With Tuesday's return of President Barack Obama to the White House, the case could be made that Americans have gone mad.

Every hour - as in every 60 minutes of every day of every week of Obama's first term in office - his administration was spending what now amounts to $188 million in money that the United States does not have.

And that's just out of Washington alone. It does not include state or municipal debt.

Another $188 million in federal red ink. Every hour. 24/7. All on a taxpayer credit card that is already maxed out.

If Obama 2.0 is not better than the beta version posing as Obama 1.0, the federal debt of the United States will hit $20 trillion by 2014, a figure so indescribably huge that there is not enough liquid cash in the world to bail it out.

Perspective? The former dwarf planet Pluto is only 3.5 billion miles from Earth, or 5.6 billion klicks.

Want something around 20 trillion miles away? Try Alpha Centauri, the closest exo-planet to Earth. It's out there in another solar system some 24 trillion miles into space.

That's how out of this world America's debt is.

So what were Americans thinking?

The harsh reality is that American power and influence under Obama has plummeted.

Once the world largest economic power, it is on the verge of bankruptcy, and having its dollar no longer the gold standard in foreign currency.

No longer is it so feared militarily that all it has to do is rattle a sabre. Think, for example, of the weak response to Benghazi, and the spin of a lie that it was all about an anti-Muslim video and had nothing to do with terrorism.

Obama looked soft because he was.

Throughout his first term, Obama blamed the bitterly partisan Republicans in Congress for foiling his economic agenda, claiming his "reaching out" was shunned and ridiculed.

But then, just two days ago, he showed his true colours and his personal intransigence by telling Americans to get their "revenge" with an anti-Republican vote.

That's not the kind of word used by consensus seekers.

But he got him re-elected.

God bless America.

Divine intervention will be needed.