Radio Australia Today Editorial

Financial meltdown: James Bond, Beyonce and Barack Obama Led Recovery

31 October 2008

I know it’s a bit early to say that the economic recovery is underway yet. The markets had a rocket yesterday, with Tokyo going up ten percent and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng jumping thirteen percent. Australia’s ASX 200 is back over 4000. The financial gods smiled overnight and stockbrokers and investors are smiling with them.

Why all this optimism?

I’m going to take a punt here and suggest that we should look at what’s happening in the world at the moment. We’re just five days away from the US people voting in a new administration, effectively wiping out a presidency that took its country into two wars and a recession. Barack Obama is the front-runner, and his message is that things are going to change when he gets behind the desk that Bill Clinton used in all manner of ways. John McCain has also been promising change, so much so that George W. Bush has not featured at all in his campaigning. So it’s fair to say that after Tuesday the direction of the US have the first minutes of change, even of the president is not sworn in until January 20.

This makes this the pre-election dreamy time, which is the grown-up versiion to what we felt as kids on the night before Christmas. There’s anticipation, and a kind of hush. John McCain has promised he’ll win, and his crowds loved it. If he does pull it off, expect Republican euphoria on a scale not seen since Reagan. Those cheerleader rallies for the candidates, they are something to behold.

Just to boost the mood, the new Bond film is about to debut, coinciding with former James Bond Roger Moore touring the world touting his new autobiography, which looks a ripper (we just received ours this morning – we’ll have the Spy Who Loved Me in the studio in a few weeks). Like the superbowl, Wimbledon, the Tour De France or the Aussie Rules Grand Final, the release of a new Bond film is something that gets people fixated and feeling just damned good.

And for those who are a little too young or cool to care about politics or spy thrillers, Beyonce is there to boost the mood with her new single, If I Were a Boy, which is a great song. She actually sounds like Pink here. Great emotion.

Of course there’s only so much euphoria a person can take. The markets might well dip next week, the Bond film and the Beyonce song could be flops, and the McCain-Obama fight might get bogged down dispiritingly in the courts like Gore-Bush.

But for a week at least we can smile. Remember it’s Halloween though, so smile in a grisly kind of way.

– Phil