After eight years of an administration that spent money like a drunken sailor, America is a candidate for Chapter 11 -- only, nations cannot file for bankruptcy. Obama has an extensive laundry list of problems he must resolve immediately, if not sooner:
A healthcare system that has left 45-plus million Americans without health or care; a Social Security System that has been so systematically finagled, the word 'security' is increasingly a misnomer; a gas-guzzling culture fostered by oil interests and crippled by volatile prices; a baby boomer generation on the verge of retirement that finds its nest egg raided by the robber barons of Wall Street; an education system so short-changed that the US is in danger of giving up the lead in the sciences that has powered its economy and enhanced its prestige... The list is as critical as it is exhaustive, and to fix each of these problems will require massive investment.
Obama needs to raise money in a hurry -- and if he tries, at a time of financial panic, to tap into the American public, the very people who gave him millions to fund his campaign will spend millions to get him out of the White House four years down the line.
Image: A file photograph of a financial analyst protesting outside the New York Stock Exchange on October 13, 2008.
Photograph: Spencer Platt/Getty Images
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