"It was like standing on the edge of an abyss." That's the stark recollection of Reserve Bank deputy governor Guy Debelle about events 10 years ago, as the world faced the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Speaking to the ABC's AM program in one of the RBA's war rooms used at the height of what became the global financial crisis, Dr Debelle spoke of fears that the world and Australia would be swept up in rapidly unfolding events sparked by the collapse of investment bank Lehman Brothers on September 15, 2008.

Dr Debelle recalls looking over the financial abyss created by two years of greed, spiralling debt and appalling lending standards that led to the subprime mortgage crisis in the US and the eventual housing crash.

"I don't think you were quite in a Wiley E Coyote moment, you hadn't gone over it [the cliff]," he said.

"But you were standing on the edge of it and if there things that you could do to prevent the global economy falling off that cliff, then they were going to be done."

Many decision makers 'had not slept for at least a month'

The former DJ and punk music enthusiast had a certain tune playing in his mind as back-to-back crisis meetings, often in the middle of the night, kept central bankers like Guy Debelle awake waiting for developments.

"I thought the best encapsulation of it is a song by The The. It was a song called This is the Day, and there's a line in it: "You didn't wake up this morning because you didn't go to bed," Dr Debelle said.

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"That's because the main protagonists in those discussions had basically not slept for at least a month, and maybe a few months in some cases, because they'd been dealing with this rolling series of crises.

"And a bunch of decisions being made by people who haven't had a hell of a lot of sleep for quite a long period time, it's interesting to reflect on what impact that had on their decision making."

Dr Debelle (who was the assistant governor of financial markets at the time) was in the crisis team with other Reserve Bank power players, including then-RBA governor Glenn Stevens and his deputy Rick Battelino, to not only monitor the unfolding events but to develop a response.

Guy Debelle (right) speaks with the ABC's Peter Ryan about the global financial crisis. ( ABC News: Maisie Cohen )

So, how confident was the Reserve Bank that Australia would be able to avoid the financial storm where banks had stopped lending to each other and even the US treasury market closed for a day?

"I don't think you'd have a great degree of confidence at various periods of time," Dr Debelle said.

"There was a lack of information for a long period of time as to who had exposure to what and how insulated various parts of the financial system were going to be from collapses going on elsewhere.

"It was more 'just how bad are things going to get in the global financial markets?'

"You were seeing some really historically very deep and liquid markets seize up."

Debelle backs Rudd 'cash splash' as 'effective'

In Australia, the then Labor government — led by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Treasurer Wayne Swan — responded with massive stimulus dubbed "a cash splash" to keep Australian consumers and businesses spending.

Dr Debelle said that decision to spend the revenue proceeds of the resources boom — along with guaranteeing bank deposits — was undoubtedly the right decision, even allowing for hindsight.

"It was the right thing to do," he said.

"The cash splash, as it was called, was an effective way of getting the stimulus into the economy pretty quick and it worked."

Dr Debelle is in the business of predicting the next financial crisis and believes the next one will be different to the events leading up to September 2008.

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But he worries that memories can be short and also selective.

"If you go back to the Great Depression, there was a very large regulatory response to that," Dr Debelle observed.

"Over the course of the next few decades those memories gradually dissipated.

"Then we ended up on a much more deregulatory bent, which culminated in terms of where we were in 2006.

"So, over a long sweep of years, history can repeat."

Follow Peter Ryan on Twitter @peter_f_ryan.