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COVER STORY: NATIONAL AFFAIRS

America’s New Shrink

Chin up, everyone. This president is well poised to bring us back from the brink.

Charles Ommanney / Getty Images for Newsweek
Therapist-in-Chief: The President explains the details of his $778 billion stimulus package to a crowd in Mesa, Arizona
 

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If Ralph Waldo emerson had a 19th-century Facebook page, his "Favorite Quotation" (or maybe I should say my favorite Emerson quote) would likely be: "Things are in the saddle, and ride mankind."

For the last six months, events have been in the saddle of the world economy and they might ride us for quite a while. Every day seems to bring bad news, with more on the way. Will commercial real estate crash next? Is General Motors toast? Dow 5,000, anyone?

When President Obama was sworn in, the stock market dropped. When he signed the largest economic recovery package in American history last week, the Dow plunged nearly 300 points. His widely panned bank rescue plan and even his better-received housing rescue plan both laid eggs on the Street.

Obama says he doesn't worry too much about short-term market swoons, and he's right not to. Who elected greedy gamblers to represent us? But the market is now based less on assessments of specific companies than on reaction to the federal government. And that reaction, cascading down to Main Street, is a fair reflection of the nation's pessimistic mood. The new president is popular and refreshing, but still well short of transformative. For all of the legislative achievements of his first month in office, Americans have not yet had their faith in the future restored.

What's a president to do? If he starts in with the happy talk, he sounds like John McCain saying "the fundamentals of the economy are strong," which is what sealed the election for Obama in the first place. But if he gets too gloomy, he'll scare the bejesus out of the entire world. The balance Obama strikes is to say that things will get worse before they get better, but that they will get better. Now he must convince us that's true.

Conservatives smell blood. The Republican National Committee issued a press release saying Obama's first month was all about "wasteful spending, failed bipartisanship and questionable ethics." Columnist Charles Krauthammer called the $787 billion stimulus package "a legislative abomination," and Karl Rove wrote that "the more Americans learn about the bill, the less they like it."

Polls say otherwise. The public likes the signs of action, respects that the new president is willing to admit error and appreciates his constant reminders that there are no easy cures to what ails us.

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  • Posted By: memo2 @ 04/21/2009 9:03:54 AM

    not only we will be on the line of Shrink, but on the Brink of our life's market's are no longer at control cause people are no longer buy garbage people learn from this president one by one no longer this economy can by fix the economy itself will collapse by his own that will be the only way we can go back if we are lucky this present pesidential administration make another mistake and all will go together with no retirement the most concern to me is not too long ago the economy was fine and in short time we got this situation we own a DEBIT of trillions to other country's how that happen the only items we buy or we purchase most from China how that happen all this was at the market and we accept it with no knowledge ? how that happen since 1980 we are no longer produce or made to sell product's from USA, how that happen we just let pass it with no cuestion's ? to no one how it happen !..........

  • Posted By: JPACTS @ 03/14/2009 1:42:34 AM

    QUCIK, FAIR AND PERMANENT RETURN FROM THE EDGE:

    1) Reduce permanently 10% of the federal and state work force - those left need work harder like most workers still working are forced to do,

    2) Make all government employees INCLUDING senators, house of reps & the President /VP give up earning any more pension benefits (like most americans no longer have), INSTEAD give them a match of 50% on up 6% of their annual wage they contribute into a 403B plan - USE the TAX savings resulting from the dropping of new pension TO PROPERLY FUND SOCIAL SECURITY FOR THE TAXPES SINCE THATS 10 year from going BROKE

    3) Have the FEDERAL government stop paying 80% for federal employee families health premium - drop it to 50%,

    4) Increase the FEDERAL employee health insurance deductible to $1000 like most private employers now have,

    5) make all senators and house of representatives serve NO MORE than 2 term limits - ends the power of long term senators, etc to force senators, etc to approve EARMARKS on bills alreday released from committee

    6) Go to a flat tax Federal tax program so the IRS audits can stop (laying off 50% of that organizations tax payer supported staff)

    7) after 1st child's birth to a single mom STOP paying for single mom's child birth , offer free sterilization - more than 1/2 the baby's being born in the US now being paid for by the government (TAXPAYERS in other words) and don't give these single mom's, who are abusing the free childbirth /single mom welfare system by having child after child out of wedlock, money to support more than 1 child

    8) NO Social Security, Medicaid or Medicare benefits to ANYONE NOT A US CITIZEN even if their "citizen" child brings them into the US - as are all being done now for NON Citizens!

    9) Give the President Line Item Veto rights

    10) Give life in prison to ANY politician find guilty of any abuse of power or corruption while in office

    11) OUR prisons - lower the taxes to care for the Prisoners - no more coffee or juice, let them drink water at ALL MEALS, feed them oatmeal/toast for breakfast, peanut butter/jelly sandwiches with crackers for lunch and inexpensive stew (easy to make and serve requiring less kitchen labor) And for medicines make them pay the FULL COST of medicine - why reduce their costs out of taxpayers pockets ? I didn't unjustly put them in prison THEY BROKE the law - suffer the CONSEQUENCES


    STOP THE MADNESS


    P.S. Anyone running on the above platform will WIN any FUTURE elections, so Go for IT you TRUE AMERICANS!

  • Posted By: radiantenergies @ 03/13/2009 5:48:02 PM

    My comment today is viewing earth from a distance from a base out in space and looking at all nature living on the planet.
    6 billion humans are a disease for everything else including among themselves and they argue and debate but comforts and pleasures are their goal whether for themselves or for all others, and how to sqeeze every last drop of nature, to use for their benefit now and long term. This human disease now looks like a dead planet earth in 200 years, maybe 500 or 1,000 years, but life on earth in any living form resembling signs of intelligence gone for the 4.5 billion years before the sun explodes outward. A human has one ear of corn and he can consume it and no corn is left. Or, he can plant it and grow a field of corn and have all he can eat including all everyone can eat. Now, we can do it even better, but instead our results are far worse. Our system is against nature winning which includes humans winning alongside it and indeed heaven on earth for human lifetimes birth to death. Now it is hell on earth for humans birth to death, given some relief, but this global warming inbalance and global economic turbulence and global political, religious, and social systems and variances between all systems, is not about human comforts or sufferings, but planet earth itself, same as that ear of corn either gone or plenty for all, but much more complex and perhaps a lost cause already not solveable in 500 years, before all hope is truly lost, for humans and most other life forms and most creations of nature, leaving a dead planet.
    6 billion people need to place planet earth first and then develop systems to support this. It is top bottom required.
    Bottom up now in play a failure and false base from the start. The living dead in hell or the dead living in heaven.
    The human and nature growing or the human growing and nature decreasing. Where have all the flowers gone?

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