Mussolini during the Great Depression and today

In the reading by Mussolini, he asserts that the importance of the State and peoples' desire for its guidance in economics and politics has been growing since 1929. When I think of that year, the first thing to come to my mind is the stock market crash that October. I'm more familiar with the poor state of economics in the U.S. during that time than I am with the economic standings of other countries in the '30s, but I'm guessing we weren't the only ones who had it rough.

Anyway, Mussolini says these crises could only be solved by the State. He throws it in capitalists' faces that the people at the time were supposedly begging for the government to get involved in business operations, almost as if to say "Ha, deregulation was what you wanted, and look how badly the economy is doing now."

The parallels to today are obvious, as everyone is comparing today's economic crisis to the Great Depression. So it makes me wonder how long it will take for people to start calling Obama fascist. He's obviously NOT, but he himself has already said the American people will have to make sacrifices and he's also said many of his rescue policies will not be popular. I'm sure there will be some Republican businessmen out there who are pro-capitalism to the death, who will have a lot to say about Obama's economic relief efforts, once they start happening.

But as Mussolini queried in the reading, "What would they say now to the unceasing, inevitable, and urgently requested interventions of government in business?"