Kathryn, the employment numbers are horrific, of course, but much as I admire the folks at CATO, I doubt that ’bail-outs and pork-filled stimulus’ are making matters worse. What we’ve got here is a nasty cyclical downturn (with quite a number of causes) enmeshed within a vicious credit crunch. It’s the way that these two beasts have fed upon each other that has conspired to make this downturn so dramatic. CATO’s Mitchell is, of course, quite right to say that “recessions…normally end quickly”, but it’s too simplistic to claim that they “almost always are caused by bad government policy.” Cycles are cycles. The problem we have to face now is that this recession is anything but “normal.” Getting it to the stage where it is will take time and, like it or not, a degree of government intervention that exceeds anything with which we free marketeers would usually be comfortable. That’s unfortunate, to say the least, but it’s reality, and, reality (like the market) is messier than ideology sometimes will allow.