IF FDR

in 1933 had attempted to "stimulate"  the U.S. economy under today's regulations, those FDR projects would have gotten under way sometime in the mid 1950s, if you go by Medan McArdle's estimates of how many years it would take to get Mike Huckabee's public works project off the ground.  Oh, and by the way.  FDR's public works idea didn't work, it simply made economic conditions even worse and helped stall the economy for another half-decade.  Amity Shlaels has a little book out documenting the whole sorry record of the FDR led economic non-recovery.  If truth be told, the story of the "Great Depression" is the story of how the Federal government turned a short-term market correction into a titanic economic train wreck.  Yes, Virginia, the cure often is worse than the disease.