Unlike M.L. King, Thurgood Marshall, A. Philip Randolph and others who we judge by the content of their characters and not by the color of their skin, Barack Obama is thought of as our "first black President." And I don't think that's an accident. I don't think Obama puts forth a character that we can judge on its merits alone. I think he seeks to get a pass based on his being the "first black" whatever. We're told he brought the conservative and liberal factions together at the Harvard Law Review. To what end? If to create an atmosphere for excellent thinking, OK. But, if to avoid conflict, then not OK, because out of conflicting ideas and ideology comes growth.

I finally figured out what's the matter with Obama. He has the same problem Hamlet had: He sees too many sides of the situation before him, and is unable to make a decision. Like Hamlet, he's stuck on the questions (as in "To be or not to be.") However, the questions are of "grave import," so the consequences of his inaction are of "grave import," too. (By my count, the play ends up with 8 dead -- "grave import," indeed!) And so it is with Obama: How many dead have happened on HIS watch? He listens to the generals. Well, generals don't fight (they direct soldiers into battle) and generals want to WIN. He listens to useless politicians who also, more than anything, want to WIN. Meanwhile, all hell is breaking out in our country and wherever "our interests" take us. It's a bloody mess -- Hamlet Redux!

CONTINUED government intervention into the people's lives is its own kind of tyranny, but what the people have to do then is demand that their government BACK OFF. And that brings me full-circle to my recent pontification on firm, PEACEFUL protest as a citizen's duty. What's missing from the aforementioned is this: The people must protest their government's inaction when government needs to act, and then protest their government's intrusion when government needs to back off. It goes on and on and on. But then again, what doesn't?

Non-violent, direct action (Ghandi's invention, M.L.King's technique) has been proven to work, so we should all take action by PROTESTING. It's our DUTY as a citizens. I'm happy that I did that as part of the "peace movement" during the Vietnam War. But I stopped, and now I realize I've failed in my duty as a citizen, as have most of us old folks. All we can do now is vote, but, as before, if we depend on politicians to act, we'll wait forever. I ask myself why that is and here's what I conclude. Politics is the art of DISSEMBLING. To expect a politician to "get out in front" of a situation is foolish. "Honest politician" is an oxymoron. The only honest politician I know of is Barney Frank, who, as an "out" gay man, has nothing to lose, so he tells the truth and tries to DO SOMETHING to help the people. Imagine that!

The problem is with economic theory itself, or so it seems to me. Here's what I think --

Adam Smith wrote in "The Wealth of Nations" claimed an "invisible hand" of self-interest would set things right. To that, George Soros comments: "Far from combining all the available knowledge in the market's movements, as economic theory claims, financial markets are ruled by impressions and emotions." Setting that debate aside, what do we do in the meantime to ease the suffering? "Nothing," says Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman and their like. "Everything, " says Karl Marx. "Neither," say I, for whatever my opinion is worth.

It seems to me that our Founders, in the main, got it right. Jefferson changed John Locke's "Life, Liberty and Property" to "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness." To my way of thinking, that changes the emphasis from the protection of wealth to the promotion of opportunity. The Preamble to the Constitution proclaims one aim to be "to promote the general Welfare," but, as far as I know, the Constitution has little to say about wealth, except that it cannot be taken without "due process of law." Fair enough, and therein lies the crux of the matter: Wealth vs. general Welfare.

It seems to me that there's a natural tension between the two -- and a natural symbiosis. I once wrote re: the free market vs. government regulation: "There is a THIRD way, hellishly difficult to construct, but the only just and equitable solution to man's inherent greed. It's the insanely difficult, inevitably tempestuous marriage of the market AND the government." And I think that applies to general welfare vs. wealth. They must fight it out (natural tension) at the same time as they co-exist (symbiosis). Tough, but doable, don't you think? Just like my marriage and, I imagine, yours

The Great Depression started as a recession among the working men in the 1920's, and then deepened as a result of the calamity of the 1929 crash. The current recession parallels that one, in that the mavens of finance were so intoxicated by their wizardry that they hardly noticed the recession. Calvin Coolidge obviously noticed, so he did not "choose to run," and left the mess to the well-intentioned technocrat, Herbert Hoover, who, like our current well-intentioned President, turned to the very wizards who had made the mess to bail him out. (Brilliant!) Hoover then created the Reconstruction Finance Corporation which, like the current Council of Economic Advisors, continued the very same policies that had caused the collapse in the first place. That's when serendipity entered the picture via the canniness of FDR, who simply used the existing RFC as a platform for programs that worked (CCC, WPA, etc.) They worked because those programs addressed the original problem: the working men's recession of the 1920's.

It was Alexander Hamilton's observation (from his earlier life as a clerk in the Bahamas) that businessmen are varmints, and should be constrained. Thus, the Constitutional constraint on who can issue money. Understand that inflation -- which we are experiencing IN SPADES at the present time -- is caused by too much (Federal Reserve) money chasing the same quantity of goods and services. Escalating prices are the consequence, not the cause, of inflation. The problem with inflation is that -- with people like you and me and the ordinary worker who cannot increase his/her income -- inflation ROBS US of purchasing power.

Deflation, on the other hand, affects the profits of the producer of goods or services, which is why businessmen and THEIR bankers hate deflation and will do anything, including causing a Great Depression(!) to avoid deflation. That's what "Too Big to Fail" really means: Business interests are protecting their profits. That's understandable, but, as I said, it's DANGEROUS to the common folk.

If I remember my history correctly, the Federal Reserve was formed in 1913 by bankers, who were forever messing up by creating one "panic" after another, the latest being in 1907, and so decided to pull a fast one by creating a system that would protect THE BANKS, no matter what. Congress went along with this scheme, of course, realizing, as usual, where THEIR bread was buttered. But, as a consequence, the Constitution which states that ONLY the U.S. government can issue money, was subverted.

A friend wrote that it cost him and and his wife $1,000 a day to visit NYC. Amazing! It makes me wonder if anyone but me realizes what that means. It's not that prices are high, but that the value of the dollar is being debased by the Fed printing presses running day and night.  That's what "quantitative easing" means. All of it signifies that we're in an enormous hole, and, to get out, we continue digging! And, as to the palaver that claims, "Wealth creates jobs", the opposite is actually true. JOBS CREATE WEALTH! Henry Ford demonstrated this a century ago by paying his large work force enough money to buy his cars, thus making him one of the wealthiest men in the US.  FDR knew this, so he created the CCC, WPA, etc. to get us out of the Depression, rather than continue digging by promoting wealth.

I did my financial review and budget for the new year. We're better than OK, I'm pleased to report. However, that's in part to a failing U.S. economic system that rewards old people (who VOTE) with a Social Security cost-of-living increase, while the poor (many of whom are DISENFRANCHISED) get poorer. In fact, my wife and I, who worked a combined 100 years and contributed to Social Security all those years and are thus entitled to benefits, now receive 50% more in benefits than the "poverty level" for a WORKING family of four. Is that an unfair system or what?