OBAMA TALKS, THE WORLD LISTENS

I have followed Obama speeches through the primaries of the US election. There is no doubt about this man eloquence and his oratorical skills. He has the advantage of a clean and untainted image needed in this difficult time to provide global leadership to sort this economic crisis.

His maiden speech in the Congress as president receives standing ovations and rave reviews. Of course the speech is inspiring and visionary. I felt he was over ambitious; he tried to cover all grounds from defence, education, environment, health, automakers, security and almost anything under the sun.

Noticeably, I feel it is short of specifics. Perhaps the specifics may come later. We had experienced the hot air coming out of every US presidents during crisis. Talk is free. Putting a comprehensive plan into action will need a lot more effort. Overcoming objections will be very challenging. The president must not end up with a divided nation. Then he must remained focus and stay the course without abandoning his position when it become politically unpopular. He will be very lonely in time to come.

Even as recently as last year, many economists has optimistically spell that the Asian economies are decoupled from the US. How wrong this proves to be. The sad truth is that the entire world is still under the crutches of the American economy. The world has no choice but to faithfully hope that this man, Obama can rally his citizens. The world still need his leadership to initiate global initiatives, pull all nations together and row in the same direction.

Fortunately, history seems to be on the American side. After WW2, 1973 oil shock, 87 market crash, dot-com crash, 911, America has weathered all these storms admirably and came out stronger. I honestly hope the American under the leadership of Obama has the same resolve to overcome this crisis. But this crisis requires a lot of painful adjustment and sacrifices. This is where a great leader has to be able to convince its people to swallow the bitter pills when the time comes. He has to rally, motivate and provides them with hopes.

American has over the centuries live faithfully on hopes and overcome many difficulties and made many ‘impossible’ possible. The black president itself was a “dream’ of Marther Luther King and sending a man to Moon was another dream of JFK. ‘Hope’ is the most powerful weapon in trouble time for many great American leaders. American had demonstrated the faith in hope before and Obama must live up to it.

The painful sacrifices have yet to be articulated to the American public. Obama should be upfront to tell American that they need to ‘downsize’ and cut wastages. Perhaps lower salaries and smaller cars. The truth will hurt. With the mountain of debts this crisis raked up, future taxes have to be higher. One Nobel laureate said that “US simply cannot go back to it old ways” by spending too much and saving too little to wriggle out of this crisis.

The recovery train has yet to leave the stations. I will definitely monitor the progress of this train. The journey will be long and arduous.



-------------------------Living to see the world--------------------