Obama as president

Faced with this weakening of American leadership, where it has to negotiate with North Korea and recognise China as a player in Asia, where its policies are contested by all and sundry, including its previously loyal allies, there is a need for an adjustment in policy to better defend its interests.

There is no place to hide now. According to the December announcement by The National Bureau of Economic Research - the agency responsible for dating the beginning of a recession in the US - the American economy has been in recession since December 2007.In other words, for most of last year Mr. Bernanke, Mr. Paulson, the White House and Congress were busy denying the existence of, and trying to avoid, a recession that hadalready started!

Within four days of his inauguration speech Barack Obama had authorised the bombing of targets in Pakistan.

This is 2009 and with the new year comes a brand new president predicting that the economy will get worse before it gets better, a new congress ready to act where the past one fumbled, and a great new economic team educated at the most prestigious American institutions, with fresh ideas on how to save capitalism from catastrophe. Yet given the fact that so far the bourgeoisie has failed to contain the crisis, the odds for Obama's success are definitely not good.

So now Obama is president. But what does it mean? Obama promised to deliver change, but this promise was nothing but ideological sophistry. The real victor in this election was not the fictitious "Joe Blow" of middle America, not the African Americans who are part of the US working class, but rather the ruling class.

This statement was produced by the ICC's section in the USA just after the presidential election, when ‘Obamania' was in full flow.