Can President Obama talk his way out of a crisis?

He is the master orator. But President Obama is going to have an uphill task if he thinks market confidence can be revived for long by a fire-side chat this week. And anybody stupid enough to see this sort of PR stunt as a signal to invest will lose money.

There is a crisis of course. The presidential ratings have fallen below those of George W. Bush at this stage in his last administration. This crisis perhaps President Obama can address with an appropriate address.

The problem surely is that out in the real world the global financial crisis continues to get worse. I wonder if President Obama would not be better advised to stay quiet as he risks becoming the voice of the recession, the person most associated with the biggest disaster of our generation.

Campaign over

Then by implication the messenger will be associated with the bad news and blamed accordingly. But is that not the point, the US President is responsible for the problem. The election campaign is over. The votes are in and the public ratings count for nothing now.

So what is the Obama administration going to do? The time for words is surely over, some concrete action would be useful. But does anybody know what to do?

Government solutions

Perhaps understandably for somebody who has never worked a day in the private sector President Obama mentions the government in every statement. But then again the private sector has failed, broken down and it might be too much to expect a solution from Wall Street.

To reverse Ronald Reagan government is the solution and not the problem. At least government officials will not want massive bonus payments if they make policy errors like the US banking sector.

Then may be the fire-side chat with a reminder about the better American values and virtues such as thrift and hard work are necessary, except that thrift is not politically correct in these days of deficit spending.

What a mess we are in but it is the collapse in global trade over the past few months that worries me most, and we will be living with the consequences for the next few years, whatever the Oracle from Washington tells us.