The election has finally been fulfilled, and President Obama and family really do live at the White House!
What seemed to take forever, the election campaigning [der Wahlkampf], the political pendents remarks[die Kommentierungen der politischen Beobachter], the constant new coverage [die permanente Berichterstattung], and the unbelievable optimism, are all now different.
The President is now faced with so many new and historically different challenges, ranging from the economy to the wars in Iraq and Afganistan, from health care reform in the US to rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure [zerbröckelnde Infrastruktur].
The expectations are unbelievely high for him not only to succeed, but to do it quickly!
President Obama has already impressed the opposition Republican legislators [Gesetzgeber].
He has actually invited them to meet with him at his “new home”, and has gone to the Capital to meet with them — all of them and not just the leadership like EX-President Bush did.
He has appointed [er ernannte] a remarkable group of advisors around him who will challenge him [die ihn fordern] and even argue with him about policy–to help him make policy. Why the EX-President only met with those who agreed, which led, as we all can see, to many unfortunate dictums [Beschlüsse] that will take years to change.
However, one of the first things that President Obama did was to order the military prison at Guantanamo closed, out lawed torture [hat ein Folterverbot ausgesprochen], and, even, kept his “blackberry”!
Time will tell if he really can get us back to listening, talking, and cooperating–and maybe even promoting peace, trust, and charity throughout the Nation and the World.
Cheers! [Tschüß / Servus]
— Richard
Ausnahmsweise hier meine Mail-Antwort dazu:
Hello Richard,
How are you doing? Did you enjoy you journey to Rome?
During the days around new year I visited friends who live in the lower Alps (southern Germany, towards the lake of Constance / Switzerland). We had wonderful snow and celebrated our spare time with delicious meals, talks & walks over snowy fields. Liked it very much….
Thanks a lot for your brief impressions about the first days of Obama. Its already online!
As well as you are am I deeply impressed about the pace he’s delivering. May we all have enough luck to overcome this deep crisis. The only indispensable thing that can be done beside technical steps is – exactly what Obamas does: pushing and nurturing the factor hope. Only if the millions worldwide proceed with their work and good-will and trust in the sytem we will have a slight chance to get through all of this – otherwise we will have an enormous problem.
With big anger do I realize that in the meantime there are several books on the bestseller-shelfs which predict the coming of the collapse as if it was a natural law. E.g. from Max Otte “Der Crash kommt” (the crash will happen). This one is ranked # 173 on the German Amazon top list. I would like to see these authors criminalized, for their intention is just to benefit from a hovering crisis, but in a VERY dangerous manner.
They are definitely not able to do something good with these books (after the bankers and managers which as well did not perform so well, to put it politely). Theses authors just pour oil into the fire since with every new hysterical reader the financial and economic system closes in to the collapse. Nothing else than a self-fulfilling prophecy… Shame on them bastards. In some way they are even worse than the greedy investment bankers. The latter did never – or rarely – pretend to be something else than wealth-seeking people. These authors pretend to be sort of skeptics or analysts or counsellors. But in reality – they are nothing else than wartime profiteers.
Though – Best wishes!
Michael
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reply 01.02.2009
Hi Michael
I know what you mean about the “negative” press and the gloom and doom suth sayers printing very negative things about the economy, and the world for that matter. The good news is (if there is any) that the folks who read those negative books tend to be of the same kind, and have already decided that their theme is the “truth”. That means that the huge majority of folks won’t read it, and those who can see beyond the trees for the forest, agree that this kind of literature is trash and should not be taken seriously. I also agree that a good deal of the problem with the “market and finance world” is psychological. If you think negative, you won’t invest or even work hard to get ahead. This is a terrible recession we are ALL in, and it had its origins in the US financial system because our EX-President Bush and his cronies relaxed the oversight rules for the market, passed laws permitting generous tax benifits for senior executives, and basically encouraged greed at the management level. The intent was to allow the “market” be “free” of restrictive regulation so that it would grow to ‘its’ maximum potential letting the “market forces” control
the out come. Unfortunately, this “law of free economics” does not recognize the potential evil for greed sometimes found in human nature.
I am certain that there will be no collapse of the worlds economy. Unfortunately, the market did expand greatly, and the world value for many things, expecially housing in the US, became very inflated–over priced. The real estate markets grew rapidly, in part, because of the very easy mortgage credit at the big banks. They were so hungry for loans that they even sent brokers out to sign almost anyone anyone who could sign their name to a deed. They made fast money in fees and commissions they charges at the mortgage closing, and then “packaged” these loans into a bond that they sold to larger banking institutions and stock companies. They initially had little risk in this type of a loan, since they passed it on and really cared little if it ever got paid off! The house of cards collapsed, and carried most of the big financial institutions down with it. However, most of the smaller banks and stock companies that weren’t so hot for profit, and stuck to traditional rules for investment and writing loans, have actually done well. On the local level in States like Kansas, the more conservative rules of finance still prevail, and there is money to loan for sound investments. However, even the good is affected by the bad. With our largest banks, automobile companies, and major retailers being seriously hurt by the global recession, even Kansas is feeling the pinch and our State economy has dropped into recession.
But be patient. Most suth sayers are begining to predict a turn around starting late this summer, or into the fall at the latest. It will be well into 2010, thouth, before the economy will feel like it did even just last year.
You also have to remember that it takes at least 3 months for a new book to be written and a little longer to be published. Even to write a book, edit it, and do an e-publication takes 6 weeks or longer. That means that all those books that you have been reading about the bad things are at least 6 months behind what is really happening. And the reasoning behind them is over a year old, and probably still think the George W. is still in office!?