What if?

A financial crisis may make some very bad policies popular | Marvin Olasky

Associated Press/Richard Drew

Economic fluctuations cause recessions. Political ones cause depressions. The Bush bailouts in September created a $700 billion bad precedent, and by Thanksgiving we could be thankful for about $8 trillion in direct and indirect financial obligations, which is half the size of the entire U.S. economy. Coverage by The New York Times showed that even big-government advocates were amazed: Federal officials hoping for economic revival were "sending a message that they would print as much money as needed."

Wow! Unleash the presses! But it's the combination of greenback printing and book buying that fills me with shock and awe: Obama administration leaders are chomping their way through books about the New Deal, including speeches of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. I've done some of that reading, and it's sobering. For example, Roosevelt in October 1932, speaking in Detroit, quoted positively a cleric's comment: "We talk of the stabilization of business. What we need is the stabilization of human justice and happiness."