It must be nice in a time of crisis to have a ready ideological answer you can pull off the shelf. It saves wear and tear on your brain from reading and thinking things through. An economic calamity? Just dial up Fox News or Rush Limbaugh. Or better yet listen to Ron Paul.
Trouble is that almost all of the ready answers to the current economic crisis were cooked up in relative financial calm, and right now, truth be told, most professional economists are mystified as to what is going on. Sure they have their pet theories and ideas on how to fix the situation, but most will admit that they haven't seen this kind of thing before.
Previously during downturns, economists and bankers have used layers of tools to correct the financial world. For the last 20-30 years the Monetarists at the Federal Reserve Bank have controlled the flow of money using the federal funds rate. Too much growth, raise interest rates and tighten bank rates, too little drop rates and loosen controls on bank reserves. It always seems to work after a bit.
Guess what? Last year government bankers became alarmed when dropping the federal reserve rates stopped working. Rates are now darn near zero and you can't get much lower than zero. And you can drop the cash reserve requirements of banks any lower without risking the safety of the banking system if one should fail.
Flailing economists are now at the next level: They are dusting off the theories of the dread John Maynard Keynes, the anti-Christ to ideologues of all stripes. In a very short sentence: Keynes believes in aggressive government spending to stimulate the economy. Trouble is that if you start Congress down this path, you can't stop them. Keynsian economics which stared in the 30s and during the war in the 40's, darn near killed the economy in the 70s and 80s.
It starting to look like these are times when it's time to read and analyze and appreciated the wonder of the chaos.