unfortunately everything about this election changed over the summer: the peak in commodities (mainly oil but all of them really), the disintigration of the commercial paper market, pretty much the US economy tanking hardcore. add in bear from the spring and lehman in the fall, AIG, fannie mae, etc, and you have a nice mix of a shite storm to reprirotize the election. i think this election would have been wayyyyyyyyyyy closer had it not been for the US economy's performance, especially equities, during this past fall
obama's first objectives in office are going to be to get the economy going again. at this point it's anyone's guess when that will be. the ISM report was the lowest in 26 years, ADP reported a huge wave of non-farm payroll decreases. factor in that 10 year treasury yield curves are completely fucked in the skull right now and you have that chance for some really serious unforseen inflation showing up sometime in the beginning of the 2nd or 3rd quarter 2009 (my reasoning for this is fairly simple: in the end the gov'ment is going to pump, in the form of stimuli, lowering the reserve ratio, improving bank balance sheets, about 2 trillion dollars into the economy, over a relatively short time frame. sheer money supply increase. and if you believe in the phillips' curve, well, we might definitely need to lube up...and yeah, the hit equities took over the past months lessens the inflation factor...) but you never know because half the battle with inflation is about expectations.
i'd say an ideal time frame is that 15 months from now, the economy should be pretty normal. obama could maybe then start to really push his policies along.
iraq and afghanistan will definitely be first on his list. luckily these two areas can be addressed in a serious fashion as soon as he takes office. he'll probably negotiate with the iraqis and suggest/force them to set a time table for when they want american troops to leave. but we'll never fully be out of there, sort of how we never left germany. we'll most likely set up a significant air base somewhere in iraq away from urban areas and probably close to the boarder with kuwait or saudi arabia
afghanistan, well we're going to be there as long as it takes, and hopefully obama will demand serious accountability from pakistan. i worry more about pakistan than iran or north korea. this country actually has nukes and its mad unstable. thankfully the military is the strongest institution there and their policies are somewhat aligned with those of the west, but in the end their loyalties will be with themselves and the tenability of their power and influence.
the best thing that pres elect obama can and hopefully will immediately do is improve US image abroad. restoring the credibility of america is an important and essential task to improving domestic policy in the US. i don't have any problems with the suggestions that obama will hold meetings with leaders of so called rogue nations like venezuela, north korea and iran. why not? simply because they are fucktards? come on. it never made any sense to me why president bush didn't take more steps to improve relations with venezuela which came at the cost of an increasing chinese influence in south america. another thing i see obama doing is standing up to russia. that shit they pulled this summer in georgia was bull shit (the same can be argued about the US' involvement in iraq). but realistically there are no real actions he could take to stand up to them ruskies especially if oil climbs back to over 100 dollars.
remember those anti-obama adds where joe biden is quoted as seeing a crisis developing within 6 months of his election? bring it on bitches. let's see our charismatic new guy throw some weight around
domestically, things are going to be verrrry very tricky, perhaps even more so than his foreign policy operations. already for this year, huge amounts of money have been doled out to stabilize not just the US banking system but also international banking systems. and he wants to spend more. and cut taxes for some and raise them for others; unfortunately we won't be able to tax our way out of the debt mess the US is in at the moment and expect the economy to recover in a timely fashion. so how does obama pay for improving healthcare, increasing spending on education, building infrastructure, among a myriad of other goals? ideally, and this is irrespective of how one feels about the war, we cut back in military spending for oversea's operations. conservative estimates suggest it costs 10 billion dollars a day. but this won't happen for a good while...
you know everyone thinks obama is going to change shit and maybe change it overnight. but face it fellow US citizens. we're printing money out of thin air at the moment and our economy is doing shitty (really the global economy is doing shitty but that's for another debate). we have no real exports for the most part. once again our main export is green backs.
i have some real concerns over a few little things, like ummmmm, the balance of power in our government. 56 seats at the moment, possibly 60 by week's end, are in the dems' hands. the dems also control the house. congress and the white house will both be democratic. remember when this last happened? right as our current president was entering office (actually the senate was 50/50, but see http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2000/results/). so it's definitely premature to think that things will get better as the administration moves forward. it sucks because a lot of democrats in office now are going to want to get some 'revenge' for 8 years of conservativism (read: nancy pelosi and harry reid are going on a serious power trip). there is a real shitty possibility that obama's tax plan could backfire and send the country into a deeper economic problem than it is already in
i also don't see this administration shoring up trade relations and creating new deals, even though the survival and improvement of the american manufacturing base will ultimately depend on more open economies around the world, and that includes the US. let's see if obama can put together a solid labour policy to get net exports into positive territory.
oh yeah then there is energy policy. i can't get too into this. i say, more windmills. and all you fools on the coasts who object to building wind turbines off your shores because it will ruin the view, STFU! they look cool anyway and you won't be able to see them because they will be over the horizon. i'm also down with some nuclear power plants. but the fact is, the electricity infrastructure we have right now is not capable of handling new energy supply and demand effectively. luckily obama made infrastructure improvement one of his main goals. in the end, everyone on the planet fucked until we figure out fusion. indeed, fusion will be the ultimate free lunch
ahh man i'm losing focus here. the above is in no way exhaustive of the problems facing america or the globe right now. there's so much more to be said on energy policy, our wars, our education system, immigration, defense spending, R&D etc etc etc
{i'll end with this: if i were obama right now, i'd use infrastructure improvement as my number one action to start rebuilding the economy. this demand side approach to reflating the economy will put people back to work in many areas and the projects could be tailored to specific states. [i]and pleasssse[i/] don't raise taxes until the economy is back and stronggggg}}
PS legalize ganje too
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