I have a commentary on National Review OnLine pointing out that
the so-called Great Recession hasn't been that great. In fact,
it's really just on the more severe side of normal. Yet,
supporters of aggressive national fiscal policy still justify
more government spending, including a second Stimulus program,
on the purported severity of the current recession. As I point
out: "True enough, the Great Recession lasted 18 months. That’s
the longest recessionary period since 1929. But this fact
reveals far less than the president implies. The Great
Depression was a decade-long economic roller coaster. The
economy fell into a 43-month abyss, grew for a while starting in
1933, and then plummeted again into recession in 1937. By some
estimates, unemployment peaked at one third of the national
labor force. "The Great Recession isn’t anywhere close to those
numbers. While the president has accurately called the absolute
numbers of jobs lost “unprecedented,” the economy is so much
larger now that the official unemploymen