Medary.com

Barack Obama and the Democrat leadership seem hell-bent on reinforcing and extending the very government policies that made the Great Depression worse, prolonging it by seven long years.

"Why the Great Depression lasted so long has always been a great mystery, and because we never really knew the reason, we have always worried whether we would have another 10- to 15-year economic slump," said Ohanian, vice chair of UCLA's Department of Economics. "We found that a relapse isn't likely unless lawmakers gum up a recovery with ill-conceived stimulus policies."

An increasing number of economists are warning of going down the old, tired, destructive, dangerous statist road that has lead us to this crisis in the first place. The latest are Charles K. Rowley and Nathanael Smith, who have published a a monograph titled Economic Contractions in the United States: A Failure of Government.

The monograph has been endorsed by Nobel Economics Prize winner James Buchanan, who is quoted in the UK's Telegraph newspaper:

"We have learned some things from comparable experiences of the 1930s' Great Depression, perhaps enough to reduce the severity of the current contraction. But we have made no progress toward putting limits on political leaders, who act out their natural proclivities without any basic understanding of what makes capitalism work."

How's that stimulus working out for you?