Obama or McCain: more of the same?

Dipping ones toes into political waters is never terribly wise, especially when it isn’t your chosen subject but the US presidential election is of importance to us professional types.

While I understand the need for change in the US I wonder just how much change will occur in the way business is regulated. Most of my US colleagues abhor the idea of regulation but anyone who looks objectively at the debacle in the financial markets must surely realize that change is a necessity. None of my colleagues believe that government is the place to start that process but where else? Unfettered free markets have run amok – few would deny that – yet I see little by way of cogent solution suggestions.

Many believe Barack Obama’s victory is a done deal. We’ll see. AccountancyAge thinks that:

The answer is that Obama, if he wins, has the potential to send the development of core issues ­ international standards, audit liability caps and fair value ­ in a direction that could not have been imagined just a few months ago…A more inward looking president may not think highly of auditors or convergence to global accounting standards. It’s possible a new president may be more protectionist, much less of an internationalist.

Potential – now where have I heard that before? Immediately prior to Tony Blair’s election back in 1997. I’ve said so privately for months but Obama has the same look, feel and smell as Blair in that time gone by. Lots of rhetoric, not a lot of financial substance when the country was aching for change.

Looking back 11 years, we now know what the UK got. A government that consistently brown-nosed the financial institutions, steadily giving in more and more to an industry that went out of control, aided and abetted by a cynical profession, led by the Big Four.

Unlike the US, UK observers have the benefit of hindsight. US folk will say ‘Ah, but the US is different.’ How so? If anything, lobbyists are more powerful there than anywhere else on earth except perhaps in the puppet ‘democracies’ of the Middle East. If Obama is elected, his first order of business will need be to sluice Washington clean of the blood suckers who corrupt politicians into believing that unfettered capitalism works. Even if he wins with a substantial majority of the US electorate behind him, it won’t be an easy sell on Capitol Hill.

There are already signs that ‘fair value’ could be jettisoned. If it is then what replaces it? Some other artificial way of valuing assets that is just as easy to manipulate? When will business (and banks in particular) get real and recognize illiquid assets have little or no value? What’s so hard to understand about artificially created asset derivatives that they are anything other than casino bets?

In the alternative, if McCain scrapes in, one has to wonder how long it will be before Sarah Palin takes centre stage. Dealing with corruption in Alaska is one thing but on the grand scale that is the United States?

Right now, the hopes of many of my colleagues rest on an Obama victory. The changes they want to see stretch well beyond my small area of concern. I hope that if elected he has the resilience, foresight and plain brass balls the size of Iceland to do what the US – and the rest of us – needs.

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Tagged as: Barack Obama, John McCain, Sarah Palin, Tony Blair