Told Me So
Less than a month to go and it looks more and more like I will be proven wrong. McCain futures are now in the twenties on Intrade. Obama has done well in the debates and is ahead in every closely fought state except Indiana (and George Bush won Indiana by TWENTY! points in 2004). I'm just about ready to dare to dream.
At this point, it's all starting to look like a hospital pass. Obama will inherit two unwinnable wars, a massive and fast-growing deficit, the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression and the beginning of the end of oil. I think Obama's an amazingly smart, careful and hard working guy. But will that be enough? America's debts have come due and I don't think America is ready (either psychologically or financially) to pay.
2 Comments:
If Obama seriously can get an Apollo program for ending dependency on oil in play I think that would have beneficial effects across the whole spectrum.
In addition, getting Bush out of the way of stem cell and other sorts of research will give the economy a boost.
An Apollo/Manhattan project on carbon-free energy WOULD be an interesting step towards saving the world - but I can't see the US getting in to such a "big government" kind of thing, even with a Democrat president and Congress - certainly not as deficit spending, although economically there's an argument for that. Obama could do worse than to try to channel Roosevelt.
This is America's unexpected result of globalisation. If you no longer have the best resources, workforce, and political system in the world, you can't continue to occupy that position of world dominance on credit. In this way the US is no different to a consumer who buys big screen TVs on 12-month interest free terms, then has difficulty paying for them.
America's best hope would be to use its military might while it still can and go liberate some oil fields around the world, and maybe some gold mines as well, and dare the world to do something about it. Not that I'm calling for that, but it will be interesting the see what the US does when its back is against the wall and it faces its fall from global pre-eminence.
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