubbles and normalize rates will come too soon and plunge the economy back into a slump. 
The Fed took its short-term rates target down to zero amid the financial crisis and the Great Recession, and has been there since late 2008.
However, that recession officially ended in 2009, yet the central bank has not moved on policy.
In addition to zero rates, it has boosted up its balance sheet to $4.5 trillion in a liquidity program whose effect has been to pump up the stock market by 220 percent.
...The best investors likely can hope for is that it's not as bad as other times in the past..."