Barack Obama was inaugurated today as the 44th President of the United States. As an American, it is great to see another peaceful change of power, something too many of us take for granted in this crazy world or ours.

Mr. Obama, after stumbling a bit on the oath of office, gave an excellent speech. There was no "JFK moment" but the speech was a good one. The festivities will go on long into the night and then REALITY will set in...

Obama already got a dose of reality today, when the stock market got hit again as the financials led by the wards of the state Citigroup and Bank of America got clobbered. These two banks are now approaching  penny stock status. One share of Citi and one share of BAC now fetch together around $8.00. You can't even buy a decent bottle of booze with the proceeds to drown your sorrows in.

Citi mentioned today that they are cutting their dividend to a penny a share. With more than 5 billion shares, I'm not sure where they are going to get the money -- maybe it will come from TARP. There is some good news in all this bad news. The Saudi's lost a few billion on their investments in these banks. Good for them. Maybe they will go broke too. But I digress...

Obama has his work cut out for him with a rough economy, deflation,  plenty of liberal blowhards like Pelosi and Reid wanting to bring back the New Deal and expand the Great Society, and a frustrated public with VERY HIGH expectations. There might even be a couple of Republicans willing to stand up for some real tax cuts. We'll see.

Regardless, the real work for the President now begins. We need less speeches and some real change, not the same old liberal nonsense like tax and spend.