Obama in Action

United States President Barack Obama has put himself in motion and, in less than a month, has achieved the approval of an aid package aimed at raising the economy and removing it from its prostration.

By all means, having received the backing of both houses of Congress in some way means that the recession is going to end in the short term, or that both finances and the production of services will multiply in a matter of months.

Even if everything were to come out okay, and if the crisis were gradually giving way, not less than two or three years will have to go by before the biggest economy in the world begins to breathe and to expend in a slow and progressive way.

In the first stage, much to the contrary, unemployment has increased and something unusual has occurred: illegal immigrants have begun to flee massively from the United States, depriving Uncle Sam of trained and effective labor that works at a low cost and, therefore, increases the productivity of the economy.

This last fact is not an invention. It was published by the Wall Street Journal and explained in detail by the Pew Center, which specializes in data of the Latin economy and is widely recognized for its objectivity.

Thousands of Hispanic-Americans are emigrating to Mexico and Central America, waiting to return to an uncertain future. This obliges this economy, already badly hit, to compete with Japan, Europe, or China with much higher labor costs, which makes the situation more difficult.

Among all of this, the sterling pound and the Euro have lost value (which is temporarily good for exports of those countries, but will harm them in the long run) and foreign markets are mobilizing to acquire the dollar, which continues gaining confidence.

This creates an idea: in spite of the current problems, Obama has great potential to go ahead and begin a new era like that formed at the end of the Great Depression.

In the meantime, what are we doing locally in a country where everything seems to indicate that what is happening matters to very few leaders and officials? Politicians act as if nothing is going on. Recently, they have revived the cadaver of the so-called Plan of the Country, which no one believes in, much less its authors.

It seems that those who think that with a libraco drafted by technicians of the era of planning, receiving generous salaries in a unit that President Suazo called “Fantasy Island,” we will overcome the seriousness of our crisis, which is a mixture of insecurity, violence, disrespect of the law, lack of investment, and political demagoguery.

Obama is a practical man and has put his words into action. We limit ourselves to speaking, speaking, and speaking. If we were to change this model and we were to put ourselves to work and, above all, eradicate corruption, everything would change. What it is necessary to ask is: do the high officials want this to change or do they have other interests?