Signs of an Economic Recession

I found some fun news articles where economic experts like Alan Greenspan were warning of an economic recession as early as February of 2007!! And the vast majority of other experts seem to be pointing to mid 2008. What's so surprising is that when these major thinkers set off warning bells, nothing changed. The US government is literally buying up stocks in private companies (hopefully they will remain a unbiased shareholder), yet I can't help wondering why the US government didn't do something about this sooner?? I've taken an article about 10 causes of an economic recession and outlined what the government could have done and should do today. To any readers out there...I would love comments, suggestions and discussion!!

1. The Rate Of Joblessness Assumes Disturbing Proportions.
It's not surprising to learn that the acceptable rate of unemployment, like debt and everything else in the US, has been raising in the US over the last decade. I remember while growing up, we would listen to the morning news on the radio while sitting around the breakfast table and when unemployment hit 4% my father was amazed saying "Do you know how many Americans that is? Just imagine all those people without jobs." Well in 5th grade I didn't have a grasp on it, but 4% didn't sound that bad. When taking an economic course later in college, I learned that 2-3% was healthy (when not counting seasonal turn-over) while anything above that could be symptomatic of more problems. So when we're looking at more than 6% now, that number is wholly disturbing clocking in at 18 million! 18,325,598 people to be exact and that's not taking into consideration seasonal layoffs. That is according to the US Census Bureau's Population Clock.

Why didn't the government do something about this sooner? Good question! I think the best short answer I can give to this is because we were involved in too many other things to focus on this issue. We were engaged in two wars overseas(Iraq & Afghanistan), a ton of regional disputes and hot spots(Ossetia, Sudan, the Chinese Olympics, etc.), the media hurricane during the ongoing presidential debates, and now the largest economic crisis since the great depression. These things have been happening one thing after another, there hasn't been time for anyone to gain their bearings. Hows the saying go? When it rains, it poors?

What can we do about it now? I'm just going to put a couple of ideas forward here.
1. Throw money at energy sustainability, at health care, at education, infrstructer...at anything that needs improving...just let Americans improve it.
2. Provide incentives for businesses to keep jobs in the US. This doesn't mean giving them free tax breaks to practice in the US, but instead give the tax breaks as incentives to do business like America wants. For example, give tax breaks to employers when they provide healthcare, insurance benefits, or child care assistance.
3. Provide indirect support by removing protectionist policies in the US. For example, the reason it's so costly to keep car manufacturing plants in the US is the cost of steele. The cost of steele is dictated by steele tarriffs because US steele makers can't compete with the cheap cost of steele from other countries. So, the steele unions acorss the country are indirectly hurting the cost of automanufacturers. If US steele manufactors were forced to compete in the global market you would see prices drop and the market would play towards competitive advantages. (Something the US has many off, but has done itself an injustice by using protectionist policies that force business elsewhere.)
4. Insist on a global living wage or competitive tax. If companies want to base themselves in foreign countries to avoid taxes thats fine, but then we insist in order to opperate in the US they must prove they are paying their employees a standard living wage or pay a tax for opperating in the US. If they are going to take advantage of our markets, we tax them them not through tarriffs but through a fair competition tax. This would encourage jobs back in the US and allow to tax those businesses avoiding taxes by basing themselves in foreign countries. The message is clear, it doesn't matter where you opperate from...if you want to opperate in the US, then you pay taxes in the US.