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“An economic crisis of historic proportions”

Economic growth, Financial Events, Leverage, Oil markets
By Paul Hodges on 25-Nov-2008
By Paul Hodges on 25-Nov-2008
Obama.jpgPresident-elect Obama has become the latest world leader to “get it”, as his wife Michelle once remarked. For far long, politicians seemed to believe their platitudes about the “underlying strength” of their national economies. This meant their proposed remedies were reactive, and usually unworkable.

More recently, the blog has also worried that the USA faced a policy vacuum, with Bush still President and Obama in ‘hands-off’ mode. Obama’s recognition yesterday that we are in “an economic crisis of historic proportions” is therefore very welcome. The blog strongly supports his analysis of the need for the US to “act swiftly and boldly”, to avoid a “vicious cycle” developing between Main St and Wall St, in which “folks consume less” and deepen the “problems in our financial markets”.

The USA is the world’s only economic super-power. Whatever protocol suggests, it is essential that Obama now takes the reins quickly, before his official inauguration. Effective action cannot wait until after 20 January.

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