I really don't think that Obama had control of the levers of power in a way that enabled him to take such radical action so precipitately.

And I hate to say this, ARG, but at best it would just have kicked the can down the road. It may have cut the debt burden, but it would have done nothing to redistribute wealth (ie productive assets) and nothing to make the population more creditworthy. The system is terminally fucked IMHO whichever way you look at it. Nothing deficit-based works in the medium and long term.

What we will shortly see is that all of the remedies prescribed by these voodoo economists fail. And they must be seen to fail. No-one may be able to say to Obama - as they would do when the action that you recommend fails, too - that it's because voodoo economics was not tried.

I think that in the next few months we will definitively see the end of an era, and the beginning of a new one.

This will be Obama's challenge, and opportunity.

"The future is already here -- it's just not very evenly distributed" William Gibson