Welcome, President Obama! Here, have a shovel.

Hercules had a single day to clean the Augean stables of their decades of accumulated filth.  The next president has only to shovel through the imperial ordure of the Bush administration.  

The good news is that the world's largest bond fund manager, PIMCO, is anticipating the day when President Obama takes office.  The bad news is that they're also anticipating the size of the heaping pile that Bush will leave behind.  With that in mind, chief investment officer, Bill Gross has drafted a letter to the next president.

"Dear President Obama," the letter began. "You have inherited a mess. Your predecessor, fixated on emulating a former Republican icon from a far different economic era, chose to emphasize tax cuts for the rich and excessive consumption for all Americans," Gross wrote. "He promoted deregulation and free markets when, in fact, the markets and their institutions needed tough love."

Note that this is a bond fund manager acknowledging that GOP deregulation of the market has been a catastrophe for that market, and that the trickle-on policies of Reagan are unsuited to our economy (if they were ever suited for any economy). In fact, that single paragraph indictment of the GOP economic plan needs to be carved into the sidewalk along both Wall Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, along with Warren Buffet's observations on how Republican policies rewarded billionaires while punishing folks without a mouthful of diamond-inlaid platinum spoons.

Gross anticipates that, because of trends set in motion by Bush, the incoming president will inherit the first $1 trillion budget deficit and be faced with investors who are increasingly reluctant to buy US debt. He also sees the housing market continuing to decline, and the possibility of "Japanese-style" deflation.  Compared to what faces Barack, old Herc had it easy.

Of course there is something much worse than seeing President Obama take over a shattered economy and struggle with putting it back together.  That would be seeing don't-know-much-'bout-economy President McCain leaning on his broom.