Last three pages have been HILARIOUS.
I've been converted, y'all. Justicenomics is the future. We shall start by going over the fiscal cliff with gusto for one year, thus setting the starting point GDP so low that the next ten years after it can be nothing but exuberant successes.
Barring the Great Depression (in which interventionist methods were used), certainly nothing before 1913 was quite so economically damaging as, say, stagflation.
....you do realize that the Great Depression occurred
after 1913, right? Just sayin.
Beyond that, let's see:
1807 - Jefferson embargoes ALL foreign trade, triggers a six-year recession
1836 (Panic of 1837) - Jackson insists on use of silver currency, triggers six-year recession, massive unemployment, agricultural price failures, and a decrease in the money supply of 58%
1873 - Stock prices collapse in Vienna, economic panic spreads to US, dovetailed into some banking/railway collapses in the US, triggers a six-year recession which marked the start of a
23-year period known as the Long Depression.
Honestly, if you look at most economic failures in US history, they're caused when the Fed (or before the Fed's creation, the US government through the Bank of the United States)
shrinks the money supply and raises interest rates. We've never had a period of hyperinflation like Weimar Germany, in part because the wealthy have always exerted considerable pressure in this country to KILL INFLATION WITH FIRE. Why? Because inflation is the enemy of accrued wealth. Deflation is the enemy of a functioning economy, but if you can afford to sit tight on your money, you'll make out like a bandit when the economy recovers.