Obama sized future

The future, under President Obama, looks grim. After each of his major public displays this month (Feb 9 and 17th) the markets tanked. And for good reason. His economic stimulus plan is far from what the economy needs, in order for it to return to the status it had in 2006. But is that really a bad thing? Do we really want to return to overinflated housing prices and trillions in consumer debt?


What we do face, in the short run(and this is completely out of Obama's control), can either be described as a long term recession or a short term depression. For the next year or two, we will not see any recovery, but instead will (hopefully, and this IS within Obama's control) see a cleaning out of our national excesses.


It is likely that we will recover from this recession in several years, but as a socialist/corporatist nation, rather than capitalist. Of course, we haven't really been capitalist since the Great Depression (which, in the future may be known as GD1, with this one known as GD2, just as we now have WW1 and WW2)


From a different point of view, we have not had real capitalism since the 1880's, when we saw the rise of the corporate states. (see 1886 Supreme Court Case, where corporations were given the same rights as persons) Corporatism has been with us for centuries, but was relatively unknown in the US when the Constitution was written. In addition, at that time, corporations were recognised to be instruments of the government. Those two facts may account for their absence from our Constitution.


There may be a silver lining to Obama's Presidency. He does seem (at least on the surface) to stand for the rolling back of some of the excesses of the corporate world. He has already come out in favor of Net Neutrality, and maybe he will be more sympathetic to the citizenry and listen less to the school of thugs on the subject of DRM.


This won't negate the facts that he is much more likely to abridge our (the citizens) Constitutional Rights in favor of increasing the power of the federal government and the power of the political parties (which are constitutionally repugnant). On these things, we will just have to wait and see.

Much of what is written above is in direct conflict with my religious thoughts. I truly believe that the end times are upon us, and that Jesus will return within the next 25 years. Possibly within the next several years. This does not negate the fact that we must carry on in light of the fact that He might not return when we think He should.

Until then.