OBAMA, PLEASE PAY ATTENTION!

We are on a precipice in the world of finance because there will certainly be a changing paradigm. The direction we take can decide whether we will remain a world power. I fear Obama could send us off a cliff. A nation’s financial system is the key to its prosperity. The better capitalized and developed the financial industry, the greater the strength of the country. As the Pulitzer Prize winner, Daniel Yergin put it “The era of easy globalization is over. The power of the state is reasserting itself.”

The U.S. may become a relatively slow-growing economy like Europe and Japan with aggressively regulated financial systems. This could seriously curtail financing entrepreneurial risk and growth. China and India, on the other hand will use free-wheeling offshore global hedge firms, private equity firms, and other investment vehicles to help fuel huge expansion and control throughout the rest of the world. As a result, the current power shift in manufacturing away from the West to Asia could very well lead to Pacific Rim financial dominance over the West in a very short time. WE DON’T WANT TO HAVE AMERICAN COMPANIES FORCED TO RELY LARGELY ON EUROPEAN, JAPANESE AND CHINESE BANKS FOR FINANCING. If we do that, our financial services industry will most assuredly go the way of the U.S. auto industry.

To avoid this result we need a team of financial policy gurus from both the public and the private sectors. I mean really smart people without a political agenda. Of course, they will require political backing, so it would be wise to tap some of the smart and savvy leaders in Congress, and there are a few.

Believe it or not, even some Democrats have the know how to be in this brain trust. Chuck Schumer is smart enough. On the other side of the aisle, Richard Shelby comes to mind. And we’ll have to do what our law enforcement does, work with some of the bad guys to get the rest of the bad guys. In this brain trust, we'll have to include some of the people tarnished by this downturn because they understand the financial world. They understood it well enough to make themselves rich at the expense of our country and the global financial world. Yes, the inmates will have to run the Asylum for a while, but we need to pick the ones who are cured of their malady and about to be released. Some of the names that come to mind are Robert Rubin, John Corzine, and Larry Summers, providing Summers would not be a puppet for the socialist regime we now have in power. Lots of others are out there.

I know I have no standing to speak except that I am self taught, a lawyer, and I have a sincere desire to see our country remain on top.