Obama has no room for error

Washington (News Today) - In looking back on his presidency, Bill Clinton posed the notion that presidents are defined by the crises they confront. His own tenure was without a major war or huge fiscal crisis. For Clinton, it seemed to be an almost melancholy reflection.

Barack Obama will not have the same complaint.

Let's see: a historic fiscal crisis before even taking the oath of office, two wars, a series of thwarted terrorist attacks, not to mention a slew of ongoing natural disasters. And, for the legacy-meisters, two Supreme Court vacancies to fill. So far.

In the face of all of that, President Obama stuck with his ambitious campaign agenda, tackling the politically perilous health care reform (and now the more popular financial reform), on top of controversial economic stimulus and bailout plans. And there's chatter (and plans) about tackling immigration reform and climate change legislation. No one much expects either to pass, but there is this sense that Obama is checking off all of the promises on his to-do list. Which, by the way, is long.

Here's the reality: No matter how much Obama wants to get through his list, events control the presidency. Agendas are set, the plans made. Then the world intervenes. And suddenly, the president is judged not on whether he has kept his long-time political promises but rather on his real-time performance as a competent, take-charge crisis manager.

And, by the way, he does not get extra credit for doing his job well. That is expected by this time in his tenure. But should he misstep, he gets the blame. All of it.

So consider the way life has intruded on policies these days. In February, the president pushed for new clean-coal technology. By mid-April, he was knee-deep in dealing with questions about the Massey mine disaster.

Then in late March, Obama ended a longstanding moratorium on oil exploration along parts of the East Coast. Along comes the Gulf Coast oil spill last month, and the administration found itself backing off its plans to drill until the disaster is "better understood."

"No president wants an important policy blown up by events," a top Democratic strategist says. "They're probably wishing they had waited a few more weeks to give that 'drill, baby, drill' speech."

And it's no different on the terrorism front: At Christmas, a young man with incendiary powder in his underwear tries to blow up an airplane, and the entire defense and national security establishment is tested: Why was the administration initially so slow to acknowledge that this was a very big deal, with serious implications?

Why didn't they have an eye on the bomber even after his father tried to tell an American embassy he was dangerous? Why didn't the new and complex system for surveillance coordinate well? Why didn't the vacationing president keep the American people more immediately informed?

Fast-forward to the Times Square bomb attempt. Aside from yet another initial attempt to downplay it as a "one-off" event, there's an obvious effort to not make the same mistakes: a presidential press conference, then another press conference after the arrest that screamed coordination -- with the attorney general, the chief of Homeland Security, assorted law enforcement officials.

"There's a sense they were lashed up" together this time in working on this, says a source who has been briefed on the events. "They were not going to make the same mistakes they made last time."

Indeed. This time, Attorney General Eric Holder called this a "terrorist" event repeatedly. And when it came time to explain how the bomber -- on a no-fly list -- still managed to get on an airplane, there was a quick explanation. Then came an overnight change (literally) in the law that now requires airlines to push the "refresh" button on the list more than once daily.

So lessons learned here, clearly. But no one gets any bonus points.

Now on to the next event: a Supreme Court nominee. There is no time to breathe and no room for error.

Source : CNN

Read More

Greece facing deeper cuts as price of bailout

(News Terupdate) - The International Monetary Fund and European Union are demanding further austerity measures from Greece as the price for a bailout, a top Greek labor union official said Thursday.

Greece will be required to cut civil servants' salaries, freeze their pay increases, reduce their pension payments, change tax rates, and increase the value-added tax consumers pay on purchases, according to Ilias Iliopoulos, the general secretary of the public sector union ADEDY.

The amount of the aid package currently being negotiated was not clear Friday. An amount earlier reported by CNN was unconfirmed, a spokesman for the Greek prime minister, George Papandreou, said Friday.

The International Monetary Fund did not respond immediately to a CNN request for confirmation of the value of the package. Its head, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, said Wednesday the agency did not release information about deals in the works until they were done.

"Until we reach this point there is no precise information to give because the information doesn't exist," he said.

Greece's credit rating has been slashed twice in the past two weeks -- most recently being downgraded to "junk" -- raising fears for the euro currency used by 16 nations across Europe.

Markets worldwide tumbled when Standard & Poor's downgraded Greece earlier this week. It's the first European country to fall below investment grade.

What Greece's debt rating downgrade means

The downgrade -- which makes it harder and more expensive for a country to borrow money -- was a major problem for Athens as it struggles to crawl out from beneath the country's massive debt.

The national debt of 300 billion euros ($394 billion) is bigger than the country's economy, and some estimates predict it will reach 120 percent of gross domestic product in 2010.

Germany is expected to contribute the lion's share of EU funding to bail out Greece. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Wednesday her country will do what it can to help Greece out of its financial crisis, "but also Greece has to do its part."

She was meeting with Strauss-Kahn to hammer out specifics of the deal.

"Obviously what Greece has to do is a difficult thing, but I think they are committed to doing it," he said in an appearance with the German leader.

Merkel is being pulled in two directions -- toward bailing out Greece in order to stabilize the euro, and away from forking out cash because it is unpopular with German voters, with local elections coming up soon.

Former Greek Finance Minister George Alogoskoufis said Thursday that German taxpayers have nothing to worry about.

"German taxpayers are going to make money" when Greece repays the loans, he said on CNN's "Quest Means Business."

"Greece will never default," he added.

He said the country needed the aid package because it no longer had the options it used to have for raising funds.

"The markets have closed, we cannot rely on the markets as we have relied on the markets for so many years," he said.

Standard & Poor's slashed Spain's debt to a "AA" rating Wednesday, down from "AA+," as Merkel and Strauss-Kahn focused on Greece.

Who are the credit rating agencies?

Spain's economy is among the largest in the European Union, significantly bigger than Greece's.

Greek civil servants and private sector workers are planning a 24-hour strike May 5 to protest government austerity measures, the unions announced Wednesday. Sporadic demonstrations have already taken place in several cities, with sometimes violent clashes between police and protesters angry about the coming changes.

Source : CNN

Read More

Protesters descend on Wall Street, New York City banks

New York (News Terupdate) - Protesters rallied in downtown New York City Thursday to voice their anger over what they perceive as the roles Wall Street and big banks played in America's economic crisis.

Marching from City Hall to Wall Street, the protesters chanted "good jobs for all," and held signs with messages including "Hold banks accountable," "Make Wall Street Pay," and "Reclaim America."

The AFL-CIO organized the rally, and union President Richard Trumka addressed the crowd, saying, "How long will we allow the spirit of greed to continue to drive us into economic holes?"

The National Action Network, a group that was involved in organizing the protest, said in a news release that demonstrators represented unemployed workers, foreclosure victims and community activists.

Protester Gerard Pettine said he just wants Wall Street to be held accountable for its involvement in the economic collapse.

"They need to have some integrity and some honor and do the right thing," Pettine told CNN.

Protester Elizabeth Soto, who came with her brother to the rally, was concerned about the lack of job creation.

"We are here to say Wall Street's got to help Main Street," she said. "We supported the stimulus bill, which bailed out Wall Street, but we expected the jobs to come back to Main Street."

The New York Police Department estimated that 6,000 people participated in the rally.

Earlier Thursday, as part of a larger "day of action" against Wall Street, protesters descended upon the headquarters of two New York City banks -- JP Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo -- leaving letters for the banks' chief executive officers.

The letters, according to the news release from the National Action Network, said that the banks have an opportunity "to step up to the plate and be leaders in rebuilding the American economy."

JP Morgan spokesperson Mike Fusco declined to comment on the letter, but said that there were a "couple dozen" protesters who were in the building for less than a half hour.

Fran Durst of Wells Fargo said that about 100 protesters flooded their building's lobby and tried to deliver their letter to the bank's CEO. Durst said the event didn't cause a major disruption to the bank.

Other protests were scheduled in San Francisco, California; Kansas City, Missouri; and Charlotte, North Carolina, according to the National Action Network's press release.

Source : CNN

Read More

Does the U.S. still care about the UK?

WASHINGTON(News Terupdate) - Winston Churchill, the great British wartime prime minister with a knack for a catchy phrase, declared in 1946 that there was a "special relationship" between the United States and Great Britain: strands of culture, language, world view -- as well as military cooperation and intelligence-sharing -- that knit the two countries so closely together.

But that was generations ago, and Washington is now focused on the financial crisis, health care, China and other issues that have little to do with America's cousins across the pond. So does the special relationship still exist?

At least some ordinary British people think it does.

Watching a Liverpool vs. West Ham soccer match at a pub in Washington, Mark Dronsfield, a sales manager from Manchester, northern England, grounded in the U.S. capital by the Icelandic volcano, said: "It's a really good relationship that we have with the general population of the USA -- the U.S. people. And I think that carries on no matter what political persuasion you are."

Many British people were turned off by President George W. Bush, and Tony Blair, the prime minister for much of the Bush era, who was regularly portrayed as Bush's poodle.

But Dronsfield said that didn't kill the special relationship.

"I think special relationships are defined by the trouble that you can go through, like in a marriage," he said. "I think the Bush era was some trouble with going into Iraq, weapons of mass destruction and all that kind of stuff and we came through that," he said.

"The trust of that relationship went down because of what they did with Iraq, and I think the people generally came through that, and then now we're looking for some definition of [U.S. President Barack] Obama with the next political leader in the UK." British voters go to the polls on May 6 to determine if Prime Minister Gordon Brown will keep his job.

Full coverage of the UK general election

Brown and Obama both insist the "special relationship" is "rock solid."

"The United States and the United Kingdom have stood together through thick and thin, through war and peace, through hard times and prosperity," Obama said in London in April. Brown echoed him: "Today we are renewing our special relationship for new times."

But the British House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee said earlier this year the phrase is "potentially misleading," and "should be avoided."

The committee points to the run-up to the invasion of Iraq and the perception that Blair's government was a subservient "poodle" to the administration of George Bush.

It calls that perception "deeply damaging to the reputation and interests of the UK. "

David Manning, Britain's former ambassador to the United States, who testified before the committee, said his country may have to use "sharp elbows" to get its voice heard by the Obama administration. "I don't think we should take it for granted that just because Britain says it, people in Washington are going to have time to stop and say we better listen to this," he tells CNN. "We've got to have something serious and important to say."

"I think you also have to be realistic," Manning said.

The Obama administration came into office facing a massive list of problems: the financial crisis, Afghanistan and Iraq, the Middle East, relations with China. "If there is a sense ... that Europe doesn't get all the attention it might like, I don't think this should be read as a downgrading of the relationship so much as a recognition of the fact that the U.S. administration has got some tremendously tough priorities that it has got to address in a very urgent way," Manning said.

Foreign policy expert Robert Kagan, of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, agrees that Obama is focused on countries other than the United Kingdom.

"He's devoted most of his energy toward the so-called 'reset' of relations with Russia. He's focused on working things out with China, whether it's on Iran, or the international economy," Kagan said.

"Europe in general has taken a lower place in Obama's attention," and "Britain in particular, which is used to having a prominent place within Europe, doesn't enjoy that at the moment," he said.

Personal relations among leaders do play a role too, he said. "His relationship with Gordon Brown is not a warm one. His relationship with European leaders in general is not warm. I just don't think Obama thinks about Britain particularly when he thinks 'I have problems to solve.' "

The White House is quick to point out that Washington and London work hand-in-hand in Afghanistan and Iraq, on climate change and on the world economic crisis, fighting terrorism and nuclear proliferation.

Asked about the "special relationship," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs initially avoided using the word "special."

"I don't have a special relationship with the phrase 'special relationship,' " he said, before adding: "We have a special relationship with Britain."

Andrew Hemingway, a sales manager from Yorkshire in northern England, who lives and works in the United States, thinks relations between the United States and the United Kingdom have changed, "with the economic uncertainty and general uncertainty in the world right now.

Britain is trying to decide whether to align itself more with the United States or Europe and London is dealing with the fact that it's not the world power it once was, he said.

"Things have changed quite a lot since the imperial days when the UK was quite a powerful nation," he said. "I guess now we feel dominated in a certain way, and I guess some people are trying to rebel against that, like in most other countries in the world -- so it's an interesting time."

Source : CNN

Read More