Blogosphere

LithiumCola provides an insightful look into political scope, and I agree that the conversation must be kept alive, in fact grown.  Mainstream and the “Rule of the Politician” aptly describe the existing powers that hold sway, trouble is they represent a small proportion of the mass which comprise the body politic…  and in the case of the USA the political outlook is critical to the Earth's body politic of 6.66 billion folk.
 
I cannot summon the enthusiasm that many do in respect to Obama's win.  However I am more than willing to allow this skepticism be shown unfair by the new Commander in Chief's (CIC) actions…  but there you have it… you accord your democractically elected Leader the military title CIC.  Sure he may pull the troops back from Iraq…  he might even extricate your forces from the Hamurabi eye for an eye revenge in Afghanistan, although I doubt that.  Obama may even do something for the sub-prime mortgagees and perhaps reform your medical insurance scheme…  but what will he do to reduce the powerful elite's cannibalization of the American Commons.
 
For mine the role of government is to administer for the public good.  You have a country of 305 million persons of which 1% own just about all private wealth. 
You have a wealth of Institutions of higher learning, the most advanced science in the world and one institution's school of voodoo economics(Chicago) sweeps all else in its path to ensure no regulation impedes the elites sodomizing the rest…  the recent bailout and Goldman Sach's reward of bonuses for the executives bears this out.

My perspective on this is from  a distance (New Zealand) however if you like I'm one of the many (there's now 6.66billion of us on Earth) who wonder whether the Empire can be returned to it's former status of a Republic of the People?
There is much unfolding at the moment, the Crisis in Confidence which affects us all, appears to give the elites further opportunity to impell us toward a globalized empire…  for all intents and purposes we have a global money system with a World Reserve Currency..  we have a Cartel of media ownership the effect of which is that propaganda is in the hands of a few…  and we operate in a parradigm of misinformation which constantly reinforces the mantra that growth is god…  more is good and this in a reality which exists on a globe of finite proportion.

The World's markets are now dominated by speculative capital and for this form of profit taking opportunity to grow and continue requires the free movement of capital throughout the globe.  Speculation in it's many guises is merely a prognostication on price differentials.  However as the spreads (price differentials) become ever more minute larger sums need be waged to secure acceptable profits thus the speculator leverages (incurrs debt) to finance the game…

Implicit in the game is the driving down of labour's value, and the eradication of barriers to move finance…  thus the speculative financial marketplace determines the boundaries of the domestic political policy, once a function of the domestic political process.

In a finite world there is a real constraint on this ever expanding activity, the more of the available wealth shifted to capital's pocket and from the productive sector to the speculative sector the less the consumers, (who also happened to once be the workers) can afford the artifacts of the productive economy, then as is happening now the price of assets deflates, in a vicious cycle that appears to play out periodically under the current regime.

This counter cycle affords an opportunity to change the system but does Barack Hussein Obama have either the gumption or the effective mandate to regulate capitalistic behaviour and tame it to the advantage of the mass of USA citizens and to the hopeful world described in Marilynne Robinson's article?

cheers greg.