From AlterNet
By Joshua Holland

Barack Obama has said that there can only be one president at a time. By all appearances, in the midst of an almost unprecedented economic meltdown, it is he.

Obama gave three press conferences this week, aimed at reassuring a jittery nation — and world — that he was preparing to tackle the recession head-on. Even as Bush’s Treasury Department announced an array of new interventions to prop up the moribund economy, Bush himself has been out of sight and out of mind. On Tuesday, while Obama was calling for a massive spending program to boost slacking demand for everything from houses to cars to consumer gadgets, Bush was in Kentucky, “thanking” troops returning from his wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Bush hasn’t held a full presser since August.

Obama hinted that he would adopt an approach that progressives have been urging Washington to take since the economy went into free-fall: spending as much as $800 billion to revive the “nuts and bolts” economy. It’s a marked difference from the Bush administration’s (almost) singular focus — which, in fairness, appears to be changing — on recapitalizing large, teetering financial institutions.

The task the new president will face is daunting. New economic data released this week show an increasing risk of a “deflationary spiral” in which layoffs that follow the massive pile of national wealth that has evaporated in the financial crisis and bursting housing bubble — and the fear of being hurt by the economic mess among those whose jobs are secure — cause people to rein in spending, which causes the supply of just about everything to outstrip demand, which leads to lower prices, which hurts firms’ profits, which leads to even more layoffs and even greater economic insecurity.

The four-week average of new unemployment claims hit its highest mark since the deep recession of 1983; consumer spending, which accounts for two-thirds of the American economy, dropped by a full percentage point last month — the third consecutive monthly decline — and prices fell by more than a half-point in October.

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