The Black Hole of the US Banking System

[Crewleader]

Scores of streets were shut down and cordoned off, while nearly two million people flock to the scene to bear witness to a unique moment in history. Barak Obama, campaigning on hope and change, will be a welcome new beacon for a nation that has been stumbling through the insanity and darkness of the Bush-Cheney years for so long. His rhetorical skills will be a relief from the inarticulate bumbling speech of the misunderestimated “decider” he replaces. And Obama wasted no time framing the problems we face in one concise paragraph: “That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood. Our nation is at war, against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred. Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age. Homes have been lost; jobs shed; businesses shuttered. Our health care is too costly; our schools fail too many; and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet.” Now, after the rhetoric, after the ceremony, the real work will still be before us, and it will be far more difficult than we realize.

Some feel the gala ceremony itself was the wrong message to send the nation in a time of great adversity. One intrepid blogger frowned on the inaugural ceremony this way: “In my opinion, Barack Obama should have canceled the inauguration celebration, re-directed all of the money set aside for the events to food banks around the nation, and modeled for the nation the sobering realities that we face. Instead he has chosen a grand and glorious wedding rather than a quiet marriage in front of a Justice of the Peace. He has opted for the ten thousand dollar wedding ring rather than weaving blades of grass together into a wedding band. And once the grand wedding is over, all of the drunk celebrants will return home and wake up on Wednesday morning with hangovers and less money in the bank and will scratch their heads and wonder what happens next.”

The writer characterized the ceremony as nothing more than a dangerous false hope, and he could be correct if that is all we take from the moment. But in my opinion we need to start at least with that—with some sense of hope that we can take a new direction, build a new future—or what’s a heaven for? Just looking at the faces of the nearly two million people who flooded the Washington Mall, many traveling for 10 hours or more to reach the place and huddling in sub-zero temperatures for hours, was ample evidence that the ceremony was money well spent. It was a national rite of passage, replete with all the significance and emotional impact that such rites have carried throughout history. Change was coming to America, for two days after taking the oath, Obama had begun the difficult task of dismantling the oppressive edifice built by Bush and Cheney. He froze White House salaries, tightened lobbying rules, loosened disclosure standards for the Freedom of Information Act, ordered the Gulags at Guantanamo and CIA prisons in foreign countries closed, banned cruel interrogation and torture techniques, lifted the seals placed on records of ex-presidents. Openness, transparency, accountability are the new watchwords of his administration. Thank God ,the adults are back in charge and sanity has finally returned to the US government.

http://www.writingshop.ws/html/insolvent.html