It's Reviving the Economy, Stupid: Coolidge and Reagan, Not FDR

I'm trying to ignore the 512-point drop in the Dow yesterday. I have no stocks, so I'm not scrambling around this morning trying to preserve my retirement. Nor am I emptying my savings account, which I also don't have, to cover my stock margins.

I have no retirement; and many of my friends, who worked so hard to create one, are finding themselves in the same boat.

That doesn't make me feel clever, just less cheated.

In this era of ever bigger government and destructive fiscal policy, a few more regulations and political posturing should pull the economy out of its current nose dive.

Perhaps the Prez can go to another taxpayer-subsidized solar-panel manufacturer and give a green-jobs speech. Or GE can build another mercury light-bulb factory in China.

That was sarcasm, by the way.

There are still one or two pages from the FDR playbook, which transformed what should have been a 2- or 3-year recession into our Great Depression, the current administration has yet to try.   

Next expect some government genius to suggest taxing the hordes of cash bigger businesses are sitting on because our union-supporting, over-regulating, growth-limiting government has them too nervous to invest their profits.

That was another FDR brain fart.

For my friends of the far left, who can't be bothered to read history, FDR's policies didn't bring us out of the Great Depression. Some credit World War II with doing so, but that isn't quite correct either.

War is never good for an economy. If it were, the three wars in which we are currently embroiled would have us floating on a rising tide of prosperity rather than drowning in a sea of red ink.

No, what WWII did do, however, was force FDR to make peace with big business. He had to finally admit that his anti-business strategies were hamstringing manufacturing, job creation and economic growth.

FDR recognized he needed a vibrant manufacturing sector to supply the allied war effort. He declared peace with business, allowing our free-enterprise economy to do what it typically does when left alone: grow!

The playbook our government should be using today is the one Coolidge created in the 1920s or Reagan's from the 1980s. They worked!

It doesn't take a Harvard grad to see that what is being done in Washington today isn't working. And perhaps that's the real problem.