There is, in case you hadn’t noticed, a recession on. Credit’s hard to come by, housing prices have dropped like a lead zeppelin, consumer confidence is scraping the rocks, and unemployment is surging as businesses’ profits fall and they look to cut costs and retrench.

And no one really seems to know what to do to stop the slide into depression. Well, by “no one” I guess I really mean anyone in a leadership role in government or in a pseudo-governmental entity like, say, the Federal Reserve. Ben Bernanke’s apparent refusal to believe in or acknowledge the economic fundamentals espoused by the Austrian School have left him on repeated occasions performing a rather schoolboyish verbal variant of the fingers-in-the-ears-”I can’t hear you!! LALALALALA” routine in response to excoriations by Ron Paul.

Bernanke’s not alone, however. Far from it. I read today in the Wall Street Journal (on my Kindle, meaning I had to track down the online link myself - but more about that later) some details about President Obama’s forthcoming regulatory plans.

“What’s that?” you exclaim. “President Obama’s realized that overbearing regulations - requirements for expensive things like handicap ramps, handicap parking spots, bathrooms, elevators, environmental protections, extensive building inspections, and so on - are the final death knell for many small companies, raise costs and thereby lower employment and hike prices, keep many other companies from getting off the ground, and disproportionately punish minorities and the generally less affluent… And he’s also realized that, if ever there were a time to LESSEN such regulations, to push such nonsense to the side, to foster business and workers and lower prices, it’s now… And he’s going to slash regulations to stimulate the economy as he claims to be trying to do? That’s GREAT!”

You pause, suspicious. “That doesn’t really sound like the Obama I know.”

You’re right to be suspicious. Far from cutting regulation:

The president seeks more money for the department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration, to allow it to “vigorously enforce” workplace safety laws and oversight.
…
The Environmental Protection Agency’s budget would rise by 34%, to $10.5 billion, money that would empower the agency to crack down on industrial polluters. Included is $3.9 billion — the most money ever — for the EPA’s operating budget, “which is at the heart of EPA’s environmental protection function and includes funds for research, regulation and enforcement,” the proposed budget says.
…
The Department of Commerce would get more money to implement regulations aimed at eliminating ocean overfishing by 2011.
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The budget suggests a sea change at the Department of Labor, where Mr. Obama is proposing a 4.7% increase in funding to reverse “years of erosion in funding for labor law enforcement agencies,” the proposed budget says.
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Mr. Obama’s budget would give the FDA $1 billion more than the estimated fiscal 2009 budget for stepped up enforcement of safety rules.

In a time of extreme financial turbulence and pessimism, American businesses need incentives to launch, develop, produce, and hire. Regulations add layers of time, effort, and costs to any business, but especially to those struggling to launch. Many entrepreneurs will give up when they see what faces them; others will be forced out of business due to non-compliance; still more will go bankrupt or be forced to drastically compromise their working conditions due to compliance costs and changes.

The rising chorus of complaints these days regard layoffs, bankruptcies, foreclosures, a dropping stock market, the credit crunch, and lack of consumer optimism — not hoot owls, coal pollution from the corner 7-11, or a sudden spike in work-related injuries. At a casual glance, one could assume that Obama’s simply economically illiterate, or even (at base) logically unsound. But I’m not that charitable. It strikes me - and many others as well, I’m sure - as an opportunistic extension of his big-government ideology, economy be damned regardless of the rhetoric. We’ll make it through this recession/depression, we know it and he knows it; A few years one way or the other, well, what does that matter relative to expanding the Rooseveltian grasp of government while the political stars are aligned?

We may summarize the move as follows: the government’s cure for a slowing, sickly economy? Tighten the reigns, because it’s out of control. Its counterbalance to the trillions of taxpayer dollars spent propping up failing institutions, despite widespread layman and professional worry and dizzyingly high national debt? Spend more taxpayer money. The correction for a decade of Alan Greenspan’s bubble-inducingly low interest rates at the Fed? Lower them even more - as close to zero as possible, please.

Welcome to the era of big government, indeed.