Faulty Folks on the Fulcrum

A fulcrum of the present
Balances two different pasts;
The future teeters in a misty fog;
A president has to think fast.

The G-Twenty meets this week
Amidst protests in the street;
Twenty sit on the fulcrum’s middle,
Will lean to the future it meets.

Obama’s confronted by two weights
From America’s past;
Massive reforms like FDR,
Or LBJ’s warrior track.

FDR saw capital’s cannibal
Diminish democracy’s turn.
FDR brought major reforms
Making the royalists learn.

LBJ’s Great Society
Cut poverty in half.
But Vietnam brought him down
And Nixon filled the draft.

The Doha Round* requires more
Financial deregulation.
The WTO and the IMF
Smile in arrogation.

Global predators perch on the see-saw
Applying their rapturous weight.
This is their malignant cyst-em at work.
This is capitalism’s fate.

And Obama stands on the see-saw,
But does he see what FDR saw?
Inheriting wars and financial collapse;
Will enable the cystem’s flaws.

The Doha Development Round is the current trade-negotiation round of the World Trade Organization (WTO) which commenced in November 2001. Its objective is to lower trade barriers around the world, which allows countries to increase trade globally. As of 2008, talks have stalled over a divide on major issues, such as agriculture, industrial tariffs and non-tariff barriers, services, and trade remedies.^[1] The most significant differences are between developed nations led by the European Union (EU), the United States (USA) and Japan and the major developing countries led and represented mainly by India, Brazil, China and South Africa. There is also considerable contention against and between the EU and the U.S. over their maintenance of agricultural subsidies—seen to operate effectively as trade barriers.