Across the pond

….flounderin arouni it the farmyard, with no idea of where to go.

In the last two weeks George W Bush, has had to depart from his free market doctrine and temporarily nationalise some of the country’s leading banks. But the free market verdict on his rescue plan has been a resounding thumbs down. Stock markets have continued to plunge, with further falls of around 6 per cent in share prices in the Far East, who get up before we do in London, and a similar fall in London.

Wall Street opened with further stock market falls, explained by the analysts, as a result of investors facing up to the real economic data, with falling retail sales figures, and the prospect of rising un-employment. But in te last hour of trading today, Wall Street soared over 400 points. Other investors poured in, deciding that the fall had been overdone!!!

Last night, in the last of the three Presidential debates between Barack Obama and John McCain, the media verdict was that McCain had not done well enough to dent the lenghthening lead in the opinion polls Obama has enjoyed since the financial crisis started to bite. Fourteen points ahead was the favourite figure. And the polls taken after the television debate all showed a resounding lead for Obama with viewers who watched the debate.

But today’s poll from the veteran pollstter Gallup, gives Obama only a four point lead. And his lead with vaters who said they were most likely to vote was only 2 per cent.

Well within the pollsters’ marggin of error. So if Gallup is right, the US election is still wide open. Far from the walk-over several media pundits were  talking about earlier today.

For most of the rest of the world, it is obvious that the current crisis demonstrates that the un-regulated free market, ushered in by Margaret Thatcher and echoed by Ronald Reagan has got the world economy in a terrible mess and left home owners and small busineses with the threat of bankruptscy and repossession. It has caused several leading banks to fail.

But there are still lots of Americans who don’t want to give up on era of Thatcherism, where a few people got very rich indeed. And thereby confirmed the myth that anyone in the US, however poor, could rise to the ranks of the super rich.

In the last of the great debates McCain did not deliver any knock-out blows. But he showed that he was a fighter, a man Americans can  rely on to sort out upstart states like iran and old enemies like Putin’s Russia.

His credentials for piloting the US in the current financial crisis are not obvious. But for some Americans he is is infinitely preferable to Obama, a black man with a foreign sounding name, who is the same race as the Muslim terrorists. In the debates and in his campaign McCain is trying to smear Obama as a closet terrorist, by focussing on the fact that he knows and sits on the same board as a former radical lefty ‘terrorist’ who is now a university professor. Obama is portrayed not only as a socialist, but a socialist who joins with ‘terrorists’ to prosecute armed revolution.

This was not credible for anyone who watched the debate or who has listened to his speeches. But as this battle for the Presidency nears its end, it may play with some voters.

This election is not a foregone conclusion. And there is also the fact that Obama is black which raises all sorts of fears and antagonisms amoungst the white working class.

This election is not a walkover. The world can see the need for re-regualtion of the American banking system. But despite the present havoc, and the blight it brings to many ordinary Americans, there is still  powerful support for the Thatcher/Reagan myth.

America is a headless chicken, because George W is at the end of his power. And there is a real difference between the two contenders for the crown. We will not know until November 5th whether the new leader is going to a less doctrnaire version of George W, worshipping in the church of the unregulated free market, or someone who realises that the complexities of the global economy require a less simplistic approach.

But today’s figures from Gallup, one o