Tuesday, January 20, 2009

January Addendum - We Have a New President!

Obama is now the 44th president of the U.S. I am very pleased and relieved that it all went so smoothly and beautifully. So, our worries were unfounded! It's interesting that in our work with the MoodCompass we accurately picked up on a large collapse in optimism near the end of the week of the 5th. We also picked up on the change to "panic mode" as Innauguration Day passed. These mood shifts were accompanied by appropriate downturns in the stock market (e.g. today, Innauguration Day, the market was down 5%). As it turns out, the associations with the mood shifts and the upcoming presidential transition were purely circumstantial (thankfully). I will be waiting to see what the forecasted increase in geopolitical interest is all about in the next few days.

The problems that we all have to deal with haven't changed. However, we now have a very gifted leader who will do whatever can and must be done to address the mess that was left for him to clean up. The big question is, will people give whatever is tried a chance to work? Do people, in general, have the patience to wait several years before many of the big problems even begin to get better? I don't envy his position.

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