The world still only has eyes for Obama. This fascination may irritate, but it is understandable. Let's leave aside the emotional flood of symbols he incarnates - the papers are full of them. In a more rational vein, and, to tell the truth, the only one that has anything to do with the fate of the world, it's more a question of the immense challenge posed by the crisis and the ruins his predecessor left him. In other words, people are fixated on whether the United States will be able to continue to play the role it has held for decades. And, in all likelihood, the answer is no.

    It has been said and said again: in effect, the American half-century now concluding has been one of a sort of straining suction pump irrigating the planet, a sort of American heart in the global body. All that time, people noted - sometimes to complain about it - the enormity of the debt (some tens of thousands of billions of dollars) that led global savings to continuously finance the United States. Why? Mainly because - all things considered - investors found it to their advantage to feed a big consumer country that bought their products and enjoyed industrial performance based on high productivity, a high degree of innovation, high employment levels and working hours, great adaptability to the labor market, the whole assuring a good return on capital. Backing up these solid fundamentals, the federal Treasury effortlessly sold its bills - denominated in a benchmark currency. The supposed excellence of its financial engineering, its banking services and its accounting standards succeeded in conferring indispensability. Now, all one has to do today is to pass each one of these assets in review to measure the extent of their deterioration.

    Thus arrived at the end of one America, the new president will experience serious difficulties in building another one equally paramount. Emerging economies are offering new perspectives; its new debt will finance more repairs and reparations than conquests; doubt hovers over its finance; the country's credit is undermined. A single consolation remains: if Obama truly has the qualities he is credited with, he is undoubtedly the best person to manage the great decline that is brewing.

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    Translation: Truthout French language editor Leslie Thatcher.