Obama thinks that the way to do so is to massively increase the size and scope of the federal government. That is precisely the wrong way to go, as David Boaz shows in this Cato@Liberty post. He links to an excellent piece in the Washington Post by James Grant in which Grant looks at the rapid recovery from the 1921 recession. President Harding’s approach (under the counsel of Andrew Mellon) was to cut government spending and cut taxes, thus lightening the burden of the government on entrepreneurs and consumers and freeing resources for productive use in the private sector. Of course, that approach would never occur to people who believe — deeply and fervently believe — that more government is the solution to every problem.