The transition Bush-Obama complicates

Rarely transition has been difficult in the history of the White House. At least sixty days of taking office, Jan. 20, Barack Obama has broken the silence this weekend, laying the foundations for its plan to fight against the crisis. He repeated yesterday by announcing new appointments and outlining budget cuts to finance his plan. One way to occupy the ground responding to criticism about the risk of a "power vacuum". But, facing increasing economic climate, the Bush administration also seeks to increase efforts at the risk of blurring the impact and legibility of measures to revive. "Every time we take an important decision, Barack Obama and his team will be informed," said George W. Monday Bush, implicitly indicating that it does not abandon its executive before January 20. In fact, less than a week after stating he would leave his successor with the task of having the second tranche of an aid of 700 billion to the financial sector adopted in October, Henry Paulson yesterday announced a new plan Aid of 200 billion dollars for financing small businesses and consumer credit, in addition to a redemption of real estate assets of 600 billion dollars given to the Fed (see above). Formally, these new measures do not the second tranche of $ 350 billion of Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) availability of the new administration. But after successive revisions of the "Paulson plan", the proliferation of ads signals and raises doubts about the consistency of the measures entrusted to the federal authorities, which could complicate the task of the future administration. Left wing of the Democratic Party At first, the appointment of Treasury boss of the New York Fed, Timothy Geithner, who worked closely with Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke so far, should facilitate the transition. But the left wing of the Democratic Party also believes that his association with the outgoing administration could begin its authority. For the Nobel Prize in economics Paul Krugman, the same phenomenon in 1932 may occur when the Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt had succeeded Republican Herbert Hoover in full Depression. "The outgoing administration had no credibility and the new administration had no authority. And the ideological chasm between the two camps was too important for concerted action, "says Princeton economist and columnist of the New York Times. Although Barack Obama has suggested on Monday that the worsening of the crisis now requires a plan to boost higher than the 175 billion dollars he had raised during the campaign, the absence of more specific help to fuel uncertainty reinforced by the vagueness maintained on the expiration date of the tax cuts of the Bush administration for higher income, scheduled for 2010. For some, maintaining these tax cuts until 2010 could be a tactic to obtain the support of Republicans for rapid adoption of the "stimulus package to Congress. According to the majority leader in the Senate, Harry Reid, the relaunch plan proposed by the new administration should be 500 billion dollars over two years.