It is not so much "what the U.S. Government can do" but what the rest of the nations of the world are willing to do to ensure that their Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and their Gross National Product (GNP) will not decline but instead grow inspite of the present financial crisis.
The financial crisis was caused by shifting investments from actual productive endeavours to speculative ventures in shares of stocks, currencies and commercial documents which seemed very profitable (good for the balance sheet) at the beginning until the bubble burst. Whatever money was lost by the G20's corporate world became the personal profits by way of commissions and perks of those who originated this speculative ventures. Whatever little money was invested in actual production of goods and services are now withheld to shore up the capital of corporate investores. The effect is a reduction in international trade. Analysis will show that the most affected are the multinationals who transferred and continue to transfer their production facilities to gain the advantage of cheap labor and bigger markets in the developing world.
What needs to be done is for the developing nations to change their monetary policies, understand that money is not the wealth of nations. Money is anything which at any time is generally accepted as a "medium of exchange" and/or "measure of value. While individual persons may consider money as their personal wealth because of its ready exchangeability, it is not wealth to the nation.
Wealth is anything material, produced by human labor for the satisfaction of human desires and has value in exchange. Wealth to the nation are the actual material products, goods and services such as the infrastructure, equipment and facilities that money can buy. There is no such thing as immaterial wealth in economics.
Money is issued by the government of legitimate states. This money can than be used locally to finance the building of infrastructure, equipment and facilities required by the people, and to pay the people to operate, maintain and repair these facilities to keep them in proper shape for the delivery of required government services in health, education, communication, transportation, power, peace and order, defense, natural resources, etc. including agriculture. This will put money, purchasing power, in the hands of the people. There will be a new and greater demand for produced goods and there will always be enterprising investors who will go into business in answer to these demand.
By concentrating on local productive activities as mentioned above, instead of exports, GDP and GNP will not fall but instead rise to a level limited only by the willingness of governments to shift their monetary policies. In so doing, they would have solved unemployment and helped alleviate the problem of poverty, if not totally solve it.
Only the excess production after local consumption have been satisfied should be exported. It must be accepted that the multinationals will move at will from one country to another wherever greater profits beacons. The production from the manufacturing sectore will always fluctuate with their movement. Welcome them when they come and bid them farewell when they decide to go somewhere else.
The problem of the developing world is lack of money, so the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund keep saying. But if money is issued and printed by governments, what would prevent them from using the same as outlined above? They would only require foreign exchange for products such as modern equipment not locally available, and this is where their exports should buy.
From the Philippine experience, the best export any country can make is manpower. Overseas contract workers are contributing 16 billion U.S.Dollars to the Philippine economy without any import cost related to it. That should be able to purchase all the modern equipment and needed to build high quality infrastructures. The above recommendations applies to all developing nations including the Philippines.