Economic Recession

“A recession is a decline in a country's gross domestic product (GDP) growth for two or more consecutive quarters of a year. A recession is also preceded by several quarters of slowing down)” (http://www.rediff.com/money/2008/feb/14spec.htm)
The last time that the U.S. was in a seriously tough economic situation was during the Great Depression. The current economic crisis is said to be the “worst since the Great Depression.” During the Great Depression (1929 to World War II) the stock market crashed, the economy took a nosedive, and many, many people lost their jobs, people lost their homes, banks and businesses failed, etc. The U.S. got out of that recession because of two things: President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his New Deal programs, and because we got involved in World War II after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.
“The New Deal represented the culmination of a long-range trend toward abandonment of ‘laissez-faire’ capitalism, going back to the regulation of the railroads in the 1880s, and the flood of state and national reform legislation introduced in the Progressive era of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson.” (http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/depression/overview.htm) With the New Deal, many new programs were formed to help boost the economy once again. Also, FDR made jobs for the out of work: “An early step for the unemployed came in the form of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), a program enacted by Congress to bring relief to young men between 18 and 25 years of age. Run in semi-military style, the CCC enrolled jobless young men in work camps across the country for about $30 per month. About 2 million young men took part during the decade. They participated in a variety of conservation projects: planting trees to combat soil erosion and maintain national forests; eliminating stream pollution; creating fish, game and bird sanctuaries; and conserving coal, petroleum, shale, gas, sodium and helium deposits.” (http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/depression/overview.htm)
I personally do not think that the strategy that got us out of the Great Depression will work for us again. It is possible that President Bush and President Elect Obama could make some new programs to help restart our economy, which was one thing that FDR did to help bring America out of the depression. But, the U.S. becoming involved in World War II is what really kick-started the economy again. I don’t think it would be productive to launch into another major war in order to get out of the economic slump.
I do not believe that it would have made a really dramatic difference if the administration had named this slump as a recession until recently. People already knew to some degree that the economy was in decline. It aids the country to do so because the people now really know what is going on and might even be able to help try and find a solution to the problem. It may have had a negative impact though, because people might not have known how bad the economy was and might have made foolish decisions with their money. For instance, putting their money into the stock market which is like a black hole, sucking up people’s money and giving nothing in return.
A suggestion that I would make to President Bush and President elect Obama would be that tax cuts alone probably aren’t going to cut it. I suggest looking at less costly ways of acquiring energy and looking to foreign markets. China is huge right now, so maybe if we opened up some kind of connection with them, it could help the economy. Also, I recommend staying positive and making the people feel more secure with the financial system. The more secure they feel, the more likely they are to put money back into the economy.