Actually it did, WW2 was a public works project, and it sent the government into massive debt for the time to fund it, it put millions of unemployed to work, the problem with the New Deal was it wasn't big enough, WW2 was big enough.

There are several important distinctions between the impact World War 2 had on the economy and any stimulus that Obama can produce will have:

1) World War 2 was heavily financed through war-bonds while Obama's stimulus is financed through monetizing debt

2) World War 2 destroyed a large portion of the industry of developed nations and the largest and most advanced industrial nation in the world was the United States which gained the lion's share of the money from Europe's rebuilding.

3) World War 2 ensured that efficient companies were given money to produce a skilled labour force in order to develop advanced technology (which became the basis of the US' economy for the next 50 years); Obama's stimulus is given to corrupt and inefficient companies to pay back political favours from organized labour and the financial sector.

No, WW2 was nothing more than a production and employment bubble itself. There were still dozens of facets of the depression still lingering during the war. It wasn't until AFTER the war that the depression truly ended.

People are high if they think this is going to end anytime soon. Things are going to get worse before they get any better. And they will not go back to "how it used to be."

Remember when everyone in late 07 early 08 was saying "don't call it a recession" then it wasn't until late 08 early 09 when people started saying the recession started in late 07 early 08 lol. When we are losing half a million jobs in a month and I'm hearing it may be close to 600k in July this can only continue to be called a recession for so long before people admit that it is a Depression.

Things are very serious right now.

There are also distinctions between this recession and the Great Depression, this recession has much less unemployment, the financial industry isn't in as much chaos, industrial production isn't as far down, basically recovery is going to be much easier in this recession than in the Great Depression, also that advanced technology, was on the basis of government research and government contracts into new technologies.  So yeah there are differences, there are differences on both sides of the coin, but it still doesn't change the point that its not a working out of the debt that is going to recover the economy, it'll be government expenditures.

Actually it ended during the war, in fact by 1944-46 we were at a peak well above the hidtorical trendline, and the postwar recession was a tiny dip by comparision

If that is the only factor you use to determine a depression, then we probably shouldn't continue the issue.

GDP or gross domestic product is usually a good measure of the state of the economy, but here's unemployment as well

By 1942, unemployment had fallen below 5%

The recession isn't over, so you can't outright say we'll see less unemployment than before. Even in the Great Depression, things didn't crash overnight.

We're talking about trillions of dollars in excessive debt, and you think all will be fixed by government expenditures in the order of hundreds of billions, many of which are being used to fix existing state and municipal deficits?

I really doubt it'll get anywhere near 25% unemployment, we aren't even at 10 yet, 11-13% is probably the ceiling.

The problem with your analysis is that tit forgets a few things, first while there is trillions of dollars in debts in the US, GDP has not fallen by trillions, in addition money spent in the market tends to produce more effect than its amount based on propensity to save, what happens is that when the government spends a dollar, that dollar is multiplied by a certin coefficient across the entire economy, because that money is used to buys something, which is then used by the company that sold to pay its workers, or buy something else, which is then used by the workers and other companies to buys something, each time less is utilized, but it greater effect than just the one dollar, as a result hundreds of bllions can create trillions in effect.