Obama need do nothing. The Republicans may run out of feet to shoot themselves, but let’s hope it does not go downhill from there. It is painful to watch Romney having to discourage a Senator from standing due to the rather radically evil views he has expressed about women.
America remains the most significant economic and military giant there ever was and even though the juggernaut balances on a frozen lake it manages to eke out a little growth showing signs things are improving. It just costs a hell of a lot of cash. Cash that becomes less valuable by the second.
When the debt starts it seems like a good idea, we borrow. It is relatively easy. It is far harder to repay debt – especially if like the UK, you run huge deficits between what the tax man collects and what the Government is committed to spend. All expenses are too large for the tax take. So instead of casting the net over earnings a bit more fairly the Tories acts in Government have severely depressed the tax take. It is not just the austerity, it is the imbalance and relegation of many starting with the student fees and ending with the sale of the NHS to corporatisation.
If a business can borrow it can take on new risk, new staff and grow. If it can not take on risk, or the climate is too negative then it may simply act in the same way our Chancellor is, be boring and austere oneself away from doing anything about the crying baby of British economics.
But the US have a growing economy meaning that there is gradual improvement. After 9/11 the Dow Jones dropped for nearly the entire Bush era to below 10,000. Under the present administration it is far higher at 13,800. They gotta be doing something right.