Economists learned three hard lessons from the Great Depression. Money doesn't trickle down--it gets sucked upward. You kill a depression by flooding it with government money (budget cuts make the economy fail even worse). Banks and businesses need to be carefully regulated, or they will gamble wildly, cheat and go bust.
As a consequence President Obama and the leaders of Europe knew exactly what to do when faced with the Great Recession in 2008. Obama did about half of it, and the European leaders did almost none of it. They reverted to policies that fail every time. As a consequence Europe's economy has yet to recover, America's economy recovered weakly, and Trump's idiotic trade wars are pushing much of the world's business over a cliff. Apparently our elected officials don't have the will to correct this.
FDR showed us what to do. We've blown it and continue to bleed ourselves. As historian Joseph Ellis said, when asked how we can get America back on the right track: "Perform one hundred million frontal lobotomies."
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