The Cynics' equivalent of 'it takes a village'

I note with a contemptuous sneer, and a hope I am wrong (the same hope I used to feel before a test I didn't study for) that after the massive fear pumped all day every day, and the actual accomplishment of nothing (there simply hasn't been time to measure a damn thing):

Concluding his first international summit, President Barack Obama hailed agreements at the emergency meeting of world powers Thursday as a "turning point in our pursuit of global economic recovery."

The new U.S. leader said the heads of industrial countries that met in London agreed on "unprecedented steps to restore growth and prevent a crisis like this from happening again."

In 1942, after Rommel has suffered his first defeat, by the 5th of Nov., months after the US Navy inflicted one of the greatest naval defeats by an underdog at Midway, Churchill, claimed not a turning point of the war, but PERHAPS 'the end of the beginning.' It tuned out that was so, but after a staggering sacrifice made from Poland to Dunkirk, Smolensk, Bataan, Singapore, Wake, and hundreds of ships sunk off our east coast.

While this is not war, apparently it takes a war.
Consider this chart of federal ratio changes in debt, and GDP from 1928 to 1941 with 28 as the base year and all values metered to that.

Now consider unemployment

One might frame a pretty good argument that federal spending and increase in debt has only a scant effet if any, and only from the utter bottomi 1933 until 1937, however during that time GDP never exceeded even 1930, and unemployment never went below 10% until the year we entered the war. The federal debt tripled. Exactly what Obama has promised.. But then consider what American Industry was. GM, US Steel, Kaiser, Ford, RCA, Westinghouse, Zenith (the last three are all shells for foreign production now).

For all the effort, strife, suffering and battling the economic downturns, nothing worked.

You look at history and all you can do is admit it.

It takes a war.

Obama crows the turning point.

Right now I see an upturn in the stock market which will benefit folks (IF IT CONTINUES BACK TO 12-14,000) who thought they could not retire, but I don't see anything else indicative of a positive TREND. One data point is not a trend, and from 1929 to 1933 was a fit and start slide into a deflationary miasma.

The president can be a cheerleader, but he can't be Pollyanna without looking like her.