To say that Barack Obama’s new administration has a crowded agenda in its first year would be like saying Hank Paulson’s troubled asset relief programme was insufficiently thought through: something of an understatement. On the US president-elect’s list of tasks is a fiscal stimulus amounting to maybe more than $800bn (€569bn, £542bn), the future (and possible imminent collapse) of the US-owned car industry and what to do with the unspent second half of the Treasury secretary’s Tarp. Next comes a new trade policy, tax reform, labour law reform and the greening of US energy policy.
So much for economics. The wider domestic policy agenda includes further small undertakings, such as comprehensive healthcare reform, an overhaul of domestic counter-terrorism policy, the remaking of US schools and “affordable college for all”.
Then there is foreign policy: one war to wind down, another to crank up, a ruined US reputation to repair, an entirely new approach to international relations to implement. And all this assumes that nothing else arises. History shows that something else always arises.
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