by Aetius Romulous

Created on: January 27, 2009

The election of Barack Obama has already "improved" the United States in as much as he has galvanized popular emotion, and has, more than any other President in modern History, given focus to the challenges that lay ahead.

Like a young John Lennon tilting into the srceaming hordes, Obama is struggling to make his voice heard over the din of adulation that has engulfed him. If you strain just hard enough, you can make out a serious and foreboding tenor. He warns of the inevitable, the rising tide of demographics that he himself had harnessed. There was a reason the ephemeral "Hope" was straddled within the constraints of "Change". The news is bad. All Bad.

There is no American "Fix" for the increasing decline of asset values around the world. There may not be any fix. Those asset values carry a hefty weight in American mortgages, all scattered like fall leaves around the banking houses of the earth. The paper piled on top of them in the form of now infamous Derivatives is countless in its lack of value, all of which at one time not so long ago was the rocket fuel that drove obscene amounts of concentrated prosperity. All gone.

The American economy sits on the wrong side of a disasterous balance of trade with the world, a machine built over 30 years for nothing but consumption and excess. There are no gears to reverse the engine, no way to turn retail plazas into plow shares. America depends entirely on haveing the cash or credit to purchase without recourse of return. It spends more than it makes.

The baby boom generation that built the entire, messy edifice has approached its golden year, which ended on January 20, 2009. Haveing spent the Country into virtual bakruptcy, the Boomers are now expecting a full and prosperous retirement on the backs of those left behind, those who number countless millions less than the infamous "Bulge in the Snake". A 10+ Trillion dollar debt, a projected 3 Trillion dollar deficit, a world economy in meltdown, and now the burden of carrying all those clowns who actually believe its possible. Welcome to the world you "Post Boomers". Enjoy the health care instead, as a kind of consolation prize - untill the money runs out at least.

It is completely beyond Obama's - or any President of any Nation - scope or ability to single handedly slay the dragon. The brewing troubles are International. You wanted a Global Village? Well, you got one. The crisis has its roots deep within the financial architecture of the planet and the growing pain in America is but a symptom. Americans are looking to Obama for answers, but all he has are warnings.

And yet, remarkably, his dire tone has done little to dint his popularity. Barack Obama has managed, through the will of shear charisma, to weld together the problems of the people of the United States and throw them up as a sheild against the larger issues that remain. He has given the common American a sense of purpose, and a unity in the face of danger that Americans love so much in their Hero's and their myths. John Wayne at Fort Apache holding out untill the Cavalry arrives. In this way, Obama has improved America.

He has delivered Hope, in the face of Change.

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