“the world watches america’s disappointment with president obama in disbelief”

by Georges Ugeux (Chairman and CEO, Galileo Global Advisors)

While traveling in Europe, India and China in mid-August, I met political, business and media leaders as well as friends and family. Together we reflected on a very interesting question — why are Americans disappointed with Barack Obama?

Here is a summary of our thoughts:

Barack Obama is only twenty months into the job of being president of the most powerful country in the world. When he was elected, he inherited probably the worst presidential legacy of any president in U.S. history.

On the economic front alone, he was facing a $10 trillion budget deficit while handling the worst financial crisis since the 1930s along with a one-year old recession. To stop the bleeding of the financial sector, and to reverse some of the effects of the recession, he was forced to increase the public debt. He managed to do so while keeping interest rates at historically low levels. The budgetary impact of the increased public debt was minimal thanks to those low interest rates. An important side effect was that American home owners were able to refinance their mortgage debt at the lowest levels in a decade.

Read the rest of the article here

summit

President Barack Obama addresses the Millennium Development Goals Summit at the United Nations headquarters in New York, September 22

a positive sign!

People stand with signs in support of U.S. President Barack Obama as he answers questions about the Health Care Plan with a group in the backyard of the home of Paul and Frances Brayshaw September 22, 2010 in Falls Church, Virginia

close to home

President Barack Obama steps out of the home of Paul and Frances Brayshaw for a backyard discussion on health care reform at a private residence September 22, 2010 in Fall Church, Virginia

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Politico: “Dozens of financial grants have been distributed to states and health providers to implement new programs, such as money to fund state-led reviews of insurance premium changes. Employers have gotten money to keep early retirees on their insurance plans. More than a million seniors have gotten $250 checks to help fill the missing ‘doughnut hole’ of prescription drug coverage. A Web portal with insurance options for every ZIP code in the country was put together in mere months. Insurers have been banned from canceling coverage once an insured person gets sick.

“And the Department of Health and Human Services has methodically met a series of early implementation deadlines — even winning praise from some on the other side of the issue. ‘They are working exceedingly hard to understand all the operational issues,’ said Karen Ignagni, president of the group America’s Health Insurance Plans, who credited HHS for ‘making sure that implementation [is] workable.’ ”

Drew Altman, the president and CEO of the Kaiser Family Foundation, told POLITICO: “The politics are as ugly as ever. … On the other hand, the actual implementation of the law — delivering major elements of the law within the tight timetable required under the law — has been going extremely well.”

real lives

The new White House Health Care website

President Barack Obama greets Gail O’Brien, from Keene, N.H., in the backyard of a private residence in Falls Church, Va., Wednesday, Sept. 22

six weeks out