A fixer for the hangover

Alcoholics know the drill: Take a fixer for the hangover. Matt Frey of the BBC in Washington has suggested that the US is suffering from a huge financial hangover because of a 15 year financial binge. Now the President, Mr Bush, has prescribed a fixer. He should know - his turbulent youth provides ample experience of binging. The stimulate package for the US economy sounds more like a fixer than a fix. Spend your way out of your overspent situation. That must be Bush logic to take the biscuit.

The US is over its ears in debt. National debt runs into tens of trillions of dollars, depending upon who does the actuary calculus and the spin. The national deficit is at three trillion dollars. Personal debt has landed the country and the world in the current financial melt-down through reckless personal credit at the bottom of an equally perilous pyramid of financial instruments. Living too high means falling very far.

Instead of proposing an austerity package to turn the page from overindulgence and extravagance to a more moderate live style, the President thought it good last Friday to prescribe further indulgence. In fact, it is quite amusing amidst the dismay. I wonder if there is an Alcoholics Anonymous for Financial Gluttons.

A Tear in Time

For Ms Clinton and her run for presidential candidacy, a tear in time saves nine it would seem. Probably only on these shores of the world would such a soppy stunt bring such bullish benefits as have been demonstrated in the New Hampshire Primaries. Elsewhere, the audience would have been either indifferent or embarrassed, either of which response would not have given Ms Clinton any advantage over her significantly more composed opponent, Mr Obama.

In fact, so far Mr Obama has been the more convincing, mostly because of his sincerity. Especially, Mr Obama is definitely not from the Establishment. He is not an Ivy League boy even though he holds a law degree from Harvard. He smiles with warm conviction at the crowds; not with the plastic grimace of his main opponent.

Mr Obama's message of change may be ringing with some rhetoric, but his focus is outwards, his aim apparently for the people, not his own entitlement. In contrast, Ms Clinton seems almost petulantly bent on getting her way on her way to her presidency. She is to her neck steeped in the Establishment - what she calls experience. Such experience leaves one wondering just how much change her presidency would bring. After all, the Establishment prefers the status quo in order to stay established.

So, in the aftermath of the Iowa win for Mr Obama over Ms Clinton at the Democratic caucus, Ms Clinton seemingly got a bit overwhelmed by matters and decidedly soppy on TV - in a calculatedly constrained manner. In a country where everyone seems to relish a tear or two on TV when given the chance and the circumstance, such display was a certain card towards gaining support from sop suckers. Call me cynical, but this is the country that has given us show biz and Hollywood.

After the narrow loss in the New Hampshire Primary, Mr Obama's concession speech was a model of confidence and gallantry. This man must pose the most serious threat to the Establishment since John F. Kennedy. If one person could break the hold of Corporate America on this heralded but undermined democracy, it would be Barack Obama.

Change has a face with an honest smile for once.