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I would start by describing events they are unfamiliar with, to establish how the US economy functioned before “Ol’ Frank”. This is important, because Roosevelt was convinced that only radical and untested new ideas had to be used to replace centuries of free enterprise that existed before.

For this reason, have at least some familiarity with the Panic of 1837 and the Panic of 1893, which almost led to the bankruptcy of the federal government. Both of these will make telling points later.

Herbert Hoover’s actions were based on the very best economic theory of the time, with some mistakes, granted, but in a normal time would have restored the US economy. However, the Democrat congress went out of its way to thwart his efforts, seeking political gain from the national misery.

With Roosevelt’s ascension, the first theories he tried were those that were seemingly popular in Europe. These were the economics of fascism, and while experimental, seemed to offer the fastest route to economic recovery, while avoiding the horrific mistakes of socialist-communism in Russia.

That is, the nationalization of industry, business, agriculture, education, and ought else had been tried by Lenin and shown themselves to be such miserable failures that Lenin disavowed them and created the New Economic Plan, which was to some extent capitalism reborn. But the Lenin died, and Stalin went back to doing what had already been proven didn’t work.

The irony of Europe was that, especially in Germany, the economy was already in recovery before the rise of Hitler, to a great extent because of the help and advice from the US. Hitler, of course, took credit for it, and the international assumption was that fascist economics was responsible.

The fascist “public-private partnership” was first tried in the US, to tepid result, because inexperienced bureaucrats knew little of how the industries the were supposed to “help”, functioned. And after the Nazis became obnoxious, these ideas tended to whither.

So Roosevelt’s next concept was the creation of an “easy credit” economy, in which the economy was inflated with the use of marginal credit, instead of fully collateralized credit. This was applied across the board, first to government, and the needs of the war, but then to the economy as a whole.

At the time, they did not foresee that this ever expanding outward spiral of debt would eventually consume our entire economy, and it took many years to do so, but now the experiment has finally reached its conclusion.

There is some truth that the Roosevelt economic experiment allowed the US to grow much faster than it would have otherwise, but this was not due to government action, but government inaction, allowing sensible economic rules to be broken for short term gains.

So now we face a situation of economic collapse even greater in some ways than the Great Depression. The US government will have to shrink at least by half. The national debt will likely have to be defaulted (see 1837). The great government largesse programs of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and fantasies about a national health care system, are all over. And even the “Pax Americana”, of a gigantic, all powerful military, will have to be substantially scaled down.

So the vision that Frank Roosevelt had, for a nation managed by a federal government intrusive enough to do so, at the expense to the modest authority given it by the constitution, is over.

We must now return to the economic model that existed before Frank Roosevelt, and for centuries before him. Or else our government faces bankruptcy (see 1893).