Monday, March 3, 1958:

"Are you expecting a tax cut that will put more spending money in your pocket? Don't. Not yet, anyway. Not unless the recession gets a lot worse. One main argument for a tax cut now: it would give people more money to spend, thus increasing demand for the things they want. This in turn would create more jobs for the people to make the things they want."

Tuesday, March 11, 1958:

"Editorial Speaking: That nicely balanced budget which President Eisenhower submitted in Congress in January has gone plumb haywire.

There are several reasons for this. The principal reason is the business recession. The federal receipts through the income tax won't come anywhere near the rosy forecast the first of the year. And expenses, also created in an effort to combat the recession, will go far beyond what had been estimated. The result will be a deficit of a few billion dollars. Everybody has plans for Federal spending to help out the national economy. The President's are conservative, and some of the members of his own party in Congress don't think they go far enough. All of these plans involve spending money the Treasury doesn't have in order to lick the economic dip. It's strange economics, but all economics are strange these days, and when unemployment rises, pressure for direct action becomes increasingly strong."

Tuesday, March 18, 1958:

"Editorial Speaking: Members of Congress are working up a great sweat trying to do some fancy abracadabra which will bring the country out of the economic doldrums. Each of the statesmen at the Capitol has some miraculous invention which will cause business all of a sudden to boom and great may be the political reward thereby. Some measures which are being proposed have some merit. Some of them are simply pump priming of doubtful value, and all are inflationary. If taxes are lowered, the treasury debt will become greater, and one of these years the bite will have to be made stiffer in order to prevent still heavier deficits. A vast expansion of public works will have the same effect. If this were other than an election year, the zeal in Congress might be just as great. On the other hand, it might be somewhat lessened, and the country might coast along. Inevitably, as in the case of every recession, the recession would come to an end, and it might do so without all the medicine that seems to be headed for the nation's innards."

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In 2008, fifty years after the words above were penned, the problem and solutions have not changed much. The lesson is don't panic.