When I was a junior in high school I was taught a valuable lesson in Economics class. In a free market economy the government can do very little to control it or fix it when it breaks. The problem with this is that Americans, when they get in trouble, want the government to help them out. Therefore the government is judged on its effectiveness in controlling something that is setup in a way that really has no controls. Ironic huh? Compound this with the fact that since people are losing their jobs and their livelihood (and some would argue their minds) they get very angry when the problem isnt solved with a quick fix. Because if Americans like one thing above anything else its instant gratification.
The issue with this is that it took us so long to put ourselves in this hole that its going to take a while to crawl out of it. To his credit I think that Mr. Obama has done a lot for this crisis and I really do believe that he staved off what could have been a much worse situation. However, I also believe that he was severely distracted by the health care debate and this is the result. Hindsight being 20/20 I think if he would have continued working on this crisis and pushed through REAL financial reform last summer instead of the half-assed health care plan then we could have possibly gotten both by this summer! From a political perspective if he could have brought us out of this economic crisis he would have glided through his midterms and parlayed that into a landslide for reelection. But that is not the world in which we live. If he is to survive to be awarded a second term he needs to throw everything he has into doing what little he can to help people through this time. Im not talking about bailouts, or unemployment. The government needs to start in with these so-called "green energy initiatives" and start rebuilding the electric grid as well as the rail infrastructure. This would put people to work and fix a glaring problem we've had for a while. Think about it Mr. President!
