Having lived in Taiwan and Hong Kong for a number of years I know that the Chinese consider the number four as being unlucky. I suppose that means the number 44 is double unlucky. We shall soon know.

Do not misunderstand me. I wish President Elect Obama well. I was pleased that he won the election and sincerely hope that he can assemble a team that will be able to cope with the dire looking domestic and international issues that will be inherited by the Obama administration. Bush and his cohorts have left a mess that hopefully can with great effort be cleaned up. But I fear that the challenges of the next many years are going to overwhelm the possible solutions no matter who leads the US. Here is a short list of difficult issues that the Obama team will face:

1.) The Greater Depression: The recession that in my opinion is now just getting underway is not going to be a garden variety recession that will be mild and short lived. We are facing what could be a near total collapse of the world financial order and what could well turn out to be the first global greater depression. Just look around you in the financial world. The dominoes are already falling as a balance sheet recession picks up steam. The financial crisis is now firmly affecting mainstreet. As consumer spending drives about 70% of the US GDP yesterday’s reported all time record drop in monthly retail sales of 2.8% is a scary figure. By the time Obama takes office a full blown decline in economic activity will be accelerating, both in the US and in much of the world.

2.) War in Iraq: Starting a war is so much easier than in getting out of one. While during his campaign Obama proposed a 16 month flexible timetable for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq the timetable may be difficult to meet. Baghdad and Iraq continue to be among the most dangerous places on earth as bombings and violence remain a daily affair. Getting out of Iraq with any dignity or honor at all will not be easy.

3.) War in Afghanistan: The war in Afghanistan is going from bad to much worst as the Taliban emerge as a more powerful force than ever. Obama is on record as wanting to step up the war in deploying more American troops. In my opinion such a move will be disastrous. The rugged terrain in Afghanistan will soak up more troops than we can put into the field. It is foolish hubris that leads Obama and most Americans to think that we can accomplish in Afghanistan what the Soviets and the British could not. No foreign power in the history of Afghanistan has been able to long prevail.

The war in Afghanistan has already been lost. There is no possibility of somehow transforming a largely warlord ruled Afghanistan into a democratic fully functioning nation unless a long term extremely expensive effort involving many hundreds of billions of dollars could be carried out. Given the US has its own financial challenges it is unlikely that anywhere near the amount of required funds to rebuild Afghanistan will ever be committed to the task. Even if the dollars could be found Afghanistan is so corrupt that most of them would probably be diverted by their “leaders” to private secret bank accounts located far from Kabul.

No, Obama is sure to be disappointed about the results that are achieved by an escalation of the war in Afghanistan.

4.) Climate Change: Obama will very likely take climate change seriously. I expect that during his term the evidence of profound unfavorable change in the earth’s climate will be rolling in. Unfortunately, it is probably already too late to prevent severe dislocations in the patterns of life of a majority of the earth’s people from occurring. The worldwide consequences of climate change will not be pretty.

5.) Energy Independence: Obama stated during his campaign that his administration would support what would amount to a full court press designed to with lessen America’s dependence upon foreign oil. He would pursue more drilling within the US and offshore as well as the development of alternative energy resources, such as wind, solar, biomass, clean burning coal, and nuclear power. What he didn’t say is that alternative energy resources, even with a crash development program, can not take up the slack fast enough as world wide oil production falls.

Within a few years the world will be energy starved no matter what we do. Of course, doing something will be better than doing nothing. But the result of all of the government efforts will probably be disappointing, energy shortages will be widespread, and Obama will receive much of the blame.

Do not be fooled by the current break in oil and gasoline prices. Growth in China and India will slow down as the world recession, perhaps depression, continues, but a slowing down for their economies still means growth rates of 5% to 6% a year. World oil fields are in a state of decline that will not be reversed. You will see much higher prices for crude oil than even $150 a barrel during President Elect Obama’s first term.

There was nearly a breakdown in the American transportation system this year as oil prices approached $150 a barrel. Any sustained price above $150 a barrel would likely lead to food riots within the US and around the world as transportation systems seize up and transport trucks come to a halt. Without daily deliveries to American supermarkets shelves would be bare within a week.

Conclusion: President Elect Obama will take office just as an alarming regressive period of history begins. Americans who have a keen sense of history know that human progress throughout history has not always been smooth. There are periods of time where progress in the human condition does not move forward and in face regresses, sometimes for tens or even hundreds of years at a time. Unfortunately most Americans do not have a good sense of history and think that living conditions only steadily progress and improve, except perhaps for brief periods of recession. They are likely to be dismayed, overwhelmed, and angered by events. It will be a dangerous time to live in America.

Obama is talking the oath of office near the beginning of a perfect storm of rapidly converging unpleasant events. The Chinese may be right about the number 4. Expectations are already so high for Obama to “save the world” that disappointment is sure to follow. The 44th President of the United States will have to be extremely lucky not to be blamed for much of the misfortune that will soon be upon us all.

I hope that I am completely wrong President Elect Obama. But I would not want to be so unlucky as to be the 44th President of the United States.

I should add that largely due to John McCain and his neo con friends it has also been the dirtiest low road campaign, probably in American history. With America falling into hard times after eight long years of corrupt, incompetent misrule the stakes as to the outcome of this election are high. The same folks who brought us Bush and his misrule are trying everything in their power to place their man, McCain, into the Whitehouse.

I am writing this on the day before the election. The polls appear to show that the majority of the American people have learned not to be taken in by the politics of fear. This is an important election for America. Four more years of what we have experienced in the past eight years will reduce us to a second rate nation in an increasingly competitive world.

America has great challenges in front of it. We need intelligent, thoughtful, insightful leadership if we are to stand any chance of restoring the American Dream to its former position as the envy of the world.

Should an anti intellectual, corrupt, self serving pair like Palin/McCain be elected American influence and prestige in the world would plummet to new lows. An Obama victory would overnight give the US an immediate much needed boost around the world in prestige and support.

The world has changed greatly over the last ten years or so. While still a super power America no longer dominates the world in many categories, including manufacturing output and innovative new products and ideas. American needs an enlightened leader who is aware of these changes and who will implement balanced policies of cooperation in a world that needs leadership that works to peacefully find ways to resolve conflicts.

That leader is not an old fighter jock whose every instinct is to attack and fight everyone and every thing that dares oppose him. And Palin? I don’t think I have to say much about McCain’s judgement with his VP selection. She shows her limited grasp of real issues every time she speaks.

Senator Obama may not be perfect but he is an intelligent, thoughtful man who is talented at pulling together people of diverse backgrounds to work together for a common mutually beneficial purpose. Let’s hope that Obama can usher in a new era of effective government that lives up to the promise of the American Constitution. An Obama landslide would be a fitting end to one of the craziest and dirtiest campaigns ever.

Famous investor, financier Kirk Kerkorian is pulling out of the stake he took in Ford Motor Co. just six months ago, selling 7.3 million shares at a fraction of his purchase price.

Kerkorian announced just last April that he had bought 100 million shares of Ford for an average price of $6.91. He then announced a tender offer under which he paid $8.50 a share for an additional 20 million shares. In addition he bought another 22.3 million shares between late April and mid-June at an average price of $6.54 a share, giving his total investment an average price of just over $7 a share.

Kerkorian filed a report with the Securities and Exchange Commission Tuesday that he had sold those shares Monday for an average of price of $2.43, and that he was looking to possibly dump his remaining 133.5 million shares, which represent a 6% stake in the automaker.

The losses that Kerkorian is taking on Ford Motors points out the chaos present in today’s stock market environment. Even seasoned highly successful investors like Kirk Kerkorian can buy stocks that have been badly beaten down only to find that the prices have a long way to go on the downside. The downside may be as far as zero as even long term household name firms run out of all options and file for bankruptcy.

In my opinion, even highly respected old war horse investors like Warren Buffet may get it wrong this time. Buffet and many other seasoned investors may be fighting yesterdays investment war in an investment environment that is completely off the charts as far as possible adverse outcomes are concerned.

It is the enormous size of what has been an completely unregulated derivatives market that concerns me. The market is estimated at about $56 trillion, although no one knows it’s size for sure. Some of the risk may be offset by offsetting positions but no one really knows much about that either. The fact is that an enormous time bomb is still ticking away and could explode at any time.

If a large percentage of the derivative positions still held by financial institutions remain illiquid and mostly worthless the banks and other financial institutions still face huge write offs that may in fact complete the financial meltdown, carrying the good down the tubes along with the bad. There is already a scary peak at how bad these write downs could be. Much of the Lehman Brothers “investment” portfolio was auctioned off for about 8.90 cents to the dollar. Wow!

The hundreds of billions of dollars already thrown at the worldwide financial crunch may only give a temporary lift to financial markets. It is hard to see how more of what largely contributed to the crisis in the first place, too much liquidity and too low interest rates for too long of a time period, are going to fix the problems of solvency. When most of your asset structure is composed of worthless assets borrowing more money to shore up your balance sheet isn’t going to cut it. The worthless assets are still there and will have to be recognized as worthless at some point in time.

In the case of Ford and Kirk Kerkorian it seems that Kerkorian realized that he made a mistake by buying Ford stock “cheap” and is smart enough to cut his losses and to dump the stock before it becomes worthless. Not many investors, seasoned or not, are that smart in today’s new war investment environment. Relying on past measures as to what cheap is may prove to be a painful way to get wiped out.

Leaders from the G-7 and G-20 nations as well as the IMF are all discussing what should be done to at least slow down the world wide bleeding. The great challenge is that the de-leveraging process now underway discloses in a very nasty way just how far off course the world financial system, lead by the irresponsible people in the United States of America government, was over the many years of deregulation, poor oversight, and bubble creation.

Smart people who really should have known better acted as financial asset cheerleaders as asset values skyrocketed under the influence of easy cheap financing. As long as values kept increasing the big shots on Wall Street, on The Street in London, and elsewhere added increasing amounts of leverage. So we had leverage stacked on top of leverage and the regulators didn’t seem to notice how dangerous the game had become. It never seemed to occur to anyone that asset values may fall one day and continue to fall for many years. No one thought that a decline could occur in almost every asset class and in every market of the world, all at the same time. So much for the safety of global and asset diversification.

The use of excessive debt and financial leverage had to lead to trouble. Just as values explode on the upside they implode on the downside. In the closely knit world community of financial enterprises the failure of one major institution leads to the failure of another, and then yet another. Credit freezes up as banks fear of lending even to each other, fear that they may not have money returned from previously financially strong counter parties, and stop lending to even strong credit worthy customers.

As assets values fall the entire Ponzi scheme of building a financial system that must have ever higher prices to survive comes to the ground like every Ponzi scheme ever created eventually does. With leverage as high as 40 to 1, unbelievably employed by investment banks and some hedge funds, it doesn’t take much of a decline to completely strip out every cent of equity. A 2.5% decline will do it, thank you very much. Positions that were thought to be safety hedged against declines become outright naked positions when your counterparty goes under.

In addition, it is a sad fact that bubbles built on the backs of assets that are long term assets, like housing and commercial properties, are especially difficult to control on the downside. Once the real estate bubble pops it takes a very long time for real estate markets to recover. The real estate cycle is long. Once markets have been saturated and the downward spiral is underway it will likely take years, probably much longer than you and world leaders now expect, to recover. And the troubles caused by the decline of real estate values, as we are now finding out, spills over in the general economy at an alarming rate.

But what now financial warriors?

My best guess is that we are all in for a long painful emergency. The downward economic cycle will have to run its course and will strongly resist the efforts of the Fed, the US Treasury, G-7, the IMF, the Japanese Central Bank, all the efforts of Euroland, and every other government agency to stop and reverse it. Events are now out of control.

The emergency actions that the various governments of the world are taking will probably make things much worse. For one thing we can expect a lot of re-regulation. Plus in the US a lot of socialization has already taken place with the federal government bailout of Bear Stearns, Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, AIG, probably soon enough GM and Ford, and the taking of equity positions in banks.

Think about it. The re-regulation of the financial services industry will more than likely take all of the fun and juice out of the industry for good. Capital tends to move where it is treated best. The US will probably shoot itself in the foot and drive tremendous amounts of financial services related capital offshore. There will be safe havens, like perhaps Singapore, that will see a flood of capital in flows as re-regulation fever takes hold in America and Europe.

Once the regulators get underway there will be no stopping them. While a review and revision of regulations is certainly in order you can expect an industry overkill. And who in their right mind can believe that the government which is largely responsible for this mess is going to do a stellar job at managing the complex businesses that they now have an equity stake in?

So I for one don’t expect too much if any relief will be generated by the panicked world leaders of 2008. It is a time to raise cash, reduce your burn rate, and not be too early in jumping back in to markets because they seem cheap. We have already seen that a cheap Lehman Brothers stock became just about worthless. In the present environment cheap will be defined as zero for many long standing previously successful companies. But in bankruptcy cheap becomes worthless so beware of cheap.

It is a time to hunker down in your bunker and to protect whatever you may have left for times that may soon become far worse. The meltdown of the world financial system has started and there are $56 trillion of largely worthless yet still vastly overvalued derivatives to go. That is a lot of money that may largely disappear. It is more than all of the governments of the world can handle.

“The federal rescue package is not a bailout of Wall Street tycoons - it is a lifeboat for millions of Americans whose life savings, businesses, retirement plans and jobs are at stake,” Schwarzenegger said.

As the State of California has a GDP that is as larger than all but a few countries in the world this is a very big deal. Of course, California is the state where excesses in the housing market boom were the most extreme so it is not surprising that it is now experiencing some of the most severe fallout from the housing and credit crunch. The scary thing is that California is often a bell-weather state and leads the way in national trends.

Certainly as the recession takes hold across the nation more states must be in a severe budget squeeze. No doubt other states are already looking to the Federal government to bail them out of financial disaster.

The big unanswered question is who is going to bail out the federal government as the credit crunch intensifies? Those who think that the $700 billion bailout plan (with added pork increased to about $850 billion) will solve the problem are dreaming. The plan will actually probably make things worst over the long run as it will give false hope that the crisis has somehow been averted.

It’s the big elephant in the room that we all have to worry about. The 56 trillion dollar derivative market time bomb is still ticking away. When that bomb of toxic waste impossible to evaluate and market pile of junk goes off we will indeed be lucky if the entire house of cards financial system doesn’t completely melt down.

Our army of Wall Street and government financial geniuses may have unwittingly devised a way to send us all back to small farming self sufficient barely surviving communities before this disaster has run its course.

The next currency that has any real value may turn out to be cans of pork and beans and the like. Better start stocking up now before the super markets become far less than super.

In the meantime if you are a teacher, law enforcement officer, or state employee in the late great State of California you had better hope that $7 billion from across the nation can be funneled into your own state coffers. It’s best to be at the front of the bailout line than anywhere near the rear. The battle for survival is on.

This has caused the offices of the members of congress to be flooded with irate phone calls, letters, emails, and on occasion unannounced visits of mad as all hell voters from back home. Seldom have the American people, Democrats, Republicans, and Independents, come together in such large numbers to protest a funding bill and financial plan.

This has placed the members of congress in a sweat. The administration’s fear tactics seem to have worked. Most members of congress have bought into the President’s, Bernanke’s, and Paulson’s frequent fearful statements that some sort of bailout must be put into place. Or else bad, bad, bad things will happen. But congressmen and congresswomen must worry about what will happen to their privileged position in Washington if they vote for the bailout plan when there is so much rage against it coming from the voters. Those who are up for reelection are going to face some unpleasant discussions in their home districts.

And what if the plan doesn’t work? What then? Another bailout plan to bail out the bailout plan? At that point the rage may spill over into the streets.

When one really thinks about it it is easy to believe that the Paulson plan, even after modified by Congress, will fail. The “cash for trash” nature of the bailout may take some of the pressure off the banks and Wall Street but it does not address the root cause of the problems. As we have seen over recent months billions of dollars can disappear fast in the black hole created out of the sorry misguided financial dealings over the past twenty to thirty years. Until the housing bubble collapse has fully run its course the $700 billion placed with the banks and brokerage firms almost surely won’t make much of a difference.

What the United States has forgotten in its drive to socialism is that in a capitalistic system recessions are a natural part of the way economic cycles take place. In the rush to prevent a recession at all costs the US government is driving up debt as a percentage of GDP towards, even beyond, third world nation status.

The good sense of the America people in this situation should be trusted by their leaders. The cure proposed by the good old bailout boys is likely to make financial matters for the United States even worst. For one thing even village idiots know that government forecasting and accounting really is dishonest and frankly sucks. The $700 billion will probably balloon to two or three trillion before the new president has a chance to organize his new impressive desk. The ship of state may capsize under such a debt burden.

In my opinion, the rage on main street is fully justified. After all should the bailout plan be approved the $700 billion would be largely turned over to the greedy financial rascals who caused the problem in the first place. I expect that old habits would die hard. Once their grubby money loving hands are on all of that money the temptation to game the system all over again would be great.

In watching the Presidential debate last night I thought that Obama and McCain only danced around the bailout issue. Both missed a good opportunity to garner the respect of a multitude of American voters. If only one of them had the guts to demonstrate real leadership. All they would have had to say was that they are as outraged over the $700 billion bailout plan as most Americans and give reasons as to why.

Another gutless politic operator in the Whitehouse is not going to be very beneficial. America has lived for a long time with reckless borrowing and spending habits. It now appears that our glory days are over. Now that we are the largest debtor nation on this planet it can’t be long with even more debt on the way from massive bailouts that middle class Americans will be able to have a third world experience without leaving America.

Should that happen rage will be all too common all across America. The “mother of all bailouts” may be the tipping point bailout. Confidence in America is becoming fragile. Once our main lenders, China and Japan, decide that enough is enough America will need a bailout all right. But from whom?

After a full weekend of emergency meetings meeting between Federal Reserve, US Treasury, and financial industry big shots the fourth largest investment bank in America, the 158 year old Lehman , was left to its own devices. The US government finally drew that line in the sand. No bailout for Lehman. This morning Lehman filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy.

Wall Street has at last been put on notice. Those hoping the Fed would provide bailouts for the likes of Washington Mutual (WM) and American International Group (AIG) will be sorely disappointed by the US governments reluctance to step in. Actually, with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac being placed in a “conservership” only a week ago the Fed and Treasury must have run out of running room. Throwing countless billions of dollars that you don’t really have at companies that have been terribly mismanaged is not a winning combination.

Wall Street is finding out a little late in the game that making big bets using leverage of 30:1 to 40:1 is a risky business. The fact that this was not obvious in the first place speaks loads of the concept of American exception-ism. What hubris and what nonsense. These big swinging dicks of Wall Street actually thought that they could successfully manage such leverage due to new super duper American devised management systems. After all Americans can do anything, even the impossible.

But you do have to hand it to the Wall Street gang. What salesmen. The Wall Street army lead by their fearless and not so smart after all leaders managed to sell almost the entire world junk investments presented as AAA opportunities. Greed and how to use it to advantage is a powerful tool that Wall Street understands very well.

It never occurred to any of the Wall Street marvels and willing participants that investments can go down as well as up. Especially investments backed by real estate. Unfortunately, your investments don’t have to decline by much at 30:1 leverage to wipe you out. Now the Wall Street firms that have played this dangerous game are leading the entire economy into a dark and dangerous place. The return of common sense will likely keep the US and much of the world mired in a long and difficult recession, even a depression, for many years to come.

The aversion of risk will be the new game in town and that will probably mean at least a generation of financial executives and common Americans alike who as a result of a complete financial meltdown will be adverse to taking any kind of risk. The resulting credit implosion will reshape America. Standards of living will fall and tempers and aggressive acts will rise.

Not only has the Fed and Treasury Department put Wall Street on notice that bailouts can not be counted on but all of America is on notice as well. The American dream of the past twenty years of getting rich with little or no effort has turned into a nightmare. The government has placed everyone on notice that one had best learn in a hurry to take care of themselves.

The take over would be the largest financial bailout in America’s history and probably pretty much wipe out the common stock shareholders. The take over would add about six trillion dollars to the federal debt, not a very reassuring figure. In fact it may well bring into question the very credit worthiness of the United States government and add to the cost of all government attempts to raise money in the future.

Who wants to lend money to a bankrupt government?

The following story is on Reuters:

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WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. government plans to put government sponsored mortgage finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac under federal control, the New York Times and Washington Post newspapers reported late Friday, in what could be the largest financial bailout in the nation’s history.

The two government sponsored enterprises (GSEs) own or guarantee almost half of the country’s $12 trillion in outstanding home mortgage debt.

The Wall Street Journal reported earlier on Friday that the U.S. Treasury Department is close to finalizing a plan to restructure the two companies that includes changes to their senior management.

The plan could be announced as early as this weekend, the Journal said.
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Go to Reuters for the complete tale of woe.

Starting with George W. Bush and Dick Cheney a long list of destructive characters comes to mind. A far from complete short list includes Alan Greenspan, Alberto Gonzales, Don Rumsfield, Karl Rove, and L. Paul Bremer III. These few men have cost the United States its place in the world as the supreme superpower and may have pushed the US over the edge of the abyss towards a future of being a second rate cousin of the third world if not actually sinking into third world status. However, the purpose of this article is not to look back or to assign blame but to look ahead at some of the immense extreme challenges that the next president will confront.

John McCain and Barrack Obama take note. Once elected you will likely be faced with such difficult challenges that you will go down in the history books as the American president who presided over the downward spiral of America. To be fair, you will face probably the most complex and difficult issues ever confronted by any American president. But it will be your watch and you will reap the blame for failure should failure occur.

On the campaign trail John McCain and Barack Obama talk of the ways that they will restore prosperity and international respect to the run down USA that one of them will inherit from George W. Bush. No matter what they say during their presidential campaigns that they will try and accomplish during their term in office events already in motion will probably largely set the agenda for them.

The next president of the United States of America will require great courage, management skill, the judgement of a King Solomon, the wisdom of enlightened men, and a lot of luck to avoid complete disaster for America and for his presidential legacy. Managing to over come one disaster is one thing, trying to cope with a series of overlapping disasters is quite another.

I wish you good luck Mr. President, whoever the winner of the 2008 election turns out to be. And why exactly do you want this impossible job? Here is a brief look at some of the pressing issues that the next president will have on his plate from day one.

1. Global Warming. There is little disagreement in the scientific community that human activities contribute to global warming. However, few experts have stated publicly that it is already too late for mankind to avoid disastrous consequences over the next fifty years. The extreme challenge for the next US president will be to forge a worldwide alliance of nations that will begin to plan for a disastrous future for a large percentage of mankind. The president will have to move beyond the denial stage and convince a nation that it must follow his lead.

2. Meltdown of the US Financial System and Economy: The number one issue for most Americans will become one of survival in an economy that was constructed over many years on a shaky foundation of fraud, deceit, and lies. Yes, I know strong words, but in future articles I will back up what I say. My forecast is that the next president will be immediately immersed in so many financial disasters as the housing collapse continues and even large banks fail that he will have little opportunity to work on other important, even critical issues.

3. Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan: It is so much easier to get into wars than to get out of them. The next president will face increased conflict in both Iraq and Afghanistan. A substantial troop draw down in Iraq will likely be like taking the lid off a boiling hot pot. The centuries old conflict between Sunni and Shia will probably boil over again as they fight it our for control of Iraq and its oil. Keeping a high level of America troops in Iraq and Afghanistan for years and years is a strain on American resources that probably can not be tolerated for much longer. For America there is no good way out of either conflict.

4. Healthcare System: The present healthcare system is, as just about everyone knows, broken and not sustainable. Unless something is done the unfunded cost of Medicare and the new prescription drug bill alone will be enough to bankrupt America. With a huge wave of baby boomers reaching retirement age during the next term a healthcare crisis may be enough on its own to sweep the new president and his plans for his second term in office right out of office.

5. Nuclear Proliferation: While Iran remains at the top of the nuclear arms worry list there are probably up to ten additional nations who are at least thinking about developing nuclear weapons. One of them, North Korea, probably already has a few low grade nukes on hand and despite recent fanfare about dismantling their oldest nuclear facility it is difficult to fully trust the unpredictable North Koreans. Even our friends, Brazil, may be involved in nuclear weapons research. With the discovery of vast offshore oil fields the Brazilians must be thinking about how to best protect their nation’s changing good fortune.

6. Energy Concerns: The course that the US has been on for the past thirty to forty years has lead us to the edge of the high priced energy cliff. We have already had a taste as to how the economy starts to shut down as crude oil prices approach $150 a barrel. The next president must champion an intense energy conservation program if the US has any chance of an economic recovery. We will not be able to drill our way out of the energy shortfall. Energy conservation and alternative energy sources must lead the way. But, please Mr. President, no more blind foolish corn based ethanol programs.

The transfer of $700 billion a year to oil exporting nations is not sustainable. Transfers of that magnitude already represent the greatest transfer of wealth in the history of mankind. A few more years of such wealth transfers will reduce the US to third world status.

7. Food Shortages: The hand writing is on the wall here, loud and clear. America has never before had to deal with wide spread unmanageable food shortages. However, an unfortunate convergence of events like high energy prices, global warming and drought, ill conceived programs to convert food stocks into fuel for machines, changes in weather causing floods in some areas and drought in others, and over population along with the globalization of the demand for more meat and better food as developing nations increase living standards, are already raising danger signals. The next president may have to deal with food riots, a chilling task by any measure.

If we in the US make it though the next president’s term without a great deal of pain we will be lucky indeed. In fact the pain has started during the present President’s term. The legacy of George W.Bush appears to already be established as the man more than any other whose actions have set in motion events that will forever alter America’s standing in the world and her claim to be a super power.

Any one of the seven potential disasters listed could be enough to consume the planned agenda of a United States President. Probably being forced by events to deal with all seven, perhaps even more, all at once, well, good luck to the brave egomaniac who thinks that he is up to the task.

“Barack Obama has long been his party’s presumptive nominee. Now he’s becoming its presumptuous nominee,” wrote Dana Milbank, a columnist for the Washington Post.

“As he marches towards Inauguration Day (Election Day is but a milestone on that path) Obama’s biggest challenger may not be Republican John McCain but his own hubris.”

Obama and his campaign staff are now being charged by media members of being less transparent than the highly secretive Bush Whitehouse staff. While it is normal in a close race for the front runner to fade a bit with several months to go before the general election it is a danger to Obama to lose the support of the media at a criticial time when he needs them the most.

Obama’s failure to gain ground on McCain with all of the publicity he received on his tour of the Mid East and Europe is a danger sign and does not bode well for him in coming months. Many voters seems to have been turned off with what they took as a display of arrogance. In addition, his presumptuousness in having meetings usually reserved for a head of state, like meeting with the prime minster of Pakistan upon his return to Washington, did not sit well with many voters, especially the independent voters that he must do well with to win the election.

While it is normal for a campaign to change tactics in the transition from a primary to a general election campaign Obama may have made a fatal flaw in dropping the “change you can believe in” theme that carried Obama to victory in the primary. Voters want change. What they do not want is a man whose actions seem to be those of one who thinks he has already won the election. Voters want to be courted and hugged and kissed a few times, not taken for granted.

If Obama does not make a quick correction to this perception that he is acting like a man who has the election all wrapped up the blow back may well cause him to lose the big prize to a terrible candidate, one Senator John McCain. McCain is boring, a rather stupid opportunist who can’t keep his facts straight, out of touch with reality, seems ready to say and do anything to win, and just plain old. Just what a nation in crisis needs, right?

If Obama should lose the 2008 presidential election the only honorable thing for him to do would be to immediately schedule a press conference and commit suicide in front of the TV cameras. At least that act would be a winner on YouTube. It would be a small step for him to take as Obama and his campaign staff, after winning a hard and smartly fought primary campaign, have already chosen a path of what could quickly become political suicide.

As every politician knows well a stupid political suicide due to faulty tactics is far worse than the real thing.