Global Economic Crisis

Over that past century, only four elected U.S. presidents have failed to win a second term in office. America’s 27th president, William Taft, succumbed to an insurgent challenge from his White House predecessor, Theodore Roosevelt, whose third party candidacy  doomed Taft to defeat at the hands of Woodrow Wilson. The three other single term elected presidents of the past 100 years were victims of economic crises; Herbert Hoover, Jimmy Carter and George H. Bush. Gerald Ford, the unelected successor to Richard Nixon, is an anomaly in U.S.. political history, being in effect Nixon’s surrogate and taking the heat for the Watergate scandal.

Will Barack Obama be fated to join the ranks of the one-timers? Though there remain nearly two years until the next presidential election, the prognosis on Obama is becoming increasingly guarded. Absent a severe economic or political crisis, an incumbent president seeking a second term normally enjoys an unassailable advantage over his opponent. Even amid the unpopularity of the Iraq war, George W. Bush was still able to convincingly defeat his Democratic Party challenger in the 2004 presidential contest, Senator John Kerry. However, unless a miraculous economic turnaround occurs, President Obama is likely to enter the 2012 presidential campaign  with baggage which may leave him highly vulnerable to a strong challenger from the GOP.

Almost all serious economic forecasts project that America will still be experiencing historically high levels of unemployment in 2012. The Republican Party’s midterm election triumph, in particular regaining control of the House of Representatives, points to the acute vulnerability Obama’s reelection campaign will face. In addition, the themes that generated excitement  in 2008 for Obama’s candidacy, such as “change you can believe in,” will not be credible factors in 2012, leaving him as the incumbent forced to defend a questionable record in managing the economy, and any defensive posture is unlikely to elicit a memorable theme that will excite the Democratic Party’s base and attract independent voters, the latter category crucial for any presidential candidate. In contrast, we are already seeing convincing evidence that the GOP will have an effective grass-roots movement that is excited and motivated by the prospect of ending  the Obama presidency in 2012, as evidenced by the phenomenon of the Tea Party.

As dismal a factor as the economy is likely to be in calculating the odds of Barack Obama winning a second term, there are other elements that weaken the prospects of his winning a second term. The unending war in Afghanistan  is rapidly being transformed into Obama’s version of the Iraq debacle, with a growing proportion of the electorate losing faith in this costly overseas commitment that has become the center of gravity for Obama’s war on terror. The continuing war and perception that President Obama has compromised too easily with his Republican congressional opponents has estranged  some of his supporters within the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. It is not inconceivable that Obama will face a Democratic challenger when he seeks re-nomination  as the Party’s presidential candidate in 2012.  Should that happen, the odds still favor Obama being the Democratic presidential nominee in 2012, however a divisive primary battle would further weaken the 44th president’s odds of winning a second term in the White House.

Increasingly, there is talk within Democratic Party circles regarding the steep challenge and mounting obstacles Barack Obama will face in campaigning in 2012 for a second term as president. Among these doomsayers there remains one hope; that the Republican Party will nominate Sarah Palin as its presidential candidate in 2012.  Looking at Palin’s current level of high negative poll numbers, they see her as a potential gift from Saint Jude, the patron saint of desperate causes. However, as former Labor Secretary  Robert Reich pointed out in a recent blog in the Huffington Post ( “Sarah Palin’s Presidential Strategy, and the Economy She Depends On”  ), Palin may be a far more formidable challenger to Barack Obama than Democratic strategists  recognize, especially if America’s economic woes persist.

Though undoubtedly campaigning in 2008 with the noblest of intentions, it is looking increasingly likely that Barack Obama will enter the history books as not only a one-term president, but also a valiant but deeply flawed failure.

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On November 22, 1963, as a fateful motorcade headed into downtown Dallas, leaflets were circulated throughout the city featuring profiles of President John F. Kennedy and headlined, “Wanted for Treason.”  On the day JFK was assassinated, there were factions from within the extreme rightwing of the American political spectrum expressing the most violent hatred for President Kennedy, accusing him of being soft on communism, a betrayer of anti-Castro Cubans  and an ultra-liberal supporter of civil rights for African-Americans. Before the bullets ricocheted  in Dealey Plaza on that violent day, they were preceded by words of violence. It is that historical context that connects directly with the unprecedented verbal venom being projected at the 44th President of the United States.

Even before the historic election that placed Barack Obama in the White House, crowds at several of John McCain’s rallies openly called for Barack Obama to be “killed.” Since Obama’s inauguration, the rhetoric has far from dissipated. If anything, the vitriolic contempt stemming from rightwing extremists in America has grown more strident. There are the “bithers,” who are convinced that Barack Obama is not a native-born American citizen, and therefore his presidency is inherently illegitimate. Far more ominously, there are those who are not content with just denouncing the “foreign occupier,” as some extremists refer to Obama; at rallies and on talk radio, a noisy contingent has talked about Obama representing tyranny, and have engaged in language that approaches the level of incitement towards violence.

President Barack Obama is not above criticism, as is the case with any politician. However, those who are pouring out hate and contempt towards Barack Obama, on a scale that approaches irrationality, actually drown out and delegitimize those who have genuine, thoughtful criticism of the policies of the Obama administration, especially with regards to the economic crisis and America’s exploding national debt and rampaging deficits.  While wrapping their vituperation in the American flag, these extremists masquerading  as patriots are actually damaging the heart and soul of the conservative movement in the United States, while stoking the flames of violence within America that can prove more destructive to the national interest than the threat posed by any external foe.

While listening to the joyous celebrations that erupted among many forums connected with the Republican Party when Chicago lost its bid to host the 2016 Olympic games, despite the personal intervention of President Obama, I had a feeling of déjà vu. Imagine, supporters of a U.S. political party that claims to be patriotic erupting in paroxysms of ecstasy over the defeat of an American Olympic bid, only because this somehow denigrates Obama. Where have I seen this before?

In France, just before World War II. For a brief period, a left-wing coalition government came to power in France, and for the first time a French Jew, Leon Blum, was that nation’s Premier. The rightwing went ballistic. Under no circumstances would they cooperate with Blum and his government. When Blum’s coalition, known as the Popular Front, reached out to conservative circles in France, they were rebuffed at every opportunity. Extremists attacked the Jewish Premier with violent verbosity, even when Leon Blum went against his own party’s agenda, and actually supported conservative policies on foreign affairs and military expenditures. The rightwing in France chanted in response, “better Adolf Hitler than Leon Blum.” In 1940, thanks in large part to the disunity and political polarization they had sowed, they got their wish, when the nation they claimed to love collapsed in a humiliating defeat.

Before the anti-Obama pathology that has gripped America’s rightwing has gone past the point of no return, are there any conservatives of conscience and civic courage willing to speak out? If not, their collective silence may prove more destructive to the United States than any plot being hatched by Al-Qaeda.

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Amid the surreal and boastful bonuses the Wall Street tycoons have been paying themselves after being  rescued by the American taxpayer from their own reckless follies, there is an eerie silence from the Obama administration. That this “they can eat cake” mentality flourishes among the financial elites while the economic catastrophe they engineered through their unmitigated and reckless greed sends the U.S. unemployment rate into double digits is an immoral affront to basic human decency. Yet, except for an occasional sermon on corporate excess in a time of profound economic crisis, President Barack Obama has thus far failed to exercise decisive leadership and put a line in the sand on this defining question. To paraphrase a former Republican presidential candidate, where is the outrage?

In 1962 President John F. Kennedy was also confronted with corporate greed and excess. However, in sharp contrast with Obama, he demonstrated both moral outrage and decisive leadership. Does anyone remember when JFK took on the excess greed of the U.S. steel industry? It is instructive to look back nearly half a century ago.

In the second year of his administration, President Kennedy faced two wars, just as Obama reminds us constantly he is currently confronted with. True, only one was hot, in Southeast Asia, while the other conflict was referred to as the Cold War. Yet the Cold War posed a serious threat to the United States of nuclear extinction, a danger that came perilously close to reality later that year during the Cuban missile crisis. Prior to that, the danger of a military confrontation with the Soviet Union over Berlin was very real. All these factors required compulsory military service for hundreds of thousands of Americans, and  vast expenditures on national defence. This was all occurring at a time of economic crisis, requiring the Kennedy administration to confront both recessionary and  inflationary pressures.  To prevent prices from spiralling out of  control, the President sought the cooperation of both labor and management in key areas of the U.S. economy in order to keep the lid on prices. This was important both in terms of preserving the American standard of living at home, while promoting U.S. exports abroad. A major test case for the Kennedy administration was the U.S. steel industry, where large price increases, should they occur, would have a highly negative ripple effect throughout the U.S. economy.

President Kennedy personally intervened in the question over price hikes for steel. His first step was to obtain concessions from the steel unions. He was successful in winning agreement for a new union contract that would have no effect on steel prices, taking into account both wages and productivity. Kennedy expected  management to now do its part. Instead, first U.S. Steel, the nation’s largest steel producer, followed by its competitors, announced a substantial rise in steel prices. This action, if left unchallenged, would clearly have unleashed  a damaging bout of inflationary pressures throughout the economy.

JFK was outraged. He decided to take action, and bring his voice on the importance of the issue directly to the American  people. He conducted a news conference, and in his opening statement he did not mince words. Kennedy said:

“Simultaneous and identical actions of United States Steel and other leading steel corporations increasing steel prices by some $6 a ton constitute a wholly unjustifiable and irresponsible defiance of the public interest. In this serious hour in our nation’s history when we are confronted with grave crises in Berlin and Southeast Asia, when we are devoting our energies to economic recovery and stability, when we are asking reservists to leave their homes and their families for months on end and servicemen to risk their lives–and four were killed in the last two days in Vietnam– and asking union members to hold down their wage requests at a time when restraint and sacrifice are being asked of every citizen, the American people will find it hard, as I do, to accept a situation in which a tiny handful of steel executives whose pursuit of private power and profit exceeds their sense of public responsibility can show such utter contempt for the interests of 185 million Americans. If this rise in the cost of steel is imitated by the rest of the industry, instead of rescinded, it would increase the cost of homes, autos, appliances, and most other items for every American family. It would increase the cost of machinery and tools to every American businessman and farmer. It would seriously handicap our efforts to prevent an inflationary spiral from eating up the pensions of our older citizens, and our new gains in purchasing power…The Steelworkers Union can be proud that it abided by its responsibilities in this agreement, and this Government also has responsibilities which we intend to meet. The Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission are examining the significance of this action in a free, competitive economy. The Department of Defence and other agencies are reviewing its impact on their policies of procurement. And I am informed that steps are underway by those members of the Congress who plan appropriate inquiries into how these price decisions are so quickly made and reached and what legislative safeguards may be needed to protect the public interest. Price and wage decisions in this country, except for a very limited restriction in the case of monopolies and national emergency strikes, are and ought to be freely and privately made. But the American people have a right to expect, in return for that freedom, a higher sense of business responsibility for the welfare of their country than has been shown in the last 2 days. Some time ago I asked each American to consider what he would do for his country and I asked the steel companies. In the last 24 hours we had their answer.”

The leadership Kennedy demonstrated back in 1962 shamed the senior executives of the steel industry, leading them to rescind their unwarranted price increase. Afterwards, JFK is said to have remarked, “my father told me businessmen were SOBs. I didn’t believe him, until now.”

In the past six months, President Obama has revealed his towering intellect, basic decency and sophisticated world view. However, we have yet to observe the toughness and passion required to take on the forces that drove the U.S. and global economy into a ditch. Except for periodic and overly-mild rebukes, we have witnessed excessive conciliation that is underserved. I hope I will be proven wrong, but despite initial hopes by many that President Obama would become the “Black Kennedy,” more and more I am reminded of what the late Senator Lloyd Bentsen once told Senator Quayle during the Vice Presidential debate back in 1988: “You’re no John Kennedy.”

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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.

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We must remember that not even Barack Obama walks on water, though a miracle worker is perhaps the only human being that can terminate the Global Economic Crisis with rapidity and no further pain. The approach adopted by Obama so far in confronting the economic crisis, though manifesting a clear realization of its seriousness, is also impeded by a conventionality that may be his biggest obstacle.

As with the other boilerplate responses from political leaders across the globe, the Obama administration is proposing a massive stimulus package, dubbed the “American Economic Recovery Plan,” financed with borrowed money. This follows a previous injection of borrowed money, $700 billion for TARP, supposedly essential for rescuing the banks. It is now clear that the $700 billion TARP spending frenzy was a fiasco. As has since been admitted by top Treasury Department officials, Hank Paulson, former Treasury Secretary, pulled the $700 billion out of thin air, because he wanted a “big number” to impress the markets. Such a cavalier attitude towards stampeding Congress into borrowing a staggering amount of money, equivalent to roughly $2,500 from every American man, woman and child, without any strings attached on the part of the banks receiving the money, explains its total failure to resuscitate the clogged arteries of the U.S. credit system. This example is not an encouraging harbinger for another dose of heavy deficit spending in a hurry by Washington.

The Obama Plan envisions $825 billion in borrowed money for a variety of projects and tax cuts. Though Obama promises a much higher level of accountability with his stimulus package than with TARP, that is not even the most crucial issue. It is the whole premise of Obama’s economic plan. What are the parameters and assumptions that led to a figure of $825 billion? On top of the already ballooning federal budget deficit, can the U.S. government raise another $825 billion from largely foreign credit markets (e.g. China), and at what interest rates? What if the Obama Plan has no significant impact on rapidly eroding macroeconomic indicators, while the exploding national debt and structural deficits remove any other fiscal options from consideration?

The proper context for President Barack Obama to view the Global Economic Crisis is not just as a catastrophe for the U.S. and world economy, but also as the gravest danger to American national security. If the Obama administration had a broad enough intellectual horizon to comprehend that the erosion in American geopolitical power that would inevitably result from the implosion of its economy is a far greater threat than what emanates from a non-state actor with a few thousand adherents, namely Al-Qaeda, it would review the irrationally excessive U.S. military budget.

The question Barack Obama should be reflecting on is if the U.S. should continue to spend a trillion dollars a year on its military establishment, and hope that the global credit markets will finance unfunded government liabilities in other categories in perpetuity. Ultimately, the global economic and financial tsunami cannot be combated by bloated military budgets. It is critical that there is a radical restructuring of U.S. budgetary priorities, or else Imperial overreach will finish what is left of U.S. economic power, after the meltdowns on Wall Street and Main Street have added their unique contributions to the deconstruction of the U.S. economy

 

For More Information on “Global Economic Forecast 2010-2015” please go to the homepage of our website, http://www.globaleconomiccrisis.com 

 

 

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The American consumer has been the driver of the global economic expansion that impacted the Eurozone, the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China), Southeast Asia and Japan and emerging markets. The capacity of Americans to consume was not based on intrinsic productivity but rather on debt from overseas creditors, further lubricated by irrationally loose monetary policies enacted by the U.S. Federal Reserve. The American consumer has been leveraged to a level that is unsustainable, and that bubble has burst.

The first symptoms were manifested in the sub-prime mortgage meltdown. A complex architecture of financial engineering exported toxic securitized paper investments based on these non-performing sub-prime loans. The result has been the virtual destruction of the financial world as we knew it, with the extinction of many of the largest American investment houses, some of which had been in existence for more than a century, having weathered the Great Depression.

While the financial world and now sovereign governments are currently inundated with the consequences inflicted by the sub-prime meltdown, which have cost trillions of dollars, much worse is about to be set loose on the global house of financial cards. There are other asset bubbles that will be popping with lethal force.

While sub-prime mortgages continue to devastate the American housing market, near-prime and prime mortgages are about to get hammered, as the over-leveraged American consumer becomes financially debilitated by rapidly rising unemployment rates, restricted access to credit and collapsing value of their retirement funds and household equity. Car loan delinquencies and credit card defaults will also accelerate, while consumer spending in the United States plummets, leading to the next asset bubble: commercial real estate. Retail trade declines will bring about a horde of commercial bankruptcies and foreclosures, creating vast square footage of vacant offices and storefronts. Shopping malls will become deserted, leading to unpaid commercial mortgages that will rival the sub-prime disaster in intensity.

An American Government that is already consumed with mountains of debt may promise to bail out every American consumer and business, however this is just not possible in the real world. Yet, this is the course the incoming Obama administration seems determined to follow. And leading the charge will be Tim Geithner, Barack Obama’s nominee to succeed Hank Paulson as Treasury Secretary.

Paulson of the $700 billion TARP debacle, preceded by his numerous wrong assumptions about the direction of the U.S. and global economy, was clearly a disastrous Treasury Secretary for coping with the onset of the Global Economic Crisis. However, will Geithner be an improvement? A revelation just released raises disturbing doubts. It has now been disclosed that the man President-elect Obama wants to entrust the Treasury Department to, at a time of the gravest economic crisis, failed to pay $34,000 in back taxes. Failure to pay $34,000 in back taxes? This is the genius supposed to run the Treasury Department, which supervises the IRS, and strategize our way out the current global economic disaster? This leads to another signpost on the road to global economic catastrophe. When excellence in leadership is essential for coping with the Global Economic Crisis, throughout the world the political establishment is represented by mediocrities. Mister Thirty-Four-Thousand in back taxes is a metaphor for this failure by the global political elites to identify and select the most competent professionals to confront the world’s most chronic economic disaster.

When one aggregates the cumulative affects of the asset bubbles about to burst with incendiary destructiveness, factoring in mediocre decision makers, the case for a crisis as bad as the Great Depression is solidified. There remains another element that will make it much worse.

In the 1930s the world was not as financially interconnected as it is today. Globalization has massively increased the vulnerability of the world’s financial and economic system. To take one example, a corrupt stock or bond trader in Singapore or Paris can, by manipulating his computer, gamble away billions of dollars of his company’s assets, undiscovered until calamity has struck. Every day trillions of dollars is transacted at the speed of light, much of it unregulated, particularly with those mysterious entities known as hedge funds. The derivative products they have engineered have accrued to the stratospheric level of hundreds of trillions of dollars, unmonitored by any governmental authority. In essence, a vast global financial superstructure has been erected on a foundation of quicksand as fragile as the worst of the sub-prime securities. As the global economy sinks, hedge funds will begin to deleverage and liquidate, in effect multiplying the already catastrophic global economic downturn. The result: global economic Armageddon.

The Great Depression led to the most destructive war in the history of human civilization. Will the Global Economic Crisis so disrupt social stability and international relations that an even more terrible global conflict erupts? It may be that however calamitous the financial impact of the Global Economic Crisis becomes, it will be the inevitable geopolitical consequences that will exceed our worst nightmares.

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Less than two weeks before his inauguration as America’s 44^th President, Barack Obama delivered a major speech on the U.S. economy. The essence of his message is that Congress must quickly pass an economic stimulus package with a vast price tag, possibly in the range of a trillion dollars, or face economic Armageddon. With an apocalyptic tone, President-elect Obama delivered a sobering message. Undoubtedly, the economic crisis is even more dire than described in Obama’s speech.

Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize winning economist who was chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisors during the Clinton administration, has joined the chorus of economic specialists warning that the global economy is going down the proverbial sink-hole, with the U.S. economy serving as the financial locomotive of this global train wreck. Among the destructive economic and financial forces he has recently written and commented on is the whole phenomena of de-leveraging.

According to Stiglitz, “America’s economy had been supercharged by excessive leveraging; now comes the painful process of de-leveraging. Excessive leveraging, combined with bad lending and risky derivatives, has caused credit markets to freeze. After all, when banks don’t know their own balance sheets, they aren’t about to trust others.”

Despite massive efforts by the Fed in the U.S. and central banks across the globe to unfreeze credit markets, the financial arteries of the world remain clogged. Though some shrinkage in the Libor rates and Ted Spread has occurred, the overwhelming degree of counter-party risk has eroded the element of trust to such an extent, monetary policy by central bankers cannot overrule human sentiment. The recent Madoff Ponzi scheme that may have bilked investors out of $50 billion has had far greater impact in defining the state of trust in the marketplace than near-zero interest rates being offered by central bankers.

The credit crunch may impact the massive economic stimulus package being proffered by Obama as the one great hope of salvaging the U.S. and global economy. To finance the massive amount of spending being planned by the incoming Obama administration, upwards of a trillion dollars of additional deficit funding will have to be borrowed, primarily from foreign creditors such as China. However, with China now requiring massive funding for its own economic stimulus spending, that nation and other foreign creditors may not be as readily available for financing U.S. government debt spending. Counter-party risk exists not only among private investors and institutions; foreign countries and sovereign wealth funds may prove as tight with their willingness to loan money, especially to an American government that is projecting trillion dollar plus deficits for years to come.

If the U.S. is unable to finance its massive deficit spending plans, what then? Perhaps economic Armageddon does loom in out future, as the Global Economic Crisis widens its vortex of destruction and doom.

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When the global financial crisis first arose, leading to a worldwide credit crunch, it became apparent that the economic policies of George W. Bush would be the defining issue of the 2008 presidential campaign, spelling doom for the Republican nominee. When the Republican candidate, Senator John McCain, proclaimed that the economic fundamentals of the U.S. were sound, he insured that Barack Obama would win the election and become the 44^th president of the United States. In fact, the fundamentals of the American economy are as feeble as were those of the Soviet Union before it collapsed.

Barack Obama is a very intelligent politician, and is already being compared to President Franklin Roosevelt, who presided over the New Deal economic policies of the 1930s in the depths of the Great Depression. However, Barack Obama may also be compared to Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the once-mighty Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

Gorbachev, like Obama, is a highly intelligent man. He was selected by the Soviet elite as their last-ditch candidate to save the crumbling Soviet Union. In spite of his best efforts, he failed. The economy of the Soviet Union imploded, leading to the total disintegration of the Soviet State, which once was deemed an equal superpower rival to the United States of America. Will Obama’s fate be that of Franklin Roosevelt, or Mikhail Gorbachev? There are disturbing parallels between the United States of 2009 and the Soviet Union in its last years of existence. These may prove more relevant than the comparisons some American economists are trying to draw between Obama’s and Roosevelt’s America.

Consider the following: prior to its extinction, the Soviet Union was driven to bankruptcy by bloated military expenditures, exacerbated by a losing war in Afghanistan. Its economy was immune to reform due to the tyranny of central planners. In the America that gave birth to the global financial crisis and credit crunch, the government’s finances have been driven to the brink of bankruptcy by vastly excessive military expenditures, run amok by a losing war in Afghanistan and an unnecessary war in Iraq. Its economy, supposedly a paean of free-market flexibility, has now proven to be a myth constructed by the financial alchemists of Wall Street and pseudo central-planners of the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department. Just as the Soviet Union used tax-payer money to bail out failed industries, the United States through its Treasury Department and Federal Reserve Bank have deemed failed financial enterprises “too big to fail,” warranting hundreds of billions of dollars in deficit borrowing that tax payers are responsible for in an equally futile rescue bid.

Obama, like Gorbachev, will be tied to an elite that has a vested stake in salvaging a doomed system, even at the risk of national insolvency. If Barack Obama has the intellectual stamina to resist the American financial elite and recognize that the Global Economic Crisis calls for a total restructuring of the economic order of the United States, he will go down in history as the president that saved America’s economy and preserved its status as the dominant economic power in the world. If, however, he is unable to unshackle himself from the failed policies of the American financial elite, he will be doomed to share the fate of Mikhail Gorbachev as that of being a valiant failure.

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