Desperate Times are calling...

I was talking yesterday to a relative of mine about the economy (like there is another conversation nowadays), and he had a very interesting view. It started when I described the economy like a sinking ship where the seamen are trying to shovel the water off-board instead of sealing the hole(s) in the ship. It is debatable whether there is a seal big enough for those hole(s) but he claimed he did. His solution was very radical and drastic but he claims it would work. So he started presenting his argument:

Almost all economists agree that this recession was affected extremely by globalization. The fact that Americans are buying Japanese cars and Chinese (everything else) was a catalyst to this downward spiral if not outright caused it. So lets fix that. Block imports on certain industries like the auto industry (A Chevy factory outside the U.S. counts as import). The Ford Focus would look like a bargain when there is no Honda Civics. This way tens of thousands of jobs in that industry would be created. If you do this for a handful of industries, you would create the biggest job surge in American history and catapult the economy right out of this recession. I understand that this is radical but we are not living in ordinary times.

Hate or love his idea, it is intriguing. I mean the shear boldness of this action alone gets attention, let alone the effectiveness. Pros: It might work. Nothing can help an economy more than a jolt of a few hundred thousand jobs. New jobs create new jobs and job loss creates more job loss. Cons: Huge step back for globalization. Such a move would paralyze the global economy since we are the worlds biggest importer of everything. Everything the free market achieved the last 50 years would be set back, but is that such a terrible idea?

We know now that the free market has gotten us in this mess, is it so unbelievable that something other than the free market will get us out?