President Barack Obama

When President Barack Obama, flanked by his leadership colleagues attending the G20 Summit in Pittsburgh, made his dramatic announcement regarding Iran’s covert second site for uranium processing, he did so with a high degree of credibility. Not wishing to follow the fanciful nuclear allegations made by the Bush administration to justify its invasion of Iraq, President Obama and his advisors deliberated for several months with  the U.S. intelligence community before being persuaded of the true purpose underlying a secretive underground facility being constructed by the Iranian regime outside the holy city of Qom.

The carefully worded statement by the president telegraphs an unambiguous message to the international community, and especially to those nations most concerned with the dangers of nuclear proliferation. The configuration of the Iranian nuclear facility, apparently built in violation of Tehran’s commitments to the International Atomic Energy Agency, makes it unsuited for any possible civilian purposes. However, once in operation, it would be ideally suitable for constructing at least one fission nuclear warhead per year.

Once the Iranian ruling elite realized that their secret facility was about to be unveiled, they hurriedly informed the IAEA that, apparently, they had regrettably forgot to inform the UN’s nuclear watchdog that a second uranium processing plant was being built. The fact that it was being constructed underground, below a mountain, was in no way indicative that this was anything other than a peaceful nuclear project, so claim the Iranian authorities.

No serious government believes the Iranian rationalizations, not even the Russians, who up till recently were opposed to imposing severe economic sanctions on Tehran. However, the apparently unassailable intelligence data on the nature of the nuclear facility near Qom has convinced even Moscow that sanctions may be warranted. That apparently is the hope of Washington, with the momentum now in place for a deadline that would place Iran under a sanctions regime by December, unless it is in compliance with all UN resolutions regarding her uranium enrichment program.

As laudable as President Obama’s intentions are on resolving the Iranian nuclear issue through diplomacy, I believe recent history does not leave grounds for optimism. Economic sanctions are only effective if they are imposed on a regime that is susceptible to domestic public pressure. In the case of  a Iran, the fixing of the recent presidential election and brutal suppression of public protest at having their votes disregarded  is clear evidence that the theocratic elite in Tehran does not factor in public opinion when formulating policy. Furthermore, the scope and immense financial investment being made on the Iranian nuclear project, at a time when that nation’s economy is experiencing high unemployment and rampant inflation, is incontrovertible proof that acquiring nuclear weapons, and the missile technology to deliver atomic warheads to distant targets, is that regime’s top priority.

For more than a decade, the international community has imposed draconian  economic sanctions on North Korea in an effort to contain Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program. The North Korean economy is a basket case, yet that reality has in no way restrained the nuclear ambitions of a regime that sees nuclear weapons as its best insurance policy for survival. The North Korean example would seem to suggest that when a dictatorial regime, immune to internal public opinion, is determined to develop nuclear weapons, economic sanctions are an ineffective policy response. There is every likelihood that Iran’s theocratic leadership is similarly immune to economic pressure, and sees diplomacy as merely a delaying tactic, to buy time while Tehran rushes forward with its covert uranium enrichment activity.

If in fact sanctions do not  impede Iran’s nuclear goals, what is likely to happen? Based on Israel’s aggressive non-proliferation policy  in the Middle East, and how they perceive the Iranian nuclear threat, it is unlikely they will remain passive if it appears that Tehran is on the verge of becoming a nuclear power. If the only alternative to an Iranian nuclear weapon is an Israeli attack on Iran, there should be no illusions about the Iranian reaction. They are likely to strike back not only at Israel, but at every Western country, most probably by mining the straits of Hormuz and attacking oil tankers in the Persian Gulf. The economic crisis the world is currently enduring will be massively exacerbated, with oil prices rising through the stratosphere. It is not inconceivable that a long-term regional war will erupt, while the global economy enters a tailspin.

It is not pleasant to contemplate the strong possibility that economic sanctions will fail to thwart Iran’s nuclear weapons program. However, the real world of geopolitics is often unpleasant, and frequently ugly. As painful  as it is, I hope that Washington is contemplating other options besides economic sanctions.  Otherwise, the Obama administration and the international community will, in effect, make a decision that the Israelis should handle the Iranian nuclear problem, and allow all the horrific yet predictable consequences to ensue.

President Barack Obama, 44th President of the United States of America, sent out the following Independence Day message via the Internet. The Obama letter was sent by e-mail in advance of President Obama’s first official visit to Russia. The Obama July 4th message follows:

This weekend, our family will join millions of others in celebrating America. We will enjoy the glow of fireworks, the taste of barbeque, and the company of good friends. As we all celebrate this weekend, let’s also remember the remarkable story that led to this day.

Two hundred and thirty-three years ago, our nation was born when a courageous group of patriots pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to the proposition that all of us were created equal.

Our country began as a unique experiment in liberty — a bold, evolving quest to achieve a more perfect union. And in every generation, another courageous group of patriots has taken us one step closer to fully realizing the dream our founders enshrined on that great day.

Today, all Americans have a hard-fought birthright to a freedom which enables each of us, no matter our views or background, to help set our nation’s course. America’s greatness has always depended on her citizens embracing that freedom — and fulfilling the duty that comes with it.

As free people, we must each take the challenges and opportunities that face this nation as our own. As long as some Americans still must struggle, none of us can be fully content. And as America comes ever closer to achieving the perfect Union our founders dreamed, that triumph — that pride — belongs to all of us.

So today is a day to reflect on our independence, and the sacrifice of our troops standing in harm’s way to preserve and protect it. It is a day to celebrate all that America is. And today is a time to aspire toward all we can still become.

With very best wishes,

President Barack Obama

July 4th, 2009

Barack Obama, America’s 44^th President, is one of the most brilliant, hard working and innovative politicians to occupy the White House. If the current economic crisis were a typical post-war cyclical recession, there is no doubt that President Obama would be up to the challenge, and lead the United States to renewed growth and prosperity. Alas, we are in different times, with a uniquely devastating and dangerous economic disaster of worldwide scope. Not even as gifted a leader as Barack Obama, I fear, will prove sufficient in arresting the rampaging Global Economic Crisis.

No one can accuse Obama of not recognizing that the U.S. faces a severe economic recession. Most of his administration’s initial activity has centered around crafting policy responses to the recession, primarily involving the unprecedented expenditure of borrowed money in an attempt to revive growth. However, the very character and essence of his administration’s economic policymaking reveals the lack of comprehension of how dire and unique the Global Economic Crisis is on the part of President Obama. At his core, Obama believes that the American economic system is basically sound, but slid into a severe recession because of irresponsible behavior on the part of some actors within the financial oligarchy. Hence, by restoring growth through deficit spending and enacting a new regulatory regime to restrict the destructive greed of some Wall Street tycoons and bankers, we can return to the happy economic days of yore. In effect, Obama is acting like a nostalgia buff, hoping that the correct policies will recapture the solid economic model of pre-George W. Bush America. Unfortunately, this view of America’s political economy is mythological. The U.S. economy was unhinged under the presidency of Bill Clinton as much as it has been under Bush, yet Obama has chosen Clintonites to serve in the most important economic policymaking positions in his administration. Cheerleaders for a failed model will not lead America to a new economic Jerusalem.

A major part of the problem Obama is facing is philosophical. He is following a conventional view of counter-cyclical economics; when a recession occurs, the sovereign can go into debt and use borrowed money to artificially increase demand and thus arrest the decline in growth. Once the recession is arrested, government fiscal policy can return to a more prudent policy of balanced budgets, as restored economic growth eliminates the need for the government to maintain demand. Sounds simple, as this has been enshrined as the recession-fighting bible created by economist Maynard Keynes. The only difference, the Obama administration would argue, is that this recession is much bigger than previous economic downturns, and therefore requires much more significant deficit spending. Otherwise, the Keynesian model remains unaltered.

This perspective by the Obama administration, in my view, is myopic. Like many contemporary politicians and economists, President Obama and his senior economic advisors have misread Maynard Keynes. Contrary to public perception, Keynes was no economic radical, but a centrist in dealing with the challenge of managing economic cycles within a capitalist system. Though Keynes did believe deficit spending was justified as a means to stimulate economies in deep recession, he also advocated budget surpluses during times of relative prosperity. In effect, Keynes believed in “rainy day” economics; in times of plenty you put away a little fiscal cushion that can then be spent during a recessionary period to enable the sovereign to maintain economic demand during a time of private sector contraction and declining tax revenues. This is actually a conservative philosophy that many farmers are familiar with.

In the United States, even during times of sustained economic growth, massive government deficits have been de rigeur during the past nine years, in the process doubling the national debt. There is no rainy day fund to speak of, so the staggering deficits that are now being enacted by the Obama administration are, in my judgement, fiscally unsustainable. Already, the projection for the current fiscal year’s deficit has risen by $200 billion to a stratospheric $1.8 trillion; my own estimate is that it will top $2 trillion. Looking into the future, the current Obama fiscal agenda foresees annual deficits of $1 trillion or more for several years into the future, gambling that the recession will be short-lived, with growth returning as early as the last quarter of 2009, leading to increased tax revenue and declining deficits.

But are we in a recession? The current downturn is already the most protracted and destructive since World War II. However, there is another ingredient that has been added into this toxic economic stew: globalization. We are in a Global Economic Crisis in which synchronized contractions across the world create multiple negative feedback loops that reinforce the underlying negative causation. The subprime collapse in the United States crippled banks in the U.K. and devastated Japan’s export machine; the Eurozone economic contraction is now impacting America’s export driven manufacturers. When China’s exports to America decline, commodity exporters and peripheral economies that supply value-added components to China’s export goods get whipsawed. This phenomenon is occurring at an accelerating pace, despite attempts by the Obama administration to portray minor statistical anomalies to the prevailing trend as “rays of hope” and “green shoots.” Reading tealeaves is no substitute for critical analysis.

The ongoing Global Economic Crisis has proven to be so severe, sustained and virulent that if it is not yet a global depression, it is embarked on that dangerous trajectory. However, another flaw in the Obama administration’s approach is its failure to recognize that a substantial part of the financial system is rotten to the core, and not merely a fundamentally sound system with a few bad applies populating it, who can be restrained by improved regulation. More importantly, the Obama economic team seems to have convinced themselves that “mind over matter” is the best palliative for the nation’s stricken banking system. When a sovereign’s private banks are essentially insolvent and not engaged in normal loan activities, this is another manifestation of an economic depression. Rather than admit the truth, the Obama administration cobbled together a make-believe series of bank stress tests, which supposedly show that America’s banking system, with a few minor problems, is essentially sound and fiscally healthy. This conclusion is an utter fraud, designed to artificially create a climate of economic confidence. It won’t work, and by delaying an honest approach towards the nation’s crippling level of bank insolvency, the policymakers are insuring that the final cost of the inevitable day of reckoning will be far more costly to the taxpayers.

The economist Hernando de Soto has captured the essence of the Global Economic Crisis as few others have. In his view, the Western world, and principally the United States, who have for so long railed against Third World inefficiency and corruption, have created the largest, most toxic shadow economy in the history of human civilization. More than one quadrillion dollars in unregulated financial derivatives paper, according to de Soto, has destroyed inter-bank and financial counterparty trust to such an extent, credit flows have largely frozen despite unprecedented levels of taxpayer-funded borrowing to bailout the global financial system. Nothing short of an honest accounting of the true value of the toxic assets underlying these colossal derivatives products, which equal twenty times the entire world’s GDP, can put the global economy on the road to recovery. Until these unregulated “unknown unknowns” become fully transparent, all other government interventions, including Obama’s massive borrowing binge, are doomed to failure. Sadly, as the bogus bank stress tests reveal, President Barack Obama and his Clinton-era economic advisors have financial transparency as the least important objective on their agenda.

It seems that President Obama, despite his obvious leadership gifts and towering intellect, has chosen to place his faith in a team of advisors who are tied to the Wall Street oligarchy by an umbilical chord than cannot be severed. In a sense, Obama is following the path of the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, who also sincerely wished to resolve his country’s economic problems, but believed that the system was fundamentally sound and only required a modicum of reform to correct its distortions. Only after the collapse of the USSR did Gorbachev conclude that the system itself was unsustainable. Now it appears to this observer that President Obama may be fated to travel the same path as Gorbachev, and like him end up as a valiant failure.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown of the UK was in Washington for an official visit with President Barack Obama, 44th President of the United States. Obama and Brown discussed the global financial and economic crisis, and how the two countries can work together to prevent a major economic depression.

Barack Obama, 44th President, began his term on a theme of hope. The Obama administration began to set a tone of bipartisan politics, with Barack Obama inviting Republicans to the White House. Obama met with Republican Senators and Congressmen. Republicans were even appointed to the cabinet of President Barack Obama. However, with the first major test on Capital Hill, President Obama has found that bipartisan approaches will not change reality; the Republican Party remains opposed to the Obama agenda, especially regarding the economy. In the first vote on the Obama stimulus package in the House of Representatives, every single Republican congressman, without exception, voted in opposition. Now that the Senate will be voting on Barack Obama’s economic plan, President Obama has changed his tone. He is now being competitive and combatant in fighting for his stimulus package. In media appearances, before Democratic Party leaders and in his Saturday radio and Internet broadcast, he has sharply attacked the GOP for standing in the way of his economic emergency legislation. With data on the U.S. economy getting worse as the recession deepens, President Barack Obama in now more determined than ever to get his stimulus spending bill passed by Congress, and is prepared to turn up the heat on the Republican Party.

President Barack Obama has increased pressure on Congress to pass the stimulus package he believes is essential for economic recovery. Obama is now warning Congress that, “the time for talk is over,” amid worsening economic data.

Responding to White House pressure, Senate Majority leader Harry Reid is now saying that the Senate could vote on the $900 billion stimulus package by the end of the week. Moderate Republican and Democratic senators are seeking to remove some spending elements from the stimulus bill in an attempt to enhance bipartisan support for the legislation.

“The time for talk is over, the time for action is now,” President Obama indicated in a speech he delivered at the U.S. the Energy Department. “I am calling on the members of Congress, Democrats and Republicans to rise to this moment. The scale and the scope of this plan is the right one.”

Democratic Senator Ben Nelson and his centrist Republican colleague Susan Collins have been meeting in an effort to create a listing of spending cuts in the stimulus bill. The purpose is to attract more bipartisan support. Senator Collins of Maine prefers that the stimulus bill be reduced to $650-700 billion from the current level of $900 billion.

Referred to as the Obama Plan, the economic stimulus package being proposed by President Barack Obama, it is the number one legislative priority of the new administration. President Obama’s economic recovery plan will require the government to borrow $825 billion. Several officials of the Obama administration and allies in Congress have also indicated that more money may be needed to be distributed to banks, beyond the $700 billion already appropriated for TARP funding.

Barack Obama has indicated that it is urgent that Congress moves quickly and boldly on the Obama stimulus package. President Obama warned that a bad situation might get much worse for the American economy without speedy action. New jobless claims are at record levels as companies continue to announce layoffs. America’s banks remain in a weak condition. The bad economic news explains why President Barack Obama will be highly focussed on the economy and the passage by Congress of his plan to revitalize the U.S. economy.

President Obama has made the decision to terminate a ban on providing funding for organizations that provide abortion services overseas, thus reversing a policy enacted by the previous administration of George W. Bush. This is one of a number of executive orders being issued by Barack Obama that reverses policies of the previous president.

The policy of George W. Bush, referred to as the “global gag rule,” prevented organizations that provide relief in foreign countries from being recipients of U.S. funding if they were connected in any way in the support or provision of abortion services. Non-profit health organizations have indicated they have incurred severe financial distress, as the U.S. government is one of the primary funders of family planning programs on a global scale. President Barack Obama’s decision will be received as welcome news by these organizations.

With hundreds of groups functioning in many of the world’s poorest countries, where both infant and maternal mortality rates are very high, they have had to make a difficult choice. They could agree to sign the gag rule of the Bush administration, agreeing to be silent on abortion, or refuse to sign and be deprived of significant amounts of financial aid from the United States. President Obama will now remove the “global gag rule,” allowing funding to be directed to those organizations that had refused to obey the policy of the Bush administration. Barack Obama is demonstrating in his first days as 44^th U.S. president that he intends to chart a course much different from that of his predecessor.

Barack H. Obama is now officially the 44th President of the United States. The first African-American to be elected president of the U.S.A. was sworn in with the same Bible used at the inauguration of Abraham Lincoln in 1861.

An estimated two million people were present in Washington D.C. for the inauguration of Barack Obama as 44th President. The audience that watched the swearing in of President Obama was global, and may possibly be counted in the billions.

In his inaugural address, President Barack Obama spoke with great eloquence not only to his own fellow American citizens, but also to citizens of the world. He pledged renewed American leadership on the world stage for those oppressed politically and seeking economic opportunity with justice. On the home front, President Obama also spoke of individual responsibility, the need to make tough choices and the long road ahead for leading America out of the global economic crisis.

Now that Barack Obama is the 44th President and Joe Biden the Vice President, it can be truly said that the George W. Bush era is over. The entire world now looks to President Obama to lead America in a new direction.

In three more days, Barack Obama will be inaugurated as the 44^th president of the United States of America. The entire world is alive with anticipation and excitement, as the day of the inauguration draws near. The specter of Obama mania will probably ensure that a global audience of billions will be watching President-elect Obama being sworn in, his hands on the same Bible that Abraham Lincoln, 16^th U.S. president, used at his inauguration.

From January 20th, 2009 the world will be referring to President Barack Obama. Soon to be past history will be the eight years of George W. Bush, which has left America alienated from much of the world, mired in two wars and now with an economy in the throes of a major depression.

So many Americans, and others across the world, have high expectations in Barack Obama. Will a President Obama be able to deliver on the hopes of so many? His challenges are so immense and daunting, the odds are so great. However, just by being elected 44^th President, Barack Obama has already demonstrated his capacity to overcome steep odds, and fulfill the “Audacity of Hope.” The world now awaits President Barack Obama.