The trust crisis: from Brentwood to America to India: it's that Obama must fear in first months

In Brentwood, Williamson County families have allegedly been cheated of their hard-earned money by a businessman named Mr. Park. The hurt and anger are deep.

Across the United States, Hollywood and other parts of the world, a man named Bernie Madoff made off with up to $50 billion of people's savings, including actors Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick.

And now in India, the world's rising superpower, a businessman has made a confession of wrongdoing to his board of directors, according to today's New York Times.

All the cases point to incoming President's Obama greatest obstacle: trust in what he is proposing in his economic stimulus plan.

Another story in today's Times points to skepticism from economists of the Obama plan. Wall Street will not move upward again until the plan produces results in economic acitvity, something Obama cannot guarantee.

During the Great Depression, FDR told us the only thing we had to fear was fear itself. There is plenty of fear outside there today.

But its foundation is built with a justified sense of mistrust. And Obama may not be able to touch that, thus hurting the passage of his stimulus plan any time soon.