The election of Barack Obama
The election of Barack Obama as the 44th president of the United States was a historic event in the life of the American republic. The fact that an African American was elected president and on a platform of “change” was heralded as the beginning of a new era in the politics of the nation. Obama’s repeated assertion that “Change will come to Washington” echoed with the expectations of the electorate. This has been interpreted by many as an indication of intent to reform the governmental structure and the body polity.
The other notable feature of the election has been the state of the economy and the ongoing credit crisis. This was said to have figured prominently in the election and was one of the main issues that propelled Obama towards victory. In the perception of the electorate, electing John McCain was tantamount to rewarding the very people who got the country into the financial mess.
THE CREDIT CRISIS
To have a brief introduction for the present crisis, the housing market was inflated to a large extent because of loans made to borrowers who had bad or no credit history. These kinds of borrowers were called sub-prime of below the prime required for a good credit history. Once the loans were made arbitrarily, the homeowners went for further capitalization by refinancing their mortgages and borrowing against the houses. All this went on till the housing market corrected itself and the housing prices started to come down. This meant that the bubble started to burst.
While the housing market bottoming out does not really make the whole economy go bust, it is the aspect of building up value on top of the mortgages through a form known as securitization that we will discuss later. And then the same were collateralized in the form of instruments known as CDS that gave the whole thing the look of a crisis of epic proportions.
ECONOMIC POSITIONS OF EACH CANDIDATE
As expected the candidates have divergent positions on economic issues in line with their traditional stand of their parties. While McCain favors tax breaks for the rich, Obama has famously gone of record that one can show one’s patriotism by accepting higher taxes. On the issue of free trade agreements, both of them have positions that are equivalent with some deviation as far as NAFTA and CAFTA are concerned. However, on the issue of immigration both of them are at widely divergent positions. While McCain favors stricter border patrols, he is nonetheless comfortable with the position of illegal aliens and their rights. Obama on the other hand has been a consistent opponent as far as the ease of finding jobs for the illegal aliens goes. McCain has changed his stance on some issues related to immigration particularly when it comes to the guest worker program.
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