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http://www.newsweek.com/id/181407No, we haven't turned the corner on the banking crisis—we can't even see the corner. What's needed is a bold, massive jolt to the system.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt's first inaugural address is now known for only one sentence: "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." But the audience at the time paid little attention to that line and the newspapers buried it in their reports the next day. As Jonathan Alter recounts in his book "The Defining Moment," the words that got the greatest applause were something more specific. "I shall ask Congress for the one remaining instrument to meet the crisis," FDR said, "broad Executive power to wage war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe." The next day's headline in The New York Herald Tribune was FOR DICTATORSHIP IF NECESSARY.
We are not in 1933, and no one would advocate or encourage any such power grab today. But President Barack Obama will have to quickly start planning for a set of more extraordinary measures to pull the United States out of its current, unsustainable economic condition. The president has understandably focused his first few days on important campaign promises—ending torture, closing Guantánamo—but he will now have to tackle the biggest challenge facing the country.
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