With the world’s major economies meeting at the G-20 this week charged with finding a solution to the impending global depression, President Barack Obama will be challenged to convince participants that the United States deserves to continue to lead the way.
A skilled speaker with charm, charisma and a winning smile will help President Obama immensely, but when the world begins to examine the backdrop from which he has to work, they will be more than willing to press for international safeguards as they see fit and not necessarily what the United States brings to the table. President Obama did not just inherit a $trillion plus deficit, a war in Iraq, a war in Afghanistan and a third border war percolating with Mexico from the Bush W. administration. He also inherited a systemically corrupt and woefully inept congress that has long over stayed their welcome and long outlived their usefulness.
The President will face push back from France and Germany over more regulation and less stimulation along with the Chinese and Russians. The President will be faced with private accusations of the US being the catalyst for the World’s financial crisis and he will have little ammunition to fight back with. Our congress has shown over the last thirty years that they have been more than complicit in the downward spiral of the world’s net worth as they have failed to provide and maintain adequate controls, regulation and oversight to keep the US economy on sound ground.
If it is true that the world has always looked to America’s political and business leadership as a model to follow, then we must admit we have failed the world miserably. It is bad enough that Congress has failed to deliver an affordable healthcare plan for its citizenry after decades of Bull-Sh*t debates on the floor of the House and the Senate, but it is just as horrid this same Congress have stood by and let the vast majority of middleclass jobs disappear from communities only to resurface in China, India Mexico Japan Indonesia among others.
From education to immigration, our congress has done nothing to make this country stronger, smarter or safer. Our Congress has funded many so called wars over the last few decades, but we have lost them all. The war against drugs, the war against poverty, the war against terror, you name it, we lost it. The only war the US government has won in the last forty years is the war against the middleclass.
If those that have observed America as closely as we have over the last ten years,they will likely see that the American Ponzi style economics was allowed to flourish with the passing of the Gramm-Leach-Bliey Act. We have watched our congress allow credit card companies rape our wallets, we have also watched congress cut off remedies to financial relief by rewriting the bankruptcy laws to favor big business. We have seen a congress in the last eight years shirk their duties of holding the Bush administration’s feet to the fire by requiring undisputable proof before taking the nation to an unjust war. We have watched congress allow our rights of privacy to be eroded. We watched our congress allow torture in the name of “homeland security.” And worst of all, we have watched this latest congress throw billions of very hard earned taxpayer dollars around wildly without a clue as to how it is being spent or whether it’s use will have the desired effect before the entire economy collapses.
If the rest of the world is seeing what we are seeing; a congress largely made up of lame lawyers who fail to understand the basic principals of risk managements, limiting exposure and how to mitigate damages when things screw up, then we think our President is in for a rude awakening at this G-20 meeting. Click here for the podcast
