Veering away from the personalities involved in our politics, I started another thread entitled "Request For A Thoughtful Response" a few days ago. In my initial post I ask anyone who chooses to answer what would you do?

There's been a lot of discussion here and in other threads about what we shouldn't do and how the plans of the Congress are wrong and nothing like what they're considering has ever worked. OK, those are fair criticisms. But it leaves the question on the table of what should be done?

Why don't we continue the discussion over there. Understand that my intention in starting that thread was intended to focus only on the economic crisis facing the U.S. GDP has dropped to half of the rate even earlier this year. The Christmas retail season was the worst in decades. Foreclosures are at a record high. Banks and insurance companies have failed; more are expected to fail. The auto industry might fail and add 3 million to the unemployment rolls. Home prices continue to plummet. The stock market has lost close to 50% of it's value since about a year ago. Unemployment is skyrocketing and is expected to exceed 10% early in 2009. The credit markets are frozen; banks aren't lending. If the economy worsens much more we wil experience stagflation--where GDP is negative and yet there is still some inflation.

So the question posed there is what would you do if you were President? An equally important element of every answer should be why? There should be some economic or empirical example of why the suggested course of action will work.

In this thread there's no room for criticism of political leaders past or present. No discussion of personalities, parties, past alliances, experience...none of that stuff. The question is quite simple...

If you were President what would you do to fix the economic crisis? What evidence supports your suggested course of action?

See you in the other thread.