Yes we can! And again, Yes we can! In trying to make this slogan come true, US President Barack Obama has taken the concept of moral hazard from Wall Street to Main Street.

Just one day after he signed his autograph on a piece of paper turning the US$787 billion stimulus plan into law - which did not impress equity markets - Obama unveiled a US$275 billion Homeowner Affordability and Stability Plan (HASP).

Yes we can! ‘… all of us are paying a price for this home mortgage crisis. And all of us will pay an even steeper price if we allow this crisis to deepen - a crisis which is unraveling homeownership, the middle class, and the American Dream itself. But if we act boldly and swiftly to arrest this downward spiral, every American will benefit.'

If the TARP (Troubled Assets Relief Program), the TALF (Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility), and the recently signed FSP (Financial Stability Plan) - renamed ARRA (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act )were designed to prevent the obese lending institutions and greedy investment banks from dying due to over-indulgence, the HASP now seeks to save American home borrowers who have bitten off more than they could chew.

In a nutshell, the HASP is aimed at aiding 7-9 million families in mortgage stress by limiting mortgage repayments to 31 per cent of their income and providing incentives to lending institutions for keeping homeowners in their homes.

Like all the other acronyms that preceded it, HASP is a manifestation that America is prepared to reward irresponsible behaviour to keep the ‘American Dream' alive. The financial markets verdict is that this again would be unable to stop the US economy from the recession America had to have. Time and again since the days of the Maestro - Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan - authorities bent over backwards to bandage the self-inflicted wounds of gung-ho investment institutions and investors. This time, it is the American homebuyer's turn, courtesy of President Obama. Who's next? Credit card borrowers? Personal loans?

Reading through the news reports, I noticed very minimal criticism of Obama's fresh initiative or any of his plans for that matter. Political correctness, it seems, has gone all the way to the top.

But perhaps the financial markets have got it wrong, perhaps there is really nothing to criticise in Obama's policies, perhaps this new acronym would short circuit the negative feedback loop of badly battered confidence and the sinking economy.

But what message does this rewarding of irresponsible behaviour send to Americans? That they can get away with murder. Have money, will travel. And America has a big printing press to do this. Yes it can. And the world loves America. The world will continue to buy US bonds as fast as the Treasury could issue them.

This is the tragedy. The Fed and the US government are rewarding its citizens' irresponsible behaviour and the rest of the world is feeding America's irresponsible behaviour.

The problem is, but for a miracle, there is no immdediate way out of this current predicament except to continue hacking away and pray that one day all this will be over.

The exit strategy when all this is over will again involve pain. In the meantime, expect more acronyms.