1.  PROBLEMS OBAMA FACES
    Obama's first priority, he says, is to deal with the economic crisis and he is trying to do something fast to end it.  That is admirable in itself.  But maybe it should be thought through a little more, taking a little more time to consider the longer term consequences of any actions, especially since the price tag is astronomical. 
    The US is engaged in two direct wars and more indirect wars.  This is taking a toll on lives, on prestige and on the economy.  The price tag is again astronomical.
    The dangers of climate change have become clear enough.  Unfortunately nothing was done about it for too long.  We are now experiencing the effects and it will get worse, a lot worse.
    The US role in the world has been lambasted during the Bush regime.  US prestige evaporated.  The US empire endangers itself.


2.  PROPOSED SOLUTIONS AND QUESTIONS ABOUT THEM
    Obama wants to deal with these problems and find workable solutions.  Will he be able to?  Let us start with his choices of advisors.

                            ADVISORS
    New ethics standards ought to be for everyone with no exceptions.  In the meantime some including Daschle have stepped down which was the right thing to do. But it was probably a mistake to keep Geithner.  Is it true that there were no alternatives to Geithner?  The argument that only Geithner understands the economic complexity of the problems sounds absurd.  The argument that the stimulus plan must be put in place quickly is questionable.  Will it really make a difference to the ultimate health of the US economy whether the stimulus programs happen this week or in four weeks?  Perhaps the hurried approach will even lead to bigger problems.  So rushing through Geithner's appointment may seem prudent, but the question about his qualifications remains.  Does someone who did not pay certain required social security and medicare taxes really have the moral fiber needed to watch over the IRS?  William J. Lynn III who lobbied for Raytheon is still under consideration for deputy defense secretary.  He ought to withdraw. 
    Why are so many of the Obama advisors from Harvard? All the Harvard people think pretty much the same way. What if they are wrong? Where are the people who will ask questions and offer alternatives?

                     WAR AND ITS ASPECTS
    The announcement that Guantanomo will be closed is commendable.  But when will it happen?  What will happen to the prisoners being held there?  Will the problems and objections become so great that Gitmo doesn't get closed?  Closing Gitmo should mean closing it, no excuses, no somedays.  Those involved in terror actions against the USA can be tried and placed in US jails as many already have been.
    No torture should mean no torture.  Why are exceptions for the CIA being proposed.  Their human rights record isn't good.  There should be no exceptions for the CIA.
    Why is there waffling on getting the entire military out of Iraq. Out is out. We can't solve the economic crisis if we are pursuing two VERY expensive wars.  In the past, economic growth in the USA has happened in peace time.  The beginning of a war may give a boost to a lagging economy and provide jobs for a while, but in the end it exhausts the economy.  That is the situation now.  A comparison of extended periods of economic growth in the USA in the past century shows that they required peace and reduced amounts of military spending.
    Do we really believe that if no one has been able to occupy Afghanistan successfully the past couple thousand years that we can?  Gates has intelligently suggested that sending a massive army to Afghanistan will not be able to solve the problem.  But it looks like the soldiers are going.  Why?  The Obama administration now declares that we will concentrate on the war in Afghanistan, sending tens of thousands more troops, trying to pressure other countries who don't want to, to send troops - does this sound familiar?
    What reason could there be to continue the recent strategy of killing Pakistani civilians in order to kill one or two jihadis?  Even if this should slow down militant attacks in Afghanistan, the hatred being engendered in Pakistan toward the US interventions will not disappear and attacks will burgeon up again eventually.  Maybe it will be a short term solution but not a long term one.  Does anyone know what it will mean to continue to destabilize Pakistan? 
    The Chicago School theory of creating a clean slate through destabilization of a country, slaughter and then putting in US puppet governements employing privatization, deregulation and free trade capitalism may have led to some short term upswings in GPD in some countries, but as South America which is the prime example of practicing this theory indicates, it has become a continent with a basic distrust of the USA, attempting to liberate itself from dependence on the USA and willing to sabbatage US interests when possible.  The Neos thought they could cleanse South America of socialist and communist influences and turn it into a placid dependency.  It didn't work.  They thought they could do the same with the Middle East where communist and socialist influences were eventually replaced by Islamists.  The chances of that working are minimal, but this time, it could spell the permanent economic decline of the USA.

                    CHINA
    Attacking China for currency manipulation by the Obama administration after a few days in office is crazy.  Do they wish to create enmity with China?  Will that really be helpful in the present economic situation?  China decoupled the renminbi from the dollar in 2005 and since then its value has increase by over 20%.  It has chosen to take a slow and careful path in revaluing its currency because it believes that will prevent currency dislocations, runs on currencies, and economic disruption.  The present economic disaster was not caused by the gradual increase in the value of the renminbi, nor by the fact that its rise has been slow, and it would probably be a hundred times worse if the renminbi were forced to increase rapidly in value. 
    What if China begins to sell out its US treasuries?  What if it has to sell it's US treasuries in order to try to save its own economy?  Do we really want to rock the boat on this before we've really figured out what will happen if they do?  Actually we know what will happen if there is a massive sell-off of treasuries.  The USA will either go bankrupt or US inflation will resemble Zimbabwe's.

                                  ISRAEL/PALESTINE
    The Obama government's interpretation of what is going on in Israel/Palestine is in the hands of AIPAC.  With that unbalanced, one-sided view, the problem will not be solved.  Can George Mitchell do better?  It will be difficult if he won't talk to Hamas.  Hamas was democratically elected by the Palestinian people.  Oddly this fact is always left out by the press in the USA.  Branding Hamas as terrorist and then ignoring them is not going to solve any problems.   The massive financial and especially military subsidies paid for by US taxpayers to Israel will allow the war to go on endlessly.  Israel, despite the constant jabbering of the press is not a democracy, it is an ethnocracy or a theocracy, thus in essence not much different than Saudi Arabia.  Of course, the USA has not been known to have problems supporting all sorts of non-democratic governments.  Talks should include Hamas, and military subsidies to Israel must stop completely.

                                IRAN
    Threatening Iran and allowing talk of overthrowing its government, even if Obama offers diplomacy, is a policy which will surely backfire.  The US and the world should stop the sanctions now. That will allow Iran to liberalize, begin rejuvenating its economy and eventually perhaps become the local power center.  With it's Islamic fundamentalist qualifications along with it's very real potential to liberalize it could be a very positive influence in the area.  Before the US intervention through sanctions and secret CIA interference in the country, Iran was liberalizing and growing economically.  For the US, egged on by Israeli lobbyists, an improved economy in Iran seemed threatening and had to be destroyed.  Yet, by all logic, a better living standard for the people and greater political and social possibilities always tend to reduce extremism, and that is what was happening before the sanctions.  Allowing liberalizing Iranian influence to spread from Iran to Afghanistan and elsewhere might be the best way to help Afghanistan.  After 9/11 Iranians were interested in investing in Afghanistan and probably could have given that country an economic boost if the USA hadn't intervened and blocked Iranian ambitions.

                US LEADERSHIP
    The notion of US leadership in the world is understood by the US government (Obama does not differ from preceding governments) to mean that the USA tells everyone else what to do.  It is apparently self-evident that what the USA thinks about any particular conflict is correct and the other side is wrong.  There is little give and take.  But some countries are tired of this, China for example which for the most part simply ignores the US blustering and like Russia is beginning to offer the same "medicine" to the USA.  Obviously all this US advice and pressure on others to follow it, is given not because it is good for the countries in question, but rather stems from perceived US interests.  But hey, the US just created the worst economic debacle of the last half century.  Why would anyone really want to listen?  And what would justify it if they do?

                CLIMATE CHANGE
    Can and will Obama be able to do anything to reverse the negative effects of climate change and build a new sustainable economy with a renewable local energy infrastructure.  The answer is still out on that one, but the recently passed stimulus bill does not look good.  Infrastructure requires capital that we don't have.  And there is no indication just now where that capital can come from.

            WAGES AND STANDARD OF LIVING
    Some people recognize that the downward pressure on pay and thus on income levels for the lower half of the US population over the past half century is at the core of the present problem.  But do the Obama advisors understand that?  They tend to think top down.  I doubt they've rejected their Milton Friedman even if they suddenly are more amenable to Keynes.
    In order to keep up their living standard, most people in the USA have had to increase their debt, and borrowing was readily available without restrictions.  Now, the Obama government wants to make it easier for people to continue on this path.  There you go.  I guess we are supposed to ignore the core of the problem, and instead increase the misplaced policies that led to the collapse in the first place.  Making it easier to increase debt is not going to work, unless maybe everyone with personal debt is allowed to go bankrupt with no repercussions.  Will that happen?  You can bet it won't.
    The other solution to maintain living standards while reducing income which was carried out over the last thirty years, was to encourage corporations to provide cheap imports from China and elsewhere.  Between encouraging massive debt and providing cheap foreign made products, Americans more or less could keep up the appearance of an increasing living standard - until now. 

                   ECONOMIC DISASTER
    It is not 100% certain Keynsianism got us out of the Depression in the 1930's.  But it did create an excellent infrastructure, so that is good.  But can Obama do that adequately if most of the money goes to financial bailouts, auto bailouts, and war?  It looks like a relatively small percentage of the new bailout package is going to infrastructure, and a much larger percent goes to tax cuts and stimulus checks which recent experience shows do not help.
    There is an economic presupposition that money must be borrowed in order to make an economy grow.  The notion has been carried to such an extreme over the last few decades, that the deleveraging which is now occurring will likely keep the economy contracting and then stagnating for years. Massive indebtedness wasn't always considered the way to go.  At one time people saved first in order to create the capital to invest.  Of course, that's not how capitalism began.  It was much more sinister than through debt or saving.  Capitalism was able to impose itself on the world because entrepreneurs went around the world robbing cultures of their gold and other assets in order to obtain the capital they needed to invest.  So capital grows through robbery, saving, debt and the creation of money by the government.  The latter, however, most often leads to inflation which in the end reduces capital.  Yes, we do need capital now to stop the decline of economies.  But maybe there are other ways to increase to  create what we need to be a sustainable and equitable society.    

                                                  STIMULUS
    The economic practices of the past thirty years are not working any more and there are no new suggestions of how to solve this, except basically more of the same with a larger touch of Keynsianism.  So, much of what is being done could make it worse. 
    F.ex. bailouts will allow banks and corporations to keep producing debt and unions will not be able to raise wages, forcing China to raise the value of its currency rapidly means cheap products will be less available and people won't be able to afford necessities. 

                    TAX CUTS
    Why are the Bush tax cuts for the rich not being reversed now when the government needs the money?  You can be sure it's not those folks who are going to create the jobs.  True, they may put some of the money they don't pay in taxes into the stock market, slowing the decline and potentially creating another bubble that will burst soon enough. Instead the government should be giving support only to start ups and growing small businesses that will create jobs and cut all subsidies to big corporations and agribusiness who will continue to cut jobs even if they get tax cuts.

                       REGULATION   
    Obama talks of the need to regulate financial markets.  This is self-evident.  But will one of the authors of deregulation Larry Summers who is head of the White House's National Economic Council really be willing and able to create regulations that will prevent the recurrance of a new financial disaster?  He belongs to the Harvard crowd, the same group that participated in the Bill Clinton government when much of the deregulation occurred that has now laid waste to our economy.

                    HEALTH CARE
    One of the most persistent problems both economically and personally in the US is the question of health care.  Obama has said he wants to take it on.  But so far there aren't any cogent solutions.  Health insurance companies will not allow themselves to be put out of business, so there is virtually no hope of getting single payer national health care which is the most economical, practical, and complete way of coverage with the most successful health outcomes.
               

3.  ALTERNATIVES           
    There are different overarching ways of viewing the economy.  It can be a complex array of economic subjects all striving to make money.  Interesting in that picture are the entrepreneurs who create the economic forces.  The starting point is the availability and use of capital in order to create businesses.  Workers are merely one element of cost and all costs must be reduced as much as possible.  There may be conflicts between entrepreneurs but because all have the same goal it will end up harmonious, as if there were an invisible hand guiding it all.  It's Adam Smith's pure capitalism.  Some, however, don't think the invisible hand works perfectly, therefore there should be some government regulation preventing the entrepreneurs from unbalancing the system.  All manipulation of the system must be done by regulating how capital is created and distributed.
    Then there is the view from the side of the producers of goods and services.  In this view working people are the ones that create the goods and services.  Entrepreneurs provide capital, but don't create value.  Instead they enrich themselves by appropriating most of the value of the goods and services created by the workers.  The system is manipulated by allowing capital to be shunted away from the workers and into the hands of capitalists by keeping wages as low as possible .
    If the system goes out of control, the solutions will be very different depending on how the system is conceived.  In the first case, all interventions will consist of ways to manipulate capital.  In the second case, workers are the center point and their share of the value of production might be increased or decreased.  If it is decreased too much they might rebell.
    What must be done is to start shifting the wealth of the nation from those at the top who have been stealing it for a long time, to the hands of those who create it, the workers, both white and blue collar.  (There are many people working in financial services who are providing real services to people, many of them are being paid very low wages.  However, the finance manipulators whose only goal is to think of new ways to expropriate money from people and put it in their own pockets are not creating wealth for the country even if their manipulations are added to GDP.  It's illusory GDP and it's harmful.) 
    How about ending all subsidies to corporations, private companies and agribusiness of a certain size.  How about making corporations pay for the infrastructure they use, no exceptions.  What if all companies were organized like the Canadian royalty trusts in which all excess cash goes to shareholders after costs and possible expansion.  What if shareholders would include all workers in the corporations as well as every US citizen, not just the rich.  What if private companies after reaching a certain size would have to include stakeholders as shareholders.
    Attempting to escape rules for inclusion of stakeholders as shareholders by privatizing companies would be impossible.  While trusts made of up stakeholder/shareholders would not be taxed, private companies beyond a certain size would be taxed at 90%.  Moving company headquarters out of the country to avoid taxes would simply be forbidden.  Any company doing this would be penalized  by having to pay import tariffs to sell their products in the USA.  Any company whose headquarters are in another country and don't pay US taxes is a foreign company.  That would be the end of free trade of course.  Can the supporters of free trade prove that it will be beneficial under present economic circumstances?  Can they even show that it was beneficial for most Americans before the economic crisis?
     Perhaps there are other ways than tariffs to encourage production in the USA.  Perhaps there could be tax breaks for individuals who buy US produced goods which would be large enough to make US producers competitive.  This would not be an import tarif and thus should not cause tariff retaliation. 
    It is not completely specious to consider developing a system of barter as a way to distribute goods and services in the USA.  With computers and internet this could be accomplished.

    How about putting caps on what percentage of a corporation's stock any individual can own.  Everything above that should be expropriated and distributed to EVERYONE in the USA.  That would be not much more difficult than sending stimulus checks to everyone and could be done instead of the stimulus checks.
    Any earnings including stock options over $1,000,000 should be taxed at 90%.  No one needs more than that.  Almost anyone getting that much is getting it because money is being diverted from others who have worked for it somewhere along the line.  This should end CEO pay excesses.  In the 1950's when the highest tax bracket was 90% (yes, it was whether you believe it or not) the US economy was growing rapidly, job creation was expanding, the middle class was growing at its fastest rate ever and more and more people were able to increase their standard of living.  That's what we need now with growth happening in sustainable, environmentally safe businesses and increases in living standard being defined as an improved quality of life.