Coruscation

Hayek's theory of depressions was that they started when, for some
reason, interest rates got too low--below fundamentals. If
interest rates are low, asset prices are high--above their
fundamentals. Because financial markets are sending false signals that
capital--whether in the form of machines, business organizations,
commercial buildings, or housing--is very valuable, the market shift
resources into capital-producing sectors and adds to its capital
stock.

Someday, however, interest rates return to their fundamentals. When
they do, asset prices fall sharply: it becomes clear that there are a
lot of business organizations, machines, commercial structures, and
houses that do not produce value to cover their costs. The last thing
needed is more investment. Workers, entrepreneurial energy, and
capital have to be shifted out of capital-goods production and into
the production of consumer goods and services. And, said Hayek, it is
that painful, lengthy, but necessary process of shifting resources out
of capital-goods production that we call a "depression."

In Hayek's monetary overinvestment theory of the business cycle, the
magnitude of the depression depended on the magnitude of the required
structural shift, which depended on (a) how much interest rates had
been pushed below fundamentals, (b) how long they had been pushed
there, and (c) how much damage--in terms of capital investments that
should not have been made given fundamental values--the false prices
fed to the real economy by the financial sector had done.

See also Interest rate modelling.