A Wakeup Call for the US? or Just another chance to press the snooze button?

It seems like the US is trying to blame everyone else for it's problem.  If American politicians could solve their debt problem with the same passion and vigor that they attacked the downgrade of American debt, there wouldn't be a debt problem. The basic answer is that American politicians are attacking the S&P because it's put the spotlight on them.  S&P has said it's not about the short term ability for the US to pay it's debts,  it's about the US ability to, in the long term, solve it's dependence on borrowing money.



One thing that has come out of all this is that S&P has been criticized for getting it wrong on subprime mortgages before when they rated them as AAA right up to the very end.  I guess I would say that maybe they're just being more realistic now and rating things as they see them rather than getting caught up in the hysteria or excitement of the moment as they did in the past.

Of course it's not as if the S&P is the only one calling the US government on the carpet for it's dependence on debt.  China, the US's largest creditor, has also criticized the US dependence on debt.  While the S&P downgrade is a problem, one would wonder what would happen if China suddenly pulled the plug and showed up to collect?

President Obama

Well I know it's a little late to be noting this, cause seriously you'd have to be living in a cave to not know this. Anyways Obama will become US president January 20th and it looks like Hillary Clinton will be his Secretary of State. It's a good choice for him as having Clinton as Secretary of State will keep disappointed Democrats happyish, and should help to deflect some criticism of Obamas lack of experience with foreign affairs. It will be interesting to see how Obama handles the current economic situation, it's certainly going to be tough to implement some of his plans but if he's sucessful at steering the country out of the recession then he may earn a place along with F.D.R. and other great leaders. However if the economic crisis deepens Obama may be blamed for not fixing something that he didn't break.

US Election.... FINALLY

Well the US election is finally upon us it won't be long before Obama is crowned as the new President of the US. It seems inevetable that he will win, Palin was a gamble for the Republicans that didn't pay off. Though looking at polls from last week anything could happen it will depend alot on who can get the voters out and wether there's any hanging chad or electronic voting booth problems. Fingers crossed that it's all over soon.

1 Election Down, 1 To Go

Well Canada spent 270 million dollars and changed almost nothing last week. Though it will change who's leading the Liberal party. Stephan Dion was just never able to rise above the level of guy you would vote for to stop Steven Harper. It's unfortunate for the Liberals as they have been unable to really inspire any interest in their own ideas. So in the next 6 months or so they'll have another convention and try it all again hopefully with someone who will actually make people want to vote Liberal rather than just vote Liberal because they're afraid of Harper having too much power. It's expected that Dion will resign on Monday and let someone else try their hand at it.

Wanted: Charismatic Person to lead the Liberal party; must be willing to quit gracefully if they fail to become Primeminister.

On the other side of the border the Election is still in full swing with both party's driving hard into the home stretch. It looks from recent polls that Obama will win the election as he's been pulling away from McCain in the last few weeks. McCain's Choice of Sarah Palin was a risky gamble and it was looking like it would pay off for a few weeks. In the end though no one could quite get over the idea that if McCain has a heart attack a week after the inauguration Palin would have her finger on the big red button.

Wanted: Charasmatic Perons to be McCains running mate; must be non controversial.

A short digression from the Canadian election

Well while the Americans were having their election and a Canadian election just happened to break out. So I'll digress from the Canadian election which is kinda boring at the moment and look South ... look way South to the US.

Sarah Palin has been the target of much criticism from democrats, republicans, whites, blacks, well pretty much everybody over things not related to politics such as her family life. While the way you live your life can be a reflection of how you'll be as a leader it's not really that important. Though some have suggested that since McCain is pretty old she might have a pretty good shot at being leader if he doesn't make it through the term. The interesting thing though is how much attention she has managed to take away from Obama. I don't even know the name of his running mate and I can't remember hearing any major news stories about him. So whether she's good for McCain or not she's at least kept the republican campaign in the news. In the end I think that secretly alot of Americans actually recognize themselves in Sarah Palin, many of them have had teenage daughters who get pregnant and family troubles that have been embarrassing. So she might just help McCain make it to the white house, because Americans have quite a bit of the "hey they're just like me" feelings and that might just be enough.