House of Eratosthenes

Only nine months ago, when he addressed an estimated 200,000 people in Germany, Barack Obama was heralded as “president of the world.”

But now that he’s president of the United States, the world doesn’t appear to be following up on its endorsement.

From France to Poland, from the Czech Republic to China, many nations are rebuffing the president and offering little wiggle room for him to negotiate economic and security policies.

Obama faces his first major international test next week when the world’s largest economies meet at the G20 summit in London.

“I think as the president heads to Europe, he faces a huge public relations disaster,” said Nile Gardiner, director of the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom.

“Europe is increasingly turning against his massive spending plans, which most European leaders see as a destructive way to move forward for the global economy and will only add to a massive American debt burden,” Gardiner told FOXNews.com.

“At the same time, there is a growing impression across Europe that the Obama administration is inept and inefficient and increasingly poorly managed.”

A top European Union politician on Wednesday slammed Obama’s plans for the U.S. to spend its way out of recession as “a way to hell.”

Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek, who lost a confidence vote in his own parliament this week and whose country currently holds the EU presidency, told the European Parliament that Obama’s massive stimulus package and banking bailout “will undermine the stability of the global financial market.”

That followed concerns by Poland that the U.S., as a way to appease Russia, plans to bail out of a missile defense shield the Bush administration negotiated with Poland and the Czech Republic.

“Russian generals, and even the Russian president, still continues to threaten us with the deployment of medium-range missiles in our immediate vicinity,” Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski told Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-Calif., in Brussels on Sunday. “So we signed with the previous administration. We patiently wait for the decision of the new administration and we hope we don’t regret our trust in the United States.”

Most European leaders favor tighter financial regulation, while the U.S. has been pushing for larger economic stimulus plans.

“We consider that in Europe we have already invested a lot for the recovery, and that the problem is not about spending more, but putting in place a system of regulation so that the economic and financial catastrophe that the world is seeing does not reproduce itself,” French President Nicolas Sarkozy told a news conference in Berlin last week with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, rebuffing U.S. calls to spend more.

“I think it’s fair to say on these economic issues, there seems to be a critical divide between the U.S. and some of our friends in Europe that is going to make it more difficult for the G20 to be successful,” said Isabel Sawhill, a senior fellow in economic studies at Brookings Institution.
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But Europe isn’t the only international ally that could turn on Obama. Australia’s leadership, whose longtime enthusiastic support for America had buttressed the Bush administration, is reluctant to send more troops to Afghanistan.
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China, meanwhile, is expressing serious reservations about owning U.S. debt. And in the latest sign of Beijing’s growing assertiveness on the international stage, China’s central bank has called for the creation of a new global currency as an alternative to the dollar, .

China has more than $1 trillion in U.S. Treasuries and other government securities. As the U.S. government ramps up spending to stimulate the economy and assist the battered financial sector, Chinese officials have said they are worried that inflation will result, which would erode the value of their dollar holdings.

Hire competence, and there’s a fifty-fifty chance you just might get it.

Hire popularity instead of competence…most of the time, after awhile, you don’t even get what you were buying. Whoever & whatever is popular this year, wasn’t popular last year, and won’t be popular next year.

This isn’t a Republican/democrat thing. It’s a fashion thing. Investing in fashion is like investing in this year’s computer hard drive.

So next presidential election…let’s all just try to do a better job talking about issues. M’kay?

…and then there is the obvious observation that “the world” does not have a president. Europeans are so easily manipulated.

It would be like inviting Vlad Putin of Russia over here, and expecting me to do something besides laugh.
- cylarz | 03/27/2009 @ 22:06
And I’m amazed, actually, at just how quickly the Euro-trash turned on Obama after being manipulated. I think what is even more remarkable is that they disagree with him on the best fiscal policies for ending a recession.

I’m wondering, though…could China’s reluctance to lend us any more money, possibly make it harder for our government to go even deeper into debt? I hope so.
- cylarz | 03/27/2009 @ 22:09

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International Community Not Feeling the Hopey Changey GoodnessThursday, March 26th, 2009

International Community Not Feeling the Hopey Changey Goodness
Thursday, March 26th, 2009