Obama need not walk alone

Dear WaPa,

While it's true the West faces a "delicate" task in balancing the sharing of "more wealth and power with non-Western countries" as it tries to fix the present economic cluster-fook - - your assertion that Obama need provide the public face as well as shoulder the entire reform argument needed to meet the "terms consistent with U.S. interests and values" is flawed. There is one notable omission in your analysis - the role of the American capitalist.

Unless America's economic elite is willing to recognize how its unfailing pursuit of short-term quarterly profits compromises the long-term preservation of the global free-market economy no lasting solution will be possible. Political directed action alone cannot solve this crisis. D.C. centered initiatives are doomed to fail unless those who control the levers of credit reconcile their lending practices with the unsustainable simple-minded investors Pavlovian impulse to seek out the quickest buck. Unless US credit-markets undertake to support new businesses (new neo-capitalists) who have business plans based on lower short-term returns but married to realistic innovations promising to capture tomorrow's 'just-in-time' technologies - the US economy is doomed.

Until the US investor, US businessman, US broker and banker collectively recognize America is on the cusp of an structural abyss that not only threatens the world's free-market economy but US security as well - - and as long as they refuse to reconsider their modus-operandi and lower their collective expectations, then bail-out initiatives will merely serve to placate, rather than solve, the market's systemic flaws.

Much like the "plague", if left untreated , market uncertainty will continue to re-visit US capitalism again and again until one day, like the Missouri Mandan, it will find itself succumbing to an unforgiving pathogen capable of gutting an entire economic culture. Like the long gone Dodo bird, American capitalism risks toying with extinction unless it adapts and proselytizes about its new found patience for backing sustainable development.

Should America's business culture fail to redefine its ideological ethos and question the world's taste for quick profit, then all democratically run markets are apt to fall victim to domestically driven retrenchment strategies. To be clear, the president-elect is not the only character in this drama who must act . It is incumbent on those who peddle, seek, or hoard capital to now rethink their socio-economic roles. If they do not, then any palliative legislative solution introduced by Mr. Obama is fated to fail. Until US capitalists can put aside their individual short-term agenda's and act "collectively" (yes, a la Marx) to restore the world's confidence in the capacity of the US to adapt and innovate in face of profit challenges then capitalism as we know it is, quite obviously, doomed.

President-Elect Obama need not face this crisis alone. Ultimately those who bear the greatest burden for rescuing American capitalism are, ironically[?], America's Capitalist's.