Well, it looks like a victory for the Keynesians over the Hayekians.  The two dueling economic schools have been at it since the early 1900s, the last test case being the banking implosion of 2008-9.  Led by the latest flag-bearer of the Keynesian school, the darling of the NYT and MSM, Paul Krugman and Co., with the Democrats in tow, have championed the Keynesian printing-press strategy to thwart the impending economic collapse.  As Robert Barro, professor of economics at Harvard University, puts it, the strategy was to:

… revive the economy through enormous borrowing and spending by the government, with the Federal Reserve playing a supporting role by keeping interest rates at record lows.

The leaderless Hayekians countered that such policies would lead to inflation and the collapse of the dollar and that the reverse policy of cutting the red tape strangling private enterprise and reducing taxes and spending, while painful in the short run, would lead to a revitalized and sustainable economy.

Inflation and collapse of the dollar?

Just the reverse has happened.  Keynes, Krugman, Obama and Co. have won.  They have the bragging rights, and Obama kicked off the parade in his last SOTU speech.

But is that the real story?

Back in 2012, the economists at RBC Capital Markets predicted that fracking would reduce energy imports so far that it would shrink the U.S. trade deficit and eventually convert the current account deficit into a surplus.  Inevitably, RBC argued, this would provide long-term support for the dollar and revitalize the economy – and that is exactly what happened.

Here is the 2015 story as covered by Ben Shapiro, bestselling author and conservative commentator, who somehow survived UCLA and Harvard Law.  In a word, it was fracking.  The irony is not lost on Shapiro, who notes that President Obama’s “recovery” has been “riding on the backs of just the folks the left despises: those evil frackers who power the engine of America’s economy.”  His article in Front Page is entitled “Fracking Saved the Obama Economy.”  Not only is the recovery not the wonder the O-administration would have us believe, but:

... [n]ever mind the fact that less Americans are in the active workforce, as a percentage, than at any time in three decades. Never mind that his recovery has been the weakest jobs recovery of the century.

The massive government debt-spending program would have turned the U.S. into an economic basket case were it not for those evil oil and gas companies – regarding whom, as Stephen Moore of the Heritage Foundation points out, “[f]rom 2008 to 2013, the oil and gas industry created more jobs on net than all other industries combined.”

But one has to admit, Mother Nature loves Obama.  Katrina got him elected.  Sandy got him re-elected, and fossil fuels served up from Mother Earth saved “his” economy.