Credit Crunch

Two things dominate the news currently: 1) the wind of change called Obama and 2) the credit crisis. The first started off well. I cannot remember ever having seen an US inauguration live, but we watched it at the Broad with about 80% of the people working here. To my surprise, many people in Europe saw the ritual as well.

And Obama has started living up to expectations, with his promised closing of Guantanamo Bay.
With regards to the credit crunch, I cannot get away from the impression that this is largely driven by the masses chanting how bad economy currently is. If people would start to be realistic they would realize that it aint all that bad. I am also a little surprised by the seemingly endless amounts of money that governments suddenly seem to have. Somewhere, somebody is getting quite wealthy of that money.
The US seems to be more affected by changes in economy than Europe. However, for two reasons I believe that this will not be the end of the US domination. First, the enormous wealth in the US continues to surprise me, I think the country can take some financial beating. Second, the flexibility of the country and the people will outperform the rest of the world.
Personally I am not really affected by this. I have a year left on my fellowship and Obama is actually increasing the budgets for science. Actually, the decrease in house prices make me wonder if I should try to buy an apartment here…