For the current economic downturn to remain only a recession we will have to see a turn-around pretty quickly. Patient drifting will result in a worsening not an improvement. That was perhaps Hoover's biggest mistake. It wasn't just the economy that was in a funk in the '30's, world politics were about as depressing and scary as you can imagine. There are some parallels to today's conflicts.

As far as I can tell most of the infrastructure bailout money is going to go to already underway or in-the-pipeline road projects. A sop to the highway lobby in the hope of getting the public to buy more cars and burn more gasoline. I dunno if the US economy can continue to be based on the automobile as it has for the past 100 years.