The biggest mistake that the new American president could make would be to assume his job is to duplicate the 1960s Kennedy Era fused with Johnson's Great Society in a patchwork of Great Depression populism. Mr. Obama may be the captain, but the proverbial ship is not about to turn and revisit the last three decades of debt-ridden glory and spectacular growth. That will prove to be a folly in the post-Baby Boomer era and it is worth remembering that America was not a serial debtor to foreign countries when FDR, JFK or Johnson were in office. The promise of "change" and talk therapy by the great orator named Obama does not hold promise as long as his cabinet is full of Clintonites who plan to speak for his government with a 1990s retrospect. Rampant deregulation and evaporation of government supervision took hold during the Clinton years, which subsequently gave birth to (now scrawny-looking) busts such as Enron, Worldcom, the dot.com bubble and the Greenspan doctrine of borrow and spend.

The attention of the world is focused on the economic fitness of the United States for Uncle Sam is about to flood world markets with unprecedented amounts of new debt and print money until they all run out of trees to make paper. In an objective review, how is America not a country that has passed its natural affordability limit as a former financial superpower? And how is this not just another extension of the borrow-and-spend recipe? The principle of living beyond one's means has merely shifted from private hands to the collective, public sector. Alas, the people (taxpayers) are now funding the business of banks where banks are supposed to facilitate the commerce of taxpayers. Will there be another tsunami of asset devaluation in the next 6 months? And will this financial problem devolve to a social quandary via the unemployment office, perhaps a destabilizing one as seen in the German Weimar Republic?

Another observation from abroad is the stark split among American voters. Mr. Obama was not popular in rural regions and his election performance in southern states and the farm belt was poor. Back at the ranch, however, American farmers are now suffering badly from lack of credit and low commodity prices, as they age and as their heirs have left the farm for more lucrative city jobs. This depopulation of America's bread basket, stuck in a void of credit and ethanol-laced bankruptcies and a low demand cycle could potentially lead to shortages and a slow, man-made structural flaw and an extension to other problems. This could grow to be a much bigger problem and yet another social dilemma.

So, it seems that the foreign policy of America is once again welded to America's business. But this time around, it is high season for the mother of all multi-tasking disciplines and fantastic amounts of luck at a time when even the most special of North Atlantic Treaty partners are left breathless in a foggy labyrinth of a bewilderment-- the same jumble mistaken as policy in Washington.