2008:The Year in Review

2008 has been a roller coaster of a year for everyone.This post is just my impression of the major stories of 2008 that I remember because it always seems that there's too much out there for anyone to really follow. The economic meltdown and the presidential election were probably the biggest stories of the year. I think people everywhere were just tired of the status quo and ultimately decided that something drastic was needed. I mean, major financial institutions were collapsing at the same time the country was being led by a lame duck President whose credibility to lead had long since been shot. Granted, George W. Bush is incompetent but he's not the only reason our country's in the hole it's in now. Wall Street kingpins were mismanaging investors' money, corruption in the form of Bernard Madoff's $50 billion (BILLION!!) Ponzi scheme defrauding charitable foundations and high end investors and the fantasy among analysts and investors alike that the idea of risk had been eliminated from the stock market. Not to mention the mortgage meltdown. People buying homes that they knew were entirely out of their price range, knowing they could never afford them and banks just giving money away without doing any kind of due diligence. Plus on top of all that, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are slowly but surely draining the treasury, forcing us to borrow more and more money against future generations. I think that, for these reasons and many others, were why Barack Obama was elected President. True he was an attractive candidate, but he just seemed to exude a confidence and competence that we've been sorely lacking in our nation's leadership for years now. The contrast between Obama and Republican candidate John McCain were striking. For all the criticism he received for his lack of experience, Obama chose six term Delaware Senator Joe Biden as his Vice President. In an attempt to shore up his lack of foreign policy experience, he picked someone with years of experience serving in the Senate on the Judiciary and Foreign Relations Committee. McCain chose Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate. Governor for a little under 2 years before running as Vice President, she was a complete unknown. Watching the two candidates deal with the financial crisis 2months before the election, you could see the differences in their styles. Obama seemed calm, steady. McCain seemed impulsive, rash. In a time when the vast majority of the people thought the country was on the wrong track and scared for their economic future, calm and steady won out. Barack Obama was elected the 44th President and the first African American. What else happened? New York Governor Eliot Spitzer was forced to resign back in the spring for being a client of a high priced call girl service. Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich was arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud, bribery solicitation and attempting to sell President-elect Barack Obama's vacant U.S. Senate seat. The August war between Russia and Georgia, the Beijing Olympics, the Caylee Anthony murder case and O.J. Simpson getting sentenced to 15 years in prison for armed robbery. And all this is just the stuff I can remember. What a year! Don't worry, I will write again very soon about how my year went personally. That deserves to be written entirely apart from all of the world events. Until then, peace!