Um, those pushing for more federal spending to make up for the massive shortfall in private consumption and investment include numerous economists who work with figures all the time, and many of those who saw this crisis coming. The financial industry itself and all those Wall Street wizards "working the stock market with figures," on the other hand, has been consistently wrong about everything.

That said, there are major problems with government policy right now. First is the complete inability to face our problems and nationalize the banks, as everyone outside of the Fed and Treasury and Goldman Sachs seems to know is the only way out of the credit mess. The second is the consistent lowballing about how much government spending is really going to be needed. Our historical guide should be the wartime spending that finally ended the Great Depression.