by Rich Sabatini

Created on: February 01, 2009   Last Updated: February 16, 2009

In a recent statement to the media, our newly-elected 44th president, Barack Obama, weighed in on his solution to the current economic down turn: "Only the government can break this cycle," says Mr. Obama.

What? No mention of the private sector?

But recall the New Deal - huge government spending - government's first vain attempt to break out of a spiraling downward economic cycle. Franklin Roosevelt attempted to spend America out of a depression, but only prolonged the misery for an entire decade. If there ever was a time to go out and create a huge stimulus/spending/welfare bill, it might not be now.

Hence, the current situation begs the obvious question: Mr. Obama, after the government decides to spend a trillion what if the stimulus doesn't work ... then what?

Mr. Obama's message of "Change" may very shortly be going from "Change we can believe in," to, "Brother can you spare a dime?" This was the popular mantra of the 1930's, when Americans everywhere tried to slough through the hardscrabble misery of the original Great Depression.

Mr. Obama has blithely expressed, "We should plan to see "trillion-dollar deficits for years to come."

1 trillion dollars ... do we even realize how many zeros follow that? That's 12 zeroes to the left of the decimal point! A trillion is a million-million dollars. It would take a military jet flying at the speed of sound, reeling out a roll of dollar bills behind it, 14 years before it reeled out one trillion dollar bills.

Mr. Obama's idea of stimulating the economy is like treating lung cancer by smoking an extra pack a day. Our current economic crisis was debt-induced; and Obama wants the country to run trillion dollar deficits and spend our way out, and has said, "it might not even be enough".

Lets examine some hard economic facts. Whenever you print money like it's for playing monopoly, you are indeed, playing a dangerous game of surefire future inflation. So now that Congress has decided to borrow a trillion, the Fed must go to the worldwide credit markets - creating competition for money - which drives up interest rates.

The result? We get increasing inflation with high interest rates. Does that ring a bell?

It's called stagflation, and the return of the Jimmie Carter era of the late 70's-where crises abound: sky high interest rates, high unemployment, rising energy prices; and of course - keeping our thermostats restricted.

What seems to be apparent is that Mr. Obama (like Carter) seems to have a selective memory when it comes to

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