Thats just not good enough ...

I.) ... what if the foreclosure rate is at 35%? 48%, not 50? What if infant mortality goes up 175% rather then 250? And I dare say machine guns, and more, are on the Whitehouse roof as you read this. Is New Deal style policy justified then? This threshold of yours is textbook "I'll know it when I see it." And affording (read: your feeling comfortable with) the government in power the latitude to fundamentally transform their own power structure based on their own interpretation of what a "crisis" is rather then being bound by the limits of the Constitution is frightening to me. It's how one ends up supporting internment camps for American citizens.

II.) ... you wrote: "The reason I DON'T think "New Deal" works today is that we are not suffering from the same kind of economic crisis now as we were then."

Well, set aside "justification" arguments, because it has nothing at all to do with whether New Deal succeeded or failed. I find this a fundamental error in reasoning - if New Deal successfully repaired The Great Depression then SURELY it could repair The Great Recession - right? Forget justification, we're talking what "works." If New Deal "works ", it works. If it successfully beat back the woes of the 30's then why not apply the same tenants of its' programing now? If it can successfuly handle those problems then it should be able to knock our current problems out of the park. Why wont the 3 R's that beat The Great Depression not beat The Great Recession? If it brought the Great Depression to heel why not advocate its return to handle what is happening now? If it is sound in principle and practice it should work in any era. I would advocate a return to the Reagan model, without hesitation. Yet you will not endorse the 3 R's outside of the 30's. If it was has a proven record of success, why not?

III.) ... my point about the Roosevelt Recession was that when he finally signed a balanced budget & curtailed the spigot of spending the economy again fell off a cliff. We lost 2 million jobs in the 2nd half of 38' alone. The obvious lesson is that when an economy is artificially kept afloat by government it will again spiral out of control once that support is removed. And since no government can spend/prop up the economy in perpituity the entire approach is unsound , it has a fundamental design flaw.