Not since Roosevelt in 1933 has an incoming US president had a tougher economic challenge to face than Barack Obama. He is still piecing together his Treasury team but he doesn't need a pointy-headed academic to tell him the economy has hit the wall. The housing market is still crashing, unemployment is rising sharply, Wall Street is traumatised and it appears the life expectancy of another big bank, Citigroup, can be measured in days rather than weeks.This is a crisis long in the making. And three big structural changes help explain the mess the US now finds itself ... (more)