Chapter 22 6. What will Obama do?

●I think it is true to help yourself first.There are a lot of talents in the US government, let them help themselves. ●That is to say, in the process of bailing out the government, the purpose is clear, that is, bailing out the market.Why?Depression prevention. ●Frankly speaking, the whole world is connected today.Any actions of the U.S. government and the resulting results will have a profound impact on our country. I think that as the international financial crisis intensifies, what we can do is very limited. Many of us ask, should we help the US government?I think it's true to help yourself first.There are a lot of talents in the US government, let them help themselves.Let's talk about the newly elected President of the United States, Barack Obama.If the president of the United States is to be elected, he must meet two major conditions: first, he must have excellent eloquence, and he can speak the dead into living things, and he can say it all; second, he must have extraordinary organizational skills, because every When someone comes out to run for president, he is not the president. He has a group of buddies around him. Whether he can be elected president depends on whether he can find good buddies. If he finds a group of incompetent people, he will definitely not be elected.Because from the primaries all the way to being elected president, you know how long it's going to be?It will take at least two years to go such a long way. If your campaign team is not good and your organizational skills are not strong, it will be difficult for you to go on.Therefore, the people who can be elected as the President of the United States in the end are all eloquent and eloquent, and they all have extraordinary organizational skills.

For example, let's take Obama as an example.As soon as he took office, there was a diplomatic team composed of 300 people, each of whom was an elite.At the same time, he also selected members of the former President Clinton's financial team, including Professor Summers and others.The biggest advantage of the President of the United States is that he has inexhaustible human resources; and one of the reasons why he can be elected is that he is very good at organizing a very good team to solve problems, which is worth learning from.But just as Paulson said, the financial crisis is too complicated this time, and the US government has decided to adopt flexible bailout measures to rescue where there is a problem.

Of course, from my personal point of view, the whole world is connected today.Any actions of the U.S. government and the resulting results will have a profound impact on our country.Whether US consumption will be activated by the policies announced by US Treasury Secretary Paulson on November 25, as we enter 2009, we eagerly wait and see.If consumption can be activated, it will greatly promote our economic development.If it fails, it will have a major impact on the economies of countries around the world.But in terms of the data at the end of January this year, I am not optimistic. We discover why there are famines in Asia and Africa, why are there epidemics of farmer suicides in so many parts of the world?Why do we know nothing about the composition of the food we eat?Why are black Americans more likely to be overweight than whites?Why are there so many cowboys in south central LA?How does the world's largest social movement work?These are all worthy of our deep thinking, and ultimately change our relationship with food.

When telling the origin story of food, we often mention that crops are grown to feed the stomachs of the country people.When food origins are reduced to a simple production line, there is so much beyond our comprehension that we don't even know what questions to ask. For example, who is the protagonist in food production? —farmers?What is their life like? What food can they afford?When we ask questions like this, we know that most farmers in the world are suffering.Some farmers had to sell their land to get a small piece of arable land to feed their families.Some farmers had to move to cities or even abroad to survive.The remaining small number of farmers can only choose to commit suicide.

But the problem goes far beyond that.For example, what crops should farmers grow?Most farmers choose to grow crops.This is restricted by many factors. Most farmers, especially those in the southern hemisphere, have little choice if the food they grow is for sale rather than for their own consumption.They must grow food that meets the needs of the market. Overall.Planting is constrained by market competition.Our statement actually masks the fact that the market is in jeopardy. For example, who chooses the safety level of the pesticide?How to define the standard of "safety"?Who decides where food is produced?Who determines the wages of farmers and farm workers?Who determines safe food handling techniques?Who benefits the most from food additives?Are these additives harmful to the human body?Is there enough cheap energy in the world to transport food?

It seems that this invisible food war may be a complex war in the world involving multiple parties. It is not only a competition for national power, strategy and tactics, but also not only the bloody financial giants and the world's four major grain merchants. Conspiracy, its final point is more about life, life and moral criticism, it is a power struggle that everyone must pay attention to, must understand, and must fight for. (This article is excerpted from [US] Raj Patel's "Food Wars-Markets, Power, and the Invisible War of the World Food System")