The Great Depression was not a sudden total collapse. The stock market turned upward in early 1930, returning to early 1929 levels by April, though still almost 30 percent below the peak of September 1929. ... But consumers, many of whom had suffered severe losses in the stock market the previous year, cut back their expenditures by ten percent, and a severe drought ravaged the agricultural heartland of the USA beginning in the northern summer of 1930.In early 1930, credit was ample and available at low rates, but people were reluctant to add new debt by borrowing. By May 1930, auto sales had declined to below the levels of 1928. Prices in general began to decline, but wages held steady in 1930, then began to drop in 1931. ... The decline in the American economy was the motor that pulled down most other countries at first, then internal weaknesses or strengths in each country made conditions worse or better. Frantic attempts to shore up the economies of individual nations through protectionist policies, like the 1930 U.S. Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act and retaliatory tariffs in other countries, exacerbated the collapse in global trade. By late in 1930, a steady decline set in which reached bottom by March 1933.

Herbert Hoover was a Republican president who had some similar views about laissez-faire capitalism as George Bush and John McCain, who said today, as the market went into a tailspin after new catastrophic failures in the financial sector, “'People are frightened by these events. Our economy, I think still, the fundamentals of our economy are strong,' Mr. McCain told a rally in Jacksonville. 'But these are very, very difficult times.'" McCain later clarified his comments, but it is apparent that he doesn't understand economics.

Unlike Bush and McCain, Obama does seem to share with Clinton an understanding of what it means to get the advice of world class economists and act on that advice. It was not an accident that the prosperity of the 90's when our national debt was manageable and shrinking was not a roll of the dice. It was the result of good advisers who made sound judgements about the role of government in encouraging innovation and sound fiscal policy that made it happen. What worries me is that we are in what could be one of the worst economic crises in 80 years. The Europeans know and are worried about this in ways that many in the US do not.

FactCheck says that "Jerome Corsi's 'The Obama Nation' is a mishmash of unsupported conjecture, half-truths, logical fallacies and outright falsehoods." Three points the give are:

• Obama may not qualify as a citizen because he could claim Kenyan citizenship, but he is strictly barred from being a dual citizen by the Kenyan constitution. (John McCain was born in the Canal Zone so his citizenship also has been questioned.)
• Corsi infers that Obama has never said that he stopped using drugs, when he has several times said that.
• Corsi falsely says that one of Obama's closes friends said he once was a practicing muslim, when it is pretty clear he was not.
• Corsi says Obama is a great speaker, but he has never detailed a single specific plan. Not true at all as a check of Obama's web site will show.

People are buying this book and believing it. When will the American people wake up?