<As for recession fighting, there is fiscal policy like tax cuts but those have a very long lag time before they effect the economy.

Usually because, thanks to the Democrats, we only manage to pass pissy little tax cuts like the one we just managed to squeak through the Senate (which even now the Democrats are trying to rescind). Make a major cut in capital gains if you want to see some instant results. Then hammer through a consistent, large, long-term tax cut that businessmen and consumers can count on, and, just as icing on the cake for small businesses and farms, kill the estate tax. Then watch the economy jump. The Democrats would rather drop rabid wolverines down their pants than see any of this happen. Not because it wouldn't work, but because they know it would.

Keynesian spending policies have a much better track record for lifting an economy out of recession.

This is fake prosperity, caused by taxing productive citizens and pumping the money into areas where productivity has been lacking. Kind of like putting a penny in a fuse box.

Then of course there is monetary policy which the Federal Reserve has implemented and which usually has a much more immediate effect of the economy.

Cripes, don't get me started on the Fed. While I do not consider it the Minion of Satan that many radical right-wingers do, there is something seriously wrong with the way our economy is organized if the rate charged by the Fed can have such widespread impact. Anyway, the recent drops in interest rates, while they have helped a little, have certainly not been the fire under Wall Street's butt that everyone was hoping for.