Is it just me, or does it also seem to you that a lot of the air has gone out of the euphoria filled balloon since November 4, 2008, the day of Barack Obama's historic election? Who can forget that night! 71 million people in the USA watched election night coverage. Grant Park was jammed for Obama's victory speech. Oprah and Rev. Jesse Jackson, along with thousands of others, were weeping. Salman Rushdie, in a post election appearance in Edmonton, went on at length about how hope had returned to America. The enthusiasm and "yes we can" spirit of the 1960's was back.
Election night was the high point. It's been mainly downhill since then. Belief that real change is at hand has been replaced by the sobering reality that "well, maybe we can't and won't". Obama himself seemed to signal that troubling thought in his election night speech. As you may recall, the speech was sombre and uninspiring. There was none of the rousing "yes we can" rhetoric which brought crowds to their feet during the election campaigning. Instead, I got the impression that Obama was thinking to himself: "oh my God, I actually pulled this off. Now what?".
The hard data which has come out since November 4 certainly do not support the proposition that with Obama's victory, confidence in the future has returned to America and to the world. Of course it is true that Obama has not yet taken office, and even once he does, he will not quickly or easily be able to undo the economic mess which we are in. No-one expects magic bullets or quick fixes. But what I find distressing is that no-one seems to have the confidence - "the change we can believe in" feeling - that things will get better under President Obama and his team. Remember it was this "change you can believe in" mantra which got Obama elected.
So what are the figures? On election day, the Dow Jones was at 9,625.28. As I am writing this, it stands at 8015.04. That is a drop of nearly 17% in less than three months. On the theory that the market anticipates good things before they actually happen, the market figures certainly do not evidence that investors have much confidence in the future. Retail sales in December were down 2.7%. Pending house sales dropped to a seven year low. Rather than thinking that things will be getting better under President Obama and that therefore now is a good time to jump back into the stock market, to buy a house, or to buy goods before prices rise, people think things will not be improving for a while. The change you can believe in does not seem, at least in ordinary folks' minds, to be on the horizon.
President-elect Obama has not done much to foster confidence that change is here. The team he has chosen to work with is all too familiar. There have been a lot of rookie fumbles. Whether the issue relates to Rick Warren, Leon Panetta, Bill Richardson, Blogojevich, Burris, and now Geithner, things could have been handled a lot better. The auto bail out has not impressed, and the fact that the first $350 billion was not spent as promised, has not helped restore confidence that change has come to Washington. In short, where once the question was "where's the beef", people can now not be faulted for asking "where's the change"?
Notwithstanding all of this, January 20 will be a great day. We will then wake up on January 21. So enjoy January 20.
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Perhaps one might respond in this fashion: Obama's inauguration is just about the ONLY source of hope at this gloomy time, when the worst presidency in history is ending with a world economy in freefall, peace in the Middle East more distant than ever, and the U.S. shamed in the world's eyes by its becoming-acknowledged perpetration of torture and other human rights abuses. If hope is scarce, it's only because no one expects Obama to work miracles in the process of recovering from Bush's messes. And why, pray tell, is Blagojevich on this list of early missteps?
ReplyDeleteDont be blue, Lew. I am excited. There is a ton of clean up needed after the lies and legal grabs and sell off of America over the last 8 years. It is work that will be done by millions, not one man or a cabinet or a party. Its time to ask what is fair for all and what can we all do to fix this mess. A fuller understanding of how much doo doo our economic system is in has coalesced since the election. So on the theory that the market is making bets on the future, yea, they think it will get worse. No one wanted to talk about problems with fundamentals before the election. And who was in power for eight years? Now it keeps getting stinkier. You are asking where is the change before the man has even taken office. He has said plainly there is only one president. There have been very few leaks. A few fumbles. I think this will be a 100 days like noone has seen before. Keep your chin up.
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