LONDON, England — As the dust settles after an historic U.S. presidential election, the man chosen to be the next Commander in Chief cannot afford to pause and reflect upon the significance of his victory, let alone rest up after the most gruelling and expensive election campaign ever.

What advice would you give to anyone faced with the prospect of losing their job or their home?

The domestic and international goodwill that Barack Obama enjoys today will be short lived.

The millions who voted him into office as an agent for change and the hundreds of millions more around the world who see him as a figure of hope — the man to restore their faith in the United States — face an uncertain economic future.

While Obama doesn’t officially take office until January, he will be involved in decisions taken right now, today, particularly concerning the economy and the implementation of the multi-billion-dollar bailout plan.

He faces a daunting burden of responsibility. People have such high hopes, but as recession bites and thousands lose their jobs and possibly even their homes, his “honeymoon” period won’t last long.

So, while the president-elect appoints some of the best and brightest of minds to his cabinet and gets to grips with sorting out the mess we’re in, we want to draw on the bank of experience that is the CNN audience. You.

Presidents and economic hard times come and go and yet the world keeps turning. Having lived through “downturns” in the past, what advice would you give to anyone faced with the prospect of losing their job or their home?

Many of the people who brought Barack Obama to power were voting for the first time, perhaps too young to have lived through a period of economic gloom such as this.

Just how do you cope with debt and the associated stress? With unemployment and foreclosure?

Watch CNN’s Sasha Herriman talk with Occupational Psychologist Dai Williams about how best to survive the downturn

NEW YORK – General Motors laid it on the line Thursday. At the rate things are going, they do not have enough cash to operate next year.

They need government help and they need it now. Conservative estimates say Detroit’s big three need between $25-50 billion immediately to keep their doors open.

The problem - not everyone is convinced it is a good idea to give them the cash.

Those in favor of the loan guarantees argue if you bailed out the likes of AIG, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and injected cash into the nation’s banking system, then why not lend a helping hand to car-makers?

A study by The Center for Automotive Research has suggested as many as 2.5 million jobs would be lost if the big three U.S. auto companies fail.

Those layoffs would hit a U.S. economy that has already shed more than 1 million jobs in 2008.

Others also warn that many institutions own GM and Ford bonds and that letting them go under would create more turmoil in already fragile markets.

Those against giving Detroit cash complain it would be throwing good money at a broken industry.

They say these companies are too big. They promised too much to past workers. Earlier government loans have failed to spur real change.

Many wonder why this time would be any different. Maybe it is time to face the music.

Unlike the bank bailout which was designed to address credit and lending, this bailout is more about saving jobs.

Analysts argue that while big, the auto industry is not nearly as crucial as it once was. They say the money would be better spent retraining displaced workers and getting them different jobs.

And then there is the moral hazard issue. Where do we draw the line? If taxpayers bailout the car companies, who will be next? Airlines? Construction? There isn’t enough money to bailout every company hurt by in this downturn.

What do you think? Is it fair to help some industries, but not others? How should lawmakers decide who survives and who fails? Would you buy a car from a company in bankruptcy?

LONDON, England – It’s been the most expensive presidential campaign in history, a grueling slug fest. But as difficult as the campaign has been, it’s nothing compared to the challenges of dealing with the economy, the toughest economic challenges facing any president since the 1930s.

A deepening recession, consumer confidence at a record low, rising unemployment, the continued fallout in house prices, massive write-downs by financial institutions, the cost of a massive bail out, not to mention the looming huge health costs for retiring baby boomers. 

The reality is that a lot of priorities and promises such as health care reform are likely to be pushed to the back at least for now.

The number one priority for the Obama administration will be dealing with the deepening recession. A second government stimulus package will be pushed out quickly. It won’t turn the economy around, but it will send the right signal.

But the challenges of spending their way out of recession are compounded by the huge deficit that the new administration will inherit.

The deficit for fiscal 2008 which ended in September was $455 billion or 3.2 percent of GDP. Analysts say it could be a trillion dollars for the current fiscal year or more than 7 percent of GDP.

But like so much else in this financial crisis, the immediate goal is getting the financial system and economy back on track; deficit reduction will have to wait.

Bill Clinton realized early in his administration he couldn’t afford to fulfill some of his campaign promises and that fiscal restraint was more important.  It was an act of political courage, and when he left office, the Bush administration inherited a budget surplus.

George W. Bush pushed through tax cuts, Medicare prescription drug benefits and entered into a war on two fronts, and the cost has been enormous. During his administration the national debt has nearly doubled to more than ten trillion dollars. President Bush is leaving the new administration a country that is in a weakened position fiscally.

A lot of hopes are riding on Barack Obama. Not only will his leadership be tested in getting the country through its current economic crisis, but once times get better, it will be tested again in making fiscal discipline a priority.

His economic legacy, and the country’s, is riding on both.

As always I welcome your thoughts.  Are expectations too high in terms of what the new president can accomplish?

LONDON, England — When Barack Obama is sworn in as U.S. president on January 20, 2009 he will be taking office on the usual wave of enthusiasm for a new political beginning, but against a grim economic background.

Barack Obama must act quickly to turn around the U.S. economy.

There’s a much-told story about a couple becoming utterly lost in the back lanes of some rural area and chancing upon an ancient local inhabitant.

Watch Bill Hubard of MIG Investments discuss what President-elect Obama must do to clean up the economic mess

Asked for the directions to their destination, the old man leans on his stick, furrows a wrinkled brow and remarks sorrowfully: “If I wanted to get there, I wouldn’t start from here.”

Obama won’t have any choice, any more than the couple in the story did.

Shortly after the crowds attending the inaugural parade have gone to their homes (assuming they haven’t lost them to foreclosure by hard-hit mortgage lenders), ill tidings will reach the Oval Office: the national income numbers for the fourth quarter of 2008.

They will confirm to everyone but a few academic pedants and hair-splitters that the United States will be well into recession by then.

By then, too, the usual remarkable capacity of the U.S. economy to create jobs will be fully exhausted. The unemployment rate will be rising inexorably.

Add all that to a housing market still on life-support, and the feel-bad factor will be overwhelming.

The U.S. consumer will be in parlous state, and retailers will be licking their wounds after a disastrous 2008 holiday season.

So what will the new president need to do to dig his nation out this sticky economic mess?

In fairness, a start has been made by President George W. Bush’s administration after a hesitant start.

Fingers crossed, the worst of the financial turmoil is already behind us: the banks have been underpinned by hundreds of billions of dollars of government money and U.S. stocks appear to be escaping out of the cycle of volatility that has marked the past few weeks.

Economic forecasters believe the back end of 2009 will see global recovery — without adding any riders stipulating that what the new U.S. president does will alter the outlook.

But it plainly will.

The holder of the most powerful office on the planet can do more than anyone to influence global economic fortunes, especially if he has the support of the U.S. Congress, which holds the key to the awesome power of the U.S. federal budget (albeit painfully overstretched by the bank bailout plan).

So what should Obama be doing? What will be his most powerful tools? How will he stimulate the economy? How will he best use the “presidential bully-pulpit” to instil confidence into a stricken nation?

Should he adjust the duties of the U.S. Federal Reserve to include an obligation to prevent the formation of financial bubbles? Or would he be well advised to avoid extending the boundaries of economic regulation, while perhaps making sure that the existing framework is used more effectively?

How will he lift the housing market off the floor? And should he reach out to those many Americans suffering the distress and humiliation of being turfed out of their own homes because they can’t make the mortgage payments?

Please give us your answers and ideas.

KISHIKAWA, Japan — You have to look pretty carefully for the straight-out good news when it comes to the global economy.

Tama the cat, in her conductor's hat.

We had to travel six hours outside of Tokyo to end of a country train line to find it. I should say find her, because to call Tama the cat an “it” might throw the town of Kishikawa into an outright upheaval.

Kishikawa is quite protective of Tama, for the little cat has singlehandedly boosted its local economy last year by more than $10 million. That is U.S. dollars, in case you’re wondering.  Watch my report on Tama the cat

Tama’s strange tale begins a little more than a year ago, when the Wakayama Railway heard about the friendly cat hanging out at its train stop.

The railway gave Tama the title of “Super Station Master” and built her a cushy home at the train stop. She got her own custom-made conductor’s hat. The rail line started putting the cat in the hat on its posters. And a star was born.

Japan, whose official ambassador is Hello Kitty, went wild. Japanese television aired specials on the special cat. A day-in-the-life book and documentary quickly followed. The tourists started coming, traveling hours upon hours by train, carrying fistfuls of cash and buying up the town’s new Tama merchandise with vigor.

Kishikawa is defying the odds: Seeing a boom in its local economy amid a national and global slowdown.

The town’s Buddhist monk calls it an “accident of life” and suggests other small towns look inward to discover what’s special about them.

But why did this happen in the first place? Are the Japanese that cat crazy? Perhaps, but the truth may be a little more complicated.

A businessman who took the day off work to travel hours to get a photo with Tama told me it’s a chance to take a break from all the problems facing Japan. For just a few hours, he said, it’s a chance to disconnect and enjoy a little town that’s seeing unusual and unexpected success.

When it comes to investing, timing is everything. It may be true for the music industry as well.After an eight year hiatus Australian rock bank AC/DC has exploded back onto the world stage. Their new album “Black Ice” has debuted at the top of the charts in 29 countries.

AC/DC are known for rocking recession.

The band kicks off a world tour in Wilkes-Barre Pennsylvania this week. Not since their mega-hit “Back in Black” 28 years ago has the group enjoyed such success. Back then, many countries were mired in a recession. In hard times, it seems people need some hard rock.

I haven’t had a chance to listen to the album yet, but the song list seems well-suited to a time of turmoil: “Anything Goes,” “Smash N Grab”, “Spoilin’ for a Fight,” “Money Made.”

Interestingly, AC/DC is sticking by its policy of shunning Apple’s iTunes. “Black Ice” is being sold exclusively through Walmart and on the band’s Web site.

It is a risky move in this digital age, but it seems to be paying off. The album has sold almost 800,000 copies in the U.S. alone its first week.

The concert tickets are selling fast as well. The cheapest I saw for tonight’s kick-off were over $90.

With all the worries about recession and consumer spending, it seems people are willing to pay for some escapism.

Is rock ‘n’ roll your idea of therapy? What is the soundtrack do you think best represents these uncertain times?

LONDON, England — How long can this go on? We seem to be locked into a terrifying cycle: stocks suffer days of sell-offs, followed by a powerful bounce. But just as we start wondering whether this market slump will follow the same pattern as its ugly predecessors of 1987, 2001 and many others and hit bottom, the same pattern repeats itself.

Traders at the New York Stock Exchange, where share prices have fluctuated strongly during the past few weeks.

It’s three steps back, then one step forward - and over the past few months it’s been repeated more times than I care to remember. To make matters worse, there never seems to be that much rhyme or reason to the selling or the buying. One day share markets worry themselves sick about global recession, then the next day all that is outweighed by some random piece of supposedly good news. A few hours later a renewed slide on stocks in another time zone has investors back in panic mode, and we’re off to the races again.

Market insiders point to several underlying factors, notably the aching uncertainty about where the credit crunch and the world’s leading economies are heading. But they say that what is clearly adding to the volatility is a frenzied scramble by hedge funds to move out of stock markets and also to make money for their investors by whatever means they can dream up. The betting is that they are both creating a lot of the volatility and riding it at the same time.

To add to the craziness, we are seeing some violent swings on currencies, with the Japanese yen and to a lesser extent the dollar (given the relative security of US Treasury bonds) now the safe havens of choice amid the carnage of “global deleveraging”.

With previous sell-offs, there seemed to be a clear end to the selling. It may have taken a while to come along, but in the end the bargain-hunters stepped in and there was a gradual return to normality, and then to sustained growth in share values.

So where are we now? When Warren Buffett said a couple of weeks back he thought Wall Street stocks were a buy, he may have been right about their current puny valuations, but not about whether those valuations could get even punier.

Speaking on Business International on Friday, Robert Parker, Deputy Chairman of Credit Suisse Asset Management, was a lot more cautious, predicting the return to a bull market would not come until the middle of 2009.

That would certainly be a few months before the predicted end to the current global slowdown, which most economists I speak to seem to think will only loosen its stranglehold at the far end of 2009.

What do you think? If so illustrious an investor as Warren Buffett thinks we’re close to the bottom, should the rest of us pile into stocks in hopes of rather decent gains within a couple of years? Or has even he got it wrong? Watch what Tom Hougaard, chief markets analyst at City Index thinks of your opinions

LONDON, England — Grim reading in the Financial Times. Take the headlines this past weekend: “Dire data push anaemic forecasts down;” “Recession concerns trigger turmoil in equities;” ”Uphill road back to economic growth;” “Endless calls to the business bereavement line;” “Homeowners forced to sell properties at loss” and “Oil cartel cuts output but price still falls.”

Now I don’t think the editors of the Financial Times, or any other of hundreds of media outlets are trying to talk the economy down.  I think they are reflecting the reality of what’s happening in the real economy and markets.

But there are those who are blaming the media for making a bad situation worse. Take Chuck, here’s what he had to say in response to my blog on market volatility:  “I really believe that the media needs to take some responsibility for the financial fiasco that we are going through. Not the bad loans, not the questionable securities; just for beating without let-up, the drumbeat of despair. The hype and hyperbole are incredible.

“Everyone seems to be trying to out-depress the other, as if there’s a Pulitzer for a story of 100 words or less with the most gloom and doom. A constant barrage of cut-your-wrist headlines everywhere. Just look at your main Web page. Horrible but do you really need to keep pumping the bellows?” Chuck asks in conclusion.

I don’t think the media is pumping the bellows. The bellows are broken, the money markets had frozen, credit remains tight, investors remain nervous, and the data in the economy remains almost uniformly bad.

Even the headline about “OPEC cuts production but oil price still falls” accurately reflected what happened. OPEC did announce production cuts and oil fell $3 that day on worries about a global recession and less demand.

Anyone who’s read my blogs or listened to my on-air comments on CNN knows I’ve been bearish for a very long time, and I remain bearish. It will take considerably longer to unwind the massive damage done to the financial system. The global recession is gathering pace, not ebbing. I don’t take joy in being bearish, I just tell it like I see it and so far, I’ve been proven right.

As for the media at large, a legitimate question is to ask why weren’t more warning of an impending crisis. But even if they had, they would have been accused of being doomsayers. Even if warnings had been more frequent, it’s unlikely people would have changed behavior. Few complain when markets and the economy are doing well.

Now that tough times are here, it’s easy to blame the headlines, but you can’t deny the underlying reality.

Tell me what you think.  Do you think the reporting is too negative or does it accurately reflect what’s happening in the markets and real economy?

Do you think the media should be blamed for adding to the financial crisis?

Even if more in the media had warned of the impending crisis, do you think investors and the public would have taken it to heart?

Do you think your local media has been reporting responsibly on the current financial crisis?

TOKYO, Japan — American apple pies, English breakfast tea … these items instantly recall images of their countries of origin.

For Japan, it’s electronics. More specifically, Sony Corp. has defined Japanese electronics ingenuity to the global marketplace for decades. So it only makes sense that the Nikkei plunged 9.6 percent on a profit warning from Sony: That it would see a 59 percent earnings drop, year to year, this quarter.

Sony cited poor sales and a strong yen. A double whammy, if you will. Not only is there falling demand from consumers, but the strength of the yen has made business for exporters even more expensive. And the yen was strong versus the U.S. dollar, which plunged in trading into the 94 yen territory.

Inside a major Japanese company today (I’ll refrain from naming the company as its earnings report is not out yet,) workers told me something’s got to be done. They hoped Japan’s government would take a more active role in loosening credit with its allies’ financial markets.

But the sense they have is: “We’ll believe it when we see it.” Until then, they’re expecting the bad news to keep coming for Japan’s biggest corporations.

A marquee company showing such steep profit losses only confirms to the market what investors had been fearing — that we are in the midst of a true global slowdown affecting the bottom line of major companies.

Next week, Honda will release its earnings report. Analysts widely expect the news will not be good, as automakers see a worldwide softening in demand. Japan is bracing for yet another possible beating for another company, but also to its overall business psyche.

OPPAMA, Japan – The town of Oppama is about as far away from Main Street, USA as you can get. Virtually nothing here resembles anything American, except for a lone McDonald’s on the corner. But stop and talk to 78-year-old fish-shop owner Kohei Ishiwata and he’ll wax poetic about the U.S. credit crunch.

Kohei Ishiwata waxes poetic about the U.S. credit crunch.

“They made fake money out of thin air!” Ishiwata exclaims, inbetween slicing up thick chunks of fresh sushi.

Step next door to Yuji Fujita’s vegetable shop and he’ll teach you a thing or two about trickle down economics, Japan-style. “I hope the U.S. economy improves. They’re a big influence for us,” he says, his 20-month-old son sleeping in the corner of the grocery store that’s been in the family for three generations.

The influence is everywhere on Oppama’s main street, which relies on the robust appetite of Main Street, USA. Oppama is home to a major Nissan plant. It’s the area’s primary employer and every part of life here is connected to the automaker.

But automakers are taking a huge hit from the U.S. credit crunch and the global economic slowdown. U.S. consumers, the primary customers for Japan’s auto industry, are buying fewer Japanese vehicles. Already inside the Nissan plant, workers tell us they’re worried the ax could fall on their jobs at any moment.

But the Oppama businesses that live off the Nissan paychecks also worry about the secondary impact. Oppama fears it could pay in a general slowdown to its community’s economy

The financial meltdown is undoubtedly a banking crisis and a market rollercoaster. But it’s more than just tickers at the bottom of TV screens and money being moved around in central banks. It’s a global problem being felt in neighborhoods around the world.