Obama: "Only government can break the vicious cycles that are crippling our economy"

Nick Gillespie | January 8, 2009

Barack Obama speaketh on the troubles facing the republic:

We cannot depend on government alone to create jobs or long-term growth, but at this particular moment, only government can provide the short-term boost necessary to lift us from a recession this deep and severe. Only government can break the vicious cycles that are crippling our economy—where a lack of spending leads to lost jobs which leads to even less spending; where an inability to lend and borrow stops growth and leads to even less credit.

Read more from the president-elect's remarks that will be aired later today. "If nothing is done, this recession could linger for years," he says. And yes, "the cost of this plan will be considerable."

But if people and businesses can't borrow and spend on terms disconnected from actual market forces, then how are we going to get into the next cycle where people and businesses borrow and spend too much?

You know, the very era that Obama declaimed in a speech late last year:

Politicians spent money they didn't have. Lenders tricked people into buying homes they couldn't afford and some folks knew they couldn't afford them and bought them anyway.

We've lived through an era of easy money, in which we were allowed and even encouraged to spend without limits; to borrow instead of save.

As always, the answer to the problems caused by easy money will be easier money. Now and forever, amen. The important thing is that we don't just stand, we do something. I'm about to enter a space pod timed to wake up in the year 2525 (if man is still alive). Tap on the container earlier when the government actually announces the crisis is done and public-sector spending can return to, I don't know, to the obscene levels pioneered by George W. Bush.

As you ponder the effect of Obama's "new New Deal," think about the effects of FDR's: