The DOW will rise to 10,000 before he takes the oath.  Our economy is all about hopes and fears.  Obama's job, until he is sworn in, should be to give us hope and alleviate fears.

Inauguration Day just can't come too soon.

I liked Gail Collins' column in today's NY Times: Bush and Cheney resign, Pelosi takes over as President, and we get on with things.

Meanwhile, Bush is in Peru at APEC wondering if anyone there will shake his hand...

while getting his ticket punched in Peru, just as he did at the G-20. He said before the G-20, at the G-20, and now in Lima, that he was there to defend Free Markets and make sure that in our haste to reform the system we did not destroy or substantially alter it. While acknowledging we're going through a little bit of tough time economically, he still cannot and will not recognize that it is exactly this Friedman economics as enforced by the World Bank, IMF, and the United States that got us into this mess, and will always get us into this sort of mess---- that is what needs to be replaced, not just patched up with bandaids.

Bush continues mistakenly to equate freedom and democracy with unregulated free markets. I only hope Obama's new team rejects rampant Friedmanism; much of the rest of the world is ready to do so if the United States would just get out of the way.  

I couldn't agree more with your post.  Free trade will only work if there aren't great disparities when it comes to labor rights, environmental laws, currency manipulation, government subsidies, etc.  Because these disparities will almost always occur, free trade will never work.

The best we can hope for is fair trade and mechanisms to insure more balanced trade.  Leaders who can achieve this without setting off a trade war are crucial.

Of course fair trade would never work under George Bush.  But nothing works under George Bush.  It takes good leadership to run this country.  He didn't have it in him.

As far as a rejection of Friedmanism (I'm not sure if you are talking about Milton or Thomas ;-) but I agree as well.  Thomas Friedman needs to stick with the environment - I think he can do some good there.  The world is not flat.  It is slanted with jagged valleys.  And we are all balls positioned somewhere on this slanted world - one landslide away from rolling down to the bottom, and off and ledge to nowhere if we aren't careful.

I think Milton Friedman should be respected - but he is an economist not a God.  Surely he didn't see the current crises coming.  Perhaps he thought it wise to check out before it did come.  All of the "God's" in the economic circles are looking rather silly right now.  Their fight against government regulation has caused what we see today.