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OBAMA CALLS THE FINANCIAL CRISIS A “DEVASTATING LOSS OF TRUST”
by Mike Neuenschwander ~ January 8, 2009.
Permalink | Filed under: Hybrid Vigor, Policy and Decisions, Social Trust Online.
One thing’s for certain: Obama gives a great speech. And a good whooping. He gave Wall St. execs and politicians a public flogging today. Notably he blamed politicians who
spent taxpayer money without wisdom or discipline, and too often focused on scoring political points instead of the problems they were sent here to solve. The result has been a devastating loss of trust and confidence in our economy, our financial markets, and our government.
The spending proposals Mr. Obama outlined seem reasonable, although I have to suspend my disbelief (for now) about the proposed speed and value of moving health records online.
My only word of caution is that it’s much easier to find fault in others than to outperform them. It’s of course possible to raise the bar on efficiency and efficacy in government, but not by much. Democrat or Republican, in the final analysis we’re all limited by human frailty. But we can all endure hardship much better when we feel we haven’t suffered the insult of “a devastating loss of trust” in addition to our injury. So I hope the Obama Administration focuses on building the apparatus for trust in addition to rebuilding America’s infrastructure.
February 3rd, 2009 at 9:09 am
[...] On another note: Great commentary in the WSJ yesterday about the tone of the Obama administration. The piece explores in depth a caution I offered in a recent post. The last paragraph of the commentary sums it up pretty well: And that, along with those trumpeting declarations to the world that new leadership had now come to the United States, that we were now a nation worthy of the world’s trust — those speeches suggesting that after years of darkness America had now been rescued, just barely, from the abyss — will be in the end this president’s Achilles’ heel. Those are not, Mr. Obama may discover, tones that wear well in the course of a presidency. « NO CREDIT CARDS LEFT TO STEAL,HACKERS HAVE THEM ALL [...]