Barack Obama has not lived up to his promises — claims of change and credibility were seemingly just shows of charisma and ego. From claims of restoring confidence in government to discussion of balanced budgets, accountability and general reform; it seems clear only now that none of this is likely to occur.

Obama’s rhetoric is where he shines: outspoken, charismatic and confident, his speech glows with believability, trust and rapport — an attribute of little real value, but one that is keeping the masses cool headed while being deceived and lied to about the true achievements of the new ‘great leader.’

Examining the budget, we find nothing but talking points and buzzwords, little real effort to address the credibility or chaos of the modern day republic. We see no real analysis of where funds are needed and where they are not, no new responsibility in terms of spending our federal funds, and no attempt to truly restore financial discipline from the government. Running on an air of “responsibility” at both the personal and public levels, and covering the budget with the line “A New Era of Responsibility,” there’s a lot of rhetoric, and CHANGE, CHANGE, CHANGE buzzwords, but little in the way of substance. Finally, to keep on the peoples’ good side: taxes will not cover the spending — yet again — not that it really matters, at least economically.

A ballooning $700 billion deficit (roughly 5 per cent of the GDP and 6 per cent of the total debt), a contracting economy and general economic waste should raise the question: where is our responsibility. Small, manageable government advocates, even those that many write-off as “crazy” or “insane,” due to their extreme beliefs — such as Ron Paul — see almost no press time. Even during the elections the amount of press time paid to the libertarian advocate for the Republican party was higher than ever — yet still only a tiny fraction of the total time, even compared to the extent of his support.

What a “responsible” Obama would be doing — even still could, and should be doing — is sitting down and conducting a solid analysis of where money is deserved. Not where it has historically been allocated; not where there are people dependent on it now; not where people feel they’re entitled to it for no rhyme or reason; but where it is deserved. He should then publish a public report, outlining where, and why — with sound economic principals and reasoning, the state should be intervening. This analysis should consider important factors such as long-term incentive reductions seen by taxation, government reallocation and the securing of economic rents for private entities — then this should be opened up to wide-scale public debate; perhaps the Internet is a good forum for this, some innovative form of adequately moderated crowdsourcing may be the solution at this point.

It would also be respectable and responsible for Obama and his economic advisers to stop pretending there are no other schools of economic thought on the matter. It’s obvious that most citizens don’t understand economics and have no desire to: factors are too deep for many, too complicated for some, and simply uninteresting for most. People don’t want to talk numbers: they want to talk food, consumption and wages. This makes it wholly unfair to talk about ‘economic truths’ and ‘educate’ the public on how providing stimulus will fix all the problems. Economists all over greatly disagree about the causes, effects and solutions in a recession and the solutions we’re employing today contradict with about half of them; if what economists call “long run aggregate supply” has shifted backwards — that is, there’s less capital, labour or technology available in the market — rather than simply aggregate demand (the demand for the product being supplied across the whole economy) shrinking “temporarily,” even using the more common neoclassical economic models we’re going to find ourselves in a bigger mess by throwing money at the problem: not a smaller one. Forget using the more heterodox models; the results from these models are all over the place — some potentially credible, some not.

A responsible President would acknowledge the problems and changes that need to be made as America’s population ages — problems with social programs in general, and those connected to the elderly specifically. Problems with the new health care plans, and more so problems with the existing public pension plans. Problems that are likely to arise as firms cannot find enough good productive labour, or cannot afford to spend the money to keep productivity high enough to pay for the pensions they’ve agreed to. The current modifications to Social Security and other programs are not enough and most economists see this.

A responsible President would go ahead and address long-lasting leftovers in legislation which are still in effect today — no one would be starving without farm subsidies, in fact, the whole market would work a lot better. Everyone would be better off without rent subsidies and limitations — and economists by-and-large all know this, but it’s a hyper-politicized issue, associated with people who cannot afford to live where they’re living; but really, to be economically sound, they should move to a production center that they produce among the class that can afford.

Incentives and support for people to stay in areas with little to no business should be replaced with technological support and innovation or nothing at all — economists across the spectrum would agree that wasting labour in areas where they’re hard on employment, to the extent they need to rely on government handouts, is the same as having unemployed labour to some extent. A huge negative effect on the economy.

The President should be using his skilled rhetoric and charisma to educate the masses on these important issues — no doubt his economic advisers, at least to some extent, have explained these things to he and his decision making cohorts; whether they’ve done so adequately is a matter of controversy, but if reasonableness and fiscal responsibility is the goal: these are the solutions.

Furthermore, the Geithner-Bernanke economic duo seen as of late is making a fatal fault in accountable government. Rather than listening to the people or the political establishment, they, over-and-over again publish the same recommendations, propose the same solutions — with minor, irrelevant changes — to problems which the educated and knowledgeable few refute. Eventually, with enough changes and encouragements (in the case of the original TARP bailout; added tax breaks to convert some Republicans needed to make the bill pass) and enough propaganda these bills, recommendations, and so-called solutions eventually pass; despite the rejection in the first place.

We see this again and again with projects like the toxic bank idea. Few economists seem to really support the concept of a toxic bank — redistributing ‘bad’ assets from few to all just sounds like a way of reburdening the problem — a problem the scale of which has not been entirely understood. These bad assets (like say, AIG), the government says, are worth more than people are willing to pay for them and thus, good investments: how this is the case, no one really knows. This idea has been killed time and time again by both politicians and the loudmouthed minority, yet it keeps coming back in modified form, just waiting for someone to accept it as a reasonable solution: perhaps repeat exposure increases believability — and without this solution many, if not most, of those involved in the subprime and CDO fiascoes would be found insolvent very quickly: an issue no one wants to have to deal with.

Where ever you fall along the spectrum, unless it’s that of simply “big unruly government,” you’ll agree: there’s no “responsibility” yet.

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