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President Obama is honouring Labor Day, when most working men and women stop their labours and have a BBQ with the family, by trying to create new opportunities for labour. Not that he can have much realistic expectation of getting the $50bn he wants spent on road, rail and airports through Congress.

If it's unlikely before the mid-term elections in November, it's even less likely afterwards when the Democrats may have lost control of both houses. I must admit that statement is a little ludicrous: Obama doesn't exactly have political control now of the fractious and greedy lot, but the Democrats do at least have an arithmetical advantage.

So his announcements this week are all about positioning, and appealing to working class men in particular. His message in the next two months, and more importantly the next two years, will be: The Republicans robbed us of recovery.

With not only Britain and much of Europe, but individual states in the US making deep cuts, he sometimes seems like the last Keynesian standing. the US faces both ways at the same time - a push-me-pull-you economy where the federal government tries to stimulate by spending and many individual States make deep cuts to balance their budgets.

I am off to California to see how this works in practice. Not quite sure when the piece will be broadcast, either the end of this week when Obama gives a news conference, or early next. But I hope to file snippets for this blog as I go.

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