The Last Days Of Bush

Welcome to this new blog, The Age Of F.D. Obama.

From the timing of its inception, and the slightly up itself neologism of a title, you can see I’m using Barack Obama as the hook. Everyone else does.

But this blog won’t just focus on the American President. It will be a typically self-indulgent gathering of my thoughts, opinions, views, musings etc. But it is an acknowledgement that, for better or worse, each new American Presidency ushers in a different era. How can you think about the 90s without recalling Bill Clinton looking the camera in the eye and declaring that he did not have sex with that woman, Ms Lewinsky? And the defining event of this decade is undoubtedly George Bush’s war in Iraq.

How will things be different in a world where Obama leads what remains by far the richest and most powerful nation on Earth? Don’t believe the hype about China: they still trail the US in every measure by a substantial measure. And as the sub prime debacle has shown us, when America sneezes, the world still catches a cold. Except now, it would appear America has just had an economic heart attack, meaning the rest of us will be in for an interesting ride. Early prediction: Ireland and the UK to go bankrupt like Iceland at some point this year, probably in weeks rather than months for the Emerald Isle.

What trends will we see in the Obama era? What new music will there be? There hasn’t been a genuinely new style of music since the electronic explosion of the late 80s and early 90s. In terms of sport, the English Premier League, which grew in popularity from the end of the last major recession in the early 1990s to become the world’s favourite competition is reaching the point of unsustainability as Man City prepare to pay £100m for Kaka. Obama is a keen basketballer and soccer has lost momentum to the President’s chosen game in the vast market of China.Will these years see the bouncing round ball replace the rolling one in the world’s attention?

The global economy will be different too. That’s a fact. As Seamus Milne observes in The Guardian, there seems to be a thought among many in government that we can get back to ‘how it was’, that if we throw enough of the taxpayers cash – that’s you and me folks – at banks, then they’ll be able to return to the good old days of entirely unsustainable, entirely immoral, and quite possibly criminal, business practices based on easy credit. The Age of F.D Obama will demonstrate how painfully false that notion is. A profound shift is underway. Already, Obama has expressed support for workers occupying a factory to demand unpaid wages. Traditionally US Presidents send in the military during labour disputes, not side with the workers.

As is mandatory for the first post on any new blog, I promise I will update this regularly. And this time, by jingo by Crikey, I actually mean it. Oh, and leave comments. I like comments, if only because deleting them gives me a misplaced sense of importance.