Obama's in the air

Today i am in Atlanta, Georgia attending a meeting involving U.S. and foreign bank supervisors.

While we are assembled to discuss a company we all have a stake in supervising, the buzz has been about the historic election of President Obama in the United States! The foreign bank supervisors are mainly from Europe and all of them stayed up late and in some cases woke up very early to watch the results and the acceptance speech. They universally supported the election of President Obama. If they could have voted, it would have been an avalanche instead of the landslide.

Even the taxi cab driver who took me from the airport to the hotel was thrilled with Obama's election -- despite the fact that the state of Georgia stayed red. He indicated that the election of Obama has reinstated the U.S. as a country that lives up to its reputation, walks-the-walk, means what it says, and leads by example. I found this very interesting and consistent with what i had come to ascertain over the last few years while traveling abroad that the United States' standing in the world had significantly eroded and was substantially diminished.

But that all changed on Tuesday. So many things have changed since then. And many of these things we are yet to ascertain or understand. But you can feel it in the air, you can read it about everywhere, and see it on the peoples' faces!