This commentary mysteriously disappeared from the page of Dustin's Article. I repeat it here as a letter to the Editor.

Dustin,

Don’t blame Obama. The President is respectful of the Constitution and of a political system that is supported by the Congress and the Senate, both under the command of lobbyists. That crowd of Washington and the political Secretaries in his Cabinet are not representing the American citizen but the special interests that manipulate the political corruption of Washington. Obama’s Stimulus is the limit of financial assistance to vested interests that politicians are allowed by lobbyists to support, that has a small trickling down effect that appears to provide relief to the people of America. The trickling down is the most ineffective demagogic economic assistance to Americans, and very little of tangible help is getting to the people. Dustin Ensinger must begin by informing America that Lobbyists are the Government and the president and the representatives must sustain that fraudulent, silent and hidden intruding adiminstration. In areas where the President can act by Executive Orders the president is keeping his word with America. It is the Congress - not Obama - that betrays the people of America.
Dustin Ensinger, the author of this Article- apparently an economic insider - must know and should report that since FDR there is no economic process in America nor globally. The legal value of the dollar (and of all currencies) does not exist; Wall Street has replaced it by erratic speculative “quotations” in all the Stock Markets of the World. Wikipedia has no reference to Dustin Ensinger, writer of the Article, as an economist, or financier of journalist. In fact, he is not to be found in Wikipedia.
If Obama had an America Senate and an America Congress and his Secretaries were at arms length of lobbyists, president Obama would have a team of equally motivated Americans working for the people that elected them. If that utopia was possible, Obama would have already done the following:
1) NATIONALLY:
- Transform the Department of the Treasury into a Ministry of Economics. - The Federal Reserves would become a Division of the Ministry of Economics, responsible for guaranteeing a legally binding fix value of the dollar. Would forbid that currencies be traded in stock markets under heavy penalty. Would heavily tax any transfer of American Currency abroad to poor countries of cheaper labour. Would establish and control the permanent interest rates for mortgages and for development of small and medium size enterprises “within the borders of America”. Multinationals would have no credit facilities in America.

2) INTERNATIONALLY:
- The Secretary of Commerce would be authorised to go to the UN General Assembly and have recognised the GNP/capita as the universal and permanent standard of value, on which to sustain a legally binding international monetary system equally useful to all Nations. - Global trade would be institutionalised into bilateral barter of equal value in secret agreements concerted by pairs of Nations, as their sovereignty an national interest dictates. All manipulative accords to interfere in the trading of nations would be abolished, since bilateral equal-value trade is the only form of real free trade.

Those “utopian” actions by Obama would barely restore the global and national economies to the democratic standards of the 1800s, and banking would be subordinated to the Ministry of Economics, as it is presently done in the few countries that have representative Parliaments for the people, by the people and with the people.

Jorge Torrealba. Director General, Techno Economics International Consultants,
Halifax, NS, Canada.