Obama's upside down world

At a fundraiser in Maine, Pres. Obama explained:

"We won't win the race for new jobs and new businesses and middle-class security if we cling to this same old, worn-out, tired `you're on your own' economics that the other side is peddling," Obama said.

"It was tried in the decades before the Great Depression. It didn't work then. It was tried in the last decade. It didn't work," he said. "You know, the idea you would keep on doing the same thing over and over again, even though it's been proven not to work. That's a sign of madness."

Is it really necessary to explain that the left-wing interventionist policies of the FDR were a disaster that made an economic downturn last a whole decade? Obama's similar interventionist micromanagement of the economy has made economic bad times last the whole time he has been in office.

Obama's point, if he has one, might be that the 1920s ended with a recession just as Obama's turn in office began in a recession. Recessions happen every several years and, as the Austrian school of economics teaches, human nature seems to make them unavoidable. Thus, economic success is when recessions are short or mild. By this test, Obama and FDR both fail.