KEVIN WILLIAMSON: News flash: This is not 1982, and Obama is not Reagan. “The important difference is this: There was a good reason for the Volcker-Reagan recession: defeating inflation. American voters may not be terribly economically sophisticated, but they sure as heck did notice when inflation went from 13.5 percent to 3.2 percent — in two years. . . . What, precisely, will we have to show for having come through the Obama recession(s)? A gigantic new federal entitlement program? Staggering amounts of debt? Persistently high levels of unemployment? That’s the best-case scenario.”

UPDATE: A hedge-fund reader emails with another difference between now and 1982:

There was no limit to how high Volcker could let interest rates rise, in his successful fight against inflation. And the aftermath would be a feel-good rate decline.

Bernanke now faces an absolute limit, zero, on how low he can set rates to prevent deflation…and the end game has to be an unpleasant rate increase.

Good point.