BEVERLY HILLS

BLAME IT ON globalization or economic internationalization or whatever it should be termed. But there’s no doubt that the whole world is watching and trying to figure out what the deal is with America’s frantic efforts to hammer out a new New Deal.

The whole world is watching because the hotel manager in Singapore, the exporter in India, the auto moguls in Japan and South Korea and the tourist traffickers in Europe have in utter commonality a huge, make-or-break stake in whether this relatively young man named Obama has it figured out right.

The problem is that there’s nowhere to go if he has it wrong. The whole world is on the edge of a nervous breakdown hoping and praying that the new U.S. federal stimulus package will begin to shove the American economy back up the hill.

Just the other day the government of China said as much, decrying its dependence on the United States. It grudgingly admitted that it is still hooked on U.S. Treasury bonds as the investment drug of choice because it is unable to figure out where else to park its well-gotten export-income gains. The problem with the U.S. economy, therefore, is that it is just about everyone’s problem now.

Heretofore buoyant Asia is running severe recession fever. In the last 10 years or so income-generating exports from the region have risen by almost 30 percent, now they could drop by as much as that, if not more. Smaller giants like South Korea and little gems like Hong Kong and Taiwan are reeling. Their main customers are developed countries who right now are under-developing. Even Japan — a genuine economic giant — has stumbled back into recession. We all recall the country’s “lost decade” of the ’90s, when the central government in Tokyo reacted to the meltdown with all the alacrity of a backlash of taffy – and paid a stiff price. Obama had noticed that.

Speaking of impending depression, they’re getting depressed even in Singapore, that silky-smart island city-state that usually outthinks everyone in the region. Calculating — correctly, of course — that China is still not remotely in a position to substitute for U.S. demand and take up the slack, it bet mountains of sovereign funds on former U.S. icons Merrill Lynch and Citigroup. It seemed like a good idea at the time but — like a lot of people, pension funds and countries — it lost its shirt.

Asia is far from wholly lost, of course. It rebounded from last decade’s Asian financial crisis faster than the experts predicted, just as today’s so-called “experts” (including this one) failed to imagine the depth of the current regional plunge. But amid all the misery, there are some bright spots. Stimulus packages are at work — or are in the works — almost everywhere. Australia even reported a jobs up-tick for January and has launched its own substantial spending surge. Some banks in China are lending money as if there’s no tomorrow (unlike many frightened U.S. banks, which are still living in the past), and big firms are still making big investments at home and abroad. Paradoxically and dramatically, the U.S. trade deficit — always a political football in Congress — ebbed to its lowest point in years (though not the bilateral one with China).

There is only so much that countries can do if America were to adopt a do-nothing approach to its crisis. Say what you want about Barack Hussein Obama, but one thing he obviously is not, is a do-nothing president. If he’s not the second coming of Franklin Delano Roosevelt — which he may actually turn out to be — he is certainly the genetic and instinctive opposite of Herbert Hoover.

Republican opposition to the stimulus package is not wholly politically inspired. There are still some Americans who truly deplore and fear aggressive government, even in a major crisis. They are, of course, mostly nuts, but they are not insincere. This was reflected in the dramatic and embarrassing bow-out earlier last week of Obama’s choice for Commerce secretary, Republican Sen. Judd Gregg, who has grave doubts about the stimulus package.

But the Obama philosophy takes the common-sense view of the man in the desert who desperately needs a drink. It’s hard to engage him in an extended conversation over the niceties of the intended delivery system; the point is to deliver the darn liquidity before it’s too late.

No one has raised fundamental doubts about the severity of the crisis. There is only a measure of disagreement over the dimensions of the overall enormity. Under this circumstance, action of some kind is almost certainly better than inaction of any kind — because that would be the most socially unkind option of all. People are losing jobs, homes, careers, self-esteem — and worse.

In the first three weeks, Obama has irreversibly demonstrated two virtues. He is neither inclined toward governmental minimalism nor unrealistic about what he can achieve as head of a damaged government. This week Congress gave birth to a stimulus bill that is probably only half the proverbial loaf of bread. The way Obama looks at it, though, he’s about halfway there. To paraphrase the Chinese official frustrated but resigned at having to continue to buy U.S. Treasury bills, what’s my alternative? Do nothing?

Tom Plate, a frequent contributor, is a longtime editor and foreign correspondent, and a member of the Pacific Council on International Policy.