COMMENTARY

Peter Burgess

I am way more pro-Obama than pro-anyone else in Washington, but having said that I think there have been some big wins and some bad losses. The big win is that a totally catastrophic global economic disaster was avoided in 2009, and the money, banking and financial services industry was able to get back on its feet ... and this is the loss ... and back to business pretty much as usual. Corporate profits rebounded in the past two years thanks to the Obama policy, and he only gets blame for that because it came at the cost of a high government deficit and debt. Obama has not ridden roughshod around the international neighborhood like his predecessors and the US is in better international shape than in a long time. One big area that has been problematic is jobs in the USA, and in this there has been little or no help from either the politicians, the bankers or the big corporations ... a little help from the economists and lawyers who guide policy. Many of the things that are needed do not make big profits ... but they are important and they do require work ... that is they create jobs and they also create what I call valueadd. The politicians and the media have a fixation about money accounting in government, but they should be working on the valueadd accounting. Less education may save money, but it ruins society. Less maintenance of infrastructure saves money, but it does not make for an effective modern society ... and so on. Washington politics is using the corruption model of an era that needs to be over ... needs to be history ... the Occupy Movement is calling for leadership to address this and move on to something more appropriate for the 21st century. Most major industry sectors ... military, finance, health to name three ... not to mention mainstream media ,,, think they 'own' Washington, and this has to stop and stop real soon