History is made
Inflation is plummeting - it has fallen to around 3% on various measures published this morning - and unemployment is soaring but for today at least we lift our heads from our domestic travails and look across the Atlantic to the inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States.
At precisely 5pm our time, as Mr Obama is being sworn in, a metal briefcase containing the codes to order a nuclear strike will pass from the control of George Bush to the new President.
Presidential inaugurations are the closest America comes to coronations but today will be even bigger than a coronation because of its historic significance: the swearing in of the country's first black president.
But it will be historic for another reason: no president in recent times has inherited such an in-tray from hell -- a US economy in deep downturn, two unfinished wars abroad and unresolved major problems in Gaza, Pakistan and Iran.
The rest of the world is a one-party state for Obama.
But how long will that last when the new president starts placing demands on his allies to help resolve problems in ways they might not like?
And will he even have much time to devote to foreign problems when his re-election (and be in no doubt his team will already be thinking about that) will depend on progress on pulling America out of what is likely to be its worst downturn since the Great Depression?
We'll be live with Anita in Washington and throughout today's show will be talking to John Micklethwait, the editor of The Economist who knows America well and an old friend of the show, Jamie Rubin, who'll be joining us from New York.
That's all on the Daily Politics here on BBC2 from noon. It's your official warm up for the inauguration!
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