Reading the international and domestic news is a surreal experience, complete with piracy on the open seas and heart-stopping roller coaster rides each day on Wall Street.

Let's start with the pirates - 2008 style. On November 15, Somali pirates seized a huge Saudi-owned oil tanker in the Indian Ocean off the Kenyan coast. The Sirius Star, almost as long as an aircraft carrier, is the largest ship ever to be hijacked. It is the latest of 63 piracies in 2008. As of September 30, 12 ships remained captive and under negotiation. In one week in November, the following events occurred: A Russian warship in the Gulf of Aden drove off pirates who tried to

capture a Saudi merchant ship. A Chinese fishing boat was hijacked off the Kenyan coast. A Turkish ship transporting chemicals was captured off Yemen. The UK's Royal Navy shot dead two suspected pirates who attacked a Danish ship off Yemen.

Does this sound like swashbuckling tales of the high seas in the l700s? Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff , said the pirates were well trained. "They're very good at what they do," he told a Pentagon briefing. "Once they get to a point where they can board, it becomes very difficult to get them off, because, clearly, now they hold hostages." The Sirius was bound for the United States via the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa. It has the capacity to carry more than one-quarter of Saudi Arabia's daily output of oil.

Somalia, torn by civil strife, has not had an effective government since l991. Attacks by Somali pirates seeking ransoms have prompted foreign navies to dispatch warships to the area this year. Most hijackings have been resolved through negotiations, with crew members' safety a prime consideration.

Figures from the International Maritime Bureau report that the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean off the African coast make up one third of all piracy incidents worldwide in 2008. Piracy apparently is alive and well in 2008.

Back home in the United States, we have been fixated upon the escalating financial crisis. It exploded into public consciousness in September and heavily influenced the presidential election. More voters cited the economy as their number one concern than any other issue. The war in Iraq, health care and global warming were far seconds in the concerns of the American voters.

President Bush tried to reassure the American people and his Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson created a 700 billion dollar formula to settle the markets and encourage loosening of credit. The millions of people who have lost their homes through foreclosures were originally offered hope that they would be included in the 700 billion, but this did not come to pass. Each day, Americans with stock market holdings have watched the Dow plummet further and further down. Whether we were in a recession was debated by economists with their mathematical indices, but citizens measured recession with the shrinking of their IRAs and value of their stocks. The only good news was the falling price of gasoline prices at the pump from a high of $4.00 in some regions to $2.00 per gallon.

Where are we today? President-elect Barack Obama has been selecting the members of his cabinet through an exhaustive vetting process. When he announced his selection of Timothy Geithner to be Secretary of the Treasury, the stock market soared over 400 points. Geithner, 47, is president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He spent his first years there seeking to monitor banks, insurance companies and brokerages - moving away from the long period of deregulation that was followed during the eight years of the Bush administration.

Obama has stressed that "There can only be one president at a time." However, he decided to unveil his plan for a huge stimulus package that would create or save 2.5 million jobs. The focus would be on aid to the jobless, states and cities; tax cuts for workers; job-creating construction of roads, schools and other public work. The emphasis is on building the infrastructure of the country where bridges and roads are in disrepair as well as creating "green" jobs in alternative energy projects. It would be a departure from the balanced budget economic plan of the Clinton years. The eight years of Bush tax breaks for the wealthiest members of our society - - coupled with the enormous drain of dollars to fund the Iraq War and the War in Afghanistan - have turned the surplus left from Clinton into the largest deficit and debt in United States history.

Obama is determined to follow through on his campaign promises to give tax relief to the middle class and to move ahead with his signature programs of expanding Health Care to the 40 million uninsured Americans, improving education and college access, and developing an alternative energy program that will free us from our dependence on foreign oil in ten years. There is now some question if he will roll back the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy or wait until they expire in 2011. Critics within his own party urge that he follow through on that to bring in revenue to fund the programs he proposes. The McCain argument during the campaign that he would be "redistributing the wealth" was belied by the fact that the Bush tax cuts for the rich did just that - taking from the bottom to enrich the top tiers. Instead of trickle down, we saw the reverse.

The latest chapter in our domestic travails saw the three top executives of the American automobile industry arrive in Washington to ask Congress for a $25 billion loan to avoid bankruptcy. They already have received $25 billion to make changes in their production plans and mileage efficiency.

Michigan members of Congress, like Carl Levin and the governor of the state, made urgent appeals for assistance, stressing the importance of the industry nationwide. Levin said that "one in every ten jobs in the country is tied to the auto industry" and predicted nationwide chaos if the companies became bankrupt. He argued against those who saw bankruptcy as a way out of the troubles, asking "Who would buy a Chevy from GM if the company went under?"

Some of us remember when the CEO of General Motors made the classic statement, "What's good for General Motors is good for America." That was over fifty years ago and times are radically different today. Yet, there was some of the same attitude - shall we call it chutzpah - displayed when the three top men at GM, Ford and Chrysler came before the House of Representatives Committee. They were questioned pointedly by several members who spoke of the irony of their flying to Washington in their three private jet planes ( at a cost of about $20,000 each) to bring their "tin cups" to Congress to "beg for help." They were told to come back with plans that spell out specifically what they are going to change and how they will do it, with dates and accountability benchmarks. Only then, can they hope to receive the additional $25 billion.

It seems a long time to wait until January 20 when President Obama will be sworn in and the new administration will begin the monumental task of turning the economy around. He promised change and that is exactly what we need to restore public confidence and repair the damage to millions of American lives.

Joyce S. Anderson's articles have appeared in the New York Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer and other national publications. She is the author of "Courage in High Heels," "Flaw in the Tapestry," "If Winter Comes" and "The Mermaids Singing." She can be reached at JSAWrite@aol.com.