– A friend of mine sent me a copy of Obama’s most recent speech on the economy which was given on October 13th in Toledo, Ohio.    It’s an excellent speech with a lot of good ideas and moving rhetoric in it.  I like Obama and I think he’s going to make a good president – maybe even a great one since, if there was ever an opportunity to be a great president, this is the time.   The problems requiring new thinking and new approaches are everywhere he’s going to be going.

– But, I scoured  his speech looking for some recognition, some acknowledgment of the role multinational corporations have had in America’s decline – and I found none.

– I find it plausible that ideologues cannot see the role corporations are playing in the world today, but I do expect more from real intellectuals and thinkers.   And, I have to believe Obama *is* one of these.    He’s jut too good at what he does for it to be reasonable that he’s running on ideological auto-pilot.

– But, he doesn’t acknowledge, that I’ve seen, that he understands the place corporations occupy in the mess that America’s in.   And this, to me, is the best indication of just how very powerful and intractable the power of multinational corporations are – even in the highest levels of political power in the world.

– I believe he knows and I believe that he cannot say.    It would be political suicide for him.

– So, when he talks about creating American jobs and about how hard-working American workers are, he’s ignoring the huge back-drop that colors and underlies all of this.   And that is the fact that corporations, for the benefit of their shareholders, have utterly no compunctions about sending American jobs overseas.

– America’s manufacturing has largely gone to foreign shores.   America’s intellectual work has largely gone to foreign shores.   As Globalism has become a major thread in the economies of the world and in the strategies employed by multinationals, America has gone from being a wealthy nation of hard working producers generating profit for the country to a nation of consumers who sate themselves on cheap throw-away goods from China and other countries while borrowing ever more and sending our wealth overseas at ever increasing rates.

– What I want to know is just what America is going to use to rebuild itself?

– All the politicians talk about us ‘buckling down to work‘ and recreating America the strong, the prosperous, the productive.   Just what are we going to use to do this?   We are becoming a cardboard store-front nation.   We look good, we talk some bad jive but behind the scenes, there isn’t a whole hell of a lot left.   And what’s left, our growing negative balance of trade and deep consumerist obsessions are combining to  spew into the coffers of other countries and multinationals.

– And Obama and the other politicians tell us that we can overcome all of this – if we all just pull together and work hard.   Yeah, right.   That’s  like tell the band on the Titanic that they can prevent the sinking if they just play louder.

– Take a look through his speech here: and see if you can see any acknowledgment in his remarks of the place corporations and globalism are playing in the downfall of America.

– Folks, there is a very large elephant in the room that all of the politicians are afraid to mention.   But, until we take a square look at it, our economies, our global environments and our futures are going to be evermore in doubt.