What's up with the economy?

I don't do political posts here, though I may make mention in passing.  This is something I found interesting, thought.  It's a media press release from UCLA from 2004.  Given the economic woes we're having and the policies pursued to date, it's shocking to me that more people aren't paying attention to the data.

FDR's policies prolonged Depression by 7 years, UCLA economists calculate

The two paragraphs that make me shake my head about current policy are:

"Why the Great Depression lasted so long has always been a great mystery, and because we never really knew the reason, we have always worried whether we would have another 10- to 15-year economic slump," said Ohanian, vice chair of UCLA's Department of Economics. "We found that a relapse isn't likely unless lawmakers gum up a recovery with ill-conceived stimulus policies."

"The fact that the Depression dragged on for years convinced generations of economists and policy-makers that capitalism could not be trusted to recover from depressions and that significant government intervention was required to achieve good outcomes," Cole said. "Ironically, our work shows that the recovery would have been very rapid had the government not intervened."

Economies are big, complicated things, but it seems like maybe we should learn from history.