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I just read it, and yes it does sound like the same approach. But what's interesting to me is what these policies imply. Which is, we are not headed into a down turn, a recession, deflation or some other emphemism. It sounds to me like Bernanke et al. think we are headed into that dispreferred expression, a Depression.
Yesterday, I was reading and scanning Christine Romer's papers. They are here:
http://www.econ.berkeley.edu/~cromer/index.shtml
Here's part of her take on various countries and the outcomes during the Depression:
`...The role of fiscal policy in generating recovery varied substantially across other countries. Great Britain, like the United States, did not use fiscal expansion to a noticeable extent early in its recovery. It did, however, increase military spending substantially after 1937. France raised taxes in the mid-1930s in an effort to defend the gold standard, but then ran large budget deficits starting in 1936. The expansionary effect of these deficits, however, was counteracted somewhat by a legislated reduction in the French workweek from 46 to 40 hours-a change that raised costs and depressed production. Fiscal policy was used more successfully in Germany and Japan. The German budget deficit as a percent of domestic product increased little early in the recovery, but grew substantially after 1934 as a result of spending on public works and rearmament. In Japan, government expenditures, particularly military spending, rose from 31 to 38 percent of domestic product between 1932 and 1934, resulting in substantial budget deficits. This fiscal stimulus, combined with substantial monetary expansion and an undervalued yen, returned the Japanese economy to full employment relatively quickly...'' Christine Romer, Great Depression, reprint for EB)
CG