The statement announcing the Nobel Peace Prize for U.S. President Barack Obama says that "his diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population".

(Photo: Obama at the United Nations, 23Sept 2009/Kevin Lamarque)

Is there actually a set of values and attitudes shared by most people around the world? It would be interesting to know exactly what the Norwegian Nobel Committee meant by this. Are they talking about some vague form of world political consensus or even global ethics? The citation text mentions Obama's "vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons" and his preference multilateral diplomacy, dialogue and negotiations. But none of these efforts has yet borne much fruit.

The citation also mentioned the "hope for the future" it said Obama has given the world. Hope is a powerful force, both in personal and political life. In the Christian tradition, it's a theological virtue as important as faith and love. And it is a key element of the Obama "yes we can" message.

Do you think this is what they gave him the Peace Prize for?

Follow FaithWorld on Twitter at RTRFaithWorld

President Barack Obama has just pledged to make a new start for United States relations with the Muslim world: "To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect," he said in his inaugural address. "To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society's ills on the West - know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy. To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist."

(Photo: President Obama delivers his inaugural address, 20 Jan 2009/Jason Reed)

It's not clear what he plans to do. One idea he's mentioned is to deliver a major speech in a Muslim country in his first year in office. There's already a lively discussion on the web about where he should go. During his speech, CNN showed a shot of the crowd with some people holding up signs urging him to deliver the speech in Morocco.

Before this train starts rolling, it might be useful to recall that some Islam experts don't think it's a good idea for him to deal with "the Muslim world" as a bloc opposed to the West. Two French experts on Islam, Olivier Roy and Justin Vaisse, argued this in a New York Times op-ed piece last month. Here is the full text and below are excerpts.

Do you think it's helpful for Obama to talk about the Muslim world as a distinct bloc?  Would he actually play into Osama bin Laden's hands by talking about the Muslim world and the West as distinct entities? If so, what should he do?

As Roy and Vaisse wrote:

"Such an initiative would reinforce the all-too-accepted but false notion that “Islam” and “the West” are distinct entities with utterly different values. Those who want to promote dialogue and peace between “civilizations” or “cultures” concede at least one crucial point to those who, like Osama bin Laden, promote a clash of civilizations: that separate civilizations do exist. They seek to reverse the polarity, replacing hostility with sympathy, but they are still following Osama bin Laden’s narrative.

"Instead, Mr. Obama, the first “post-racial” president, can do better. He can use his power to transform perceptions to the long-term advantage of the United States and become a “post-civilizational” president. The page he should try to turn is not that of a supposed war between America and Islam, but the misconception of a monolithic Islam being the source of the main problems on the planet: terrorism, wars, nuclear proliferation, insurgencies and the like...

"The truth is, Islam explains very little. There are as many bloody conflicts outside of regions where Islam has a role as inside them. There are more Muslims living under democracies than autocracies. There is no less or no more economic development in Muslim countries than in their equivalent non-Muslim neighbors. And, more important, there exist as many varieties of Muslims as there are adherents of other religions. This is why Mr. Obama should not give credence to the existence of an Islam that could supposedly be represented by its “leaders”.

Barack Obama became the first black president of the United States on Tuesday. In his much-anticipated inaugural speech, he said the “economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age.”

But the new president also said the United States remained “the most prosperous, powerful nation on Earth,” and that “we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.”

What did you think of the speech? Did it meet the hype? Were you moved, or dismayed?

The economy lost over half a million jobs in December and shed the greatest number of workers in 2008 since the end of World War II. The grim news didn’t stop there: the unemployment rate jumped to 7.2 percent, the highest in 16 years. Many analysts say it will only get worse before it gets better.

“The job situation is ugly and is going to get uglier. There’s no reason to expect hiring anytime in the next three to six months,” said Richard Yamarone, chief economist at Argus Research in New York. Tempus Consulting’s Matt Esteve agrees. “No matter how you look at it, those are dismal numbers,” he said.

How does all this make you feel about the nation’s economy and your own personal job and financial situation? More importantly, how is the economic environment making you change your behavior?

On the wider stage, do you think the dire unemployment picture will be President George W. Bush’s legacy and will it get better under President-elect Barack Obama?

The auto industry’s Christmas present from the government — in the form of a $1 billion loan to General Motors and a $5 billion stake in GMAC — may have left other industries hoping that the giving season isn’t over yet.

The steel industry is pressing President-elect Barack Obama to boost the flagging demand for U.S.-made steel by instituting a “buy American” clause in his infrastructure stimulus package, the New York Times reported.

“As steel production goes — and it is now in collapse — so will go the national economy,” writes the New York Times, referencing the maxim once applied to The Big Three automakers.

But why stop at manufacturing industries? Rep. Frank Nicastro of Connecticut and some of his fellow legislators want to save two local papers, The Bristol Press and The Herald, which are hanging by a thread after their publisher said it cannot afford to keep them.

Which companies are really too big to fail? If you were writing the check, who would you bail out?

(Pictured above: Workers secure a steel beam at a construction site on 8th Avenue and 42nd Street in New York, April 21, 2008. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton)

Now here's an interesting question. The New York Times reports that President-elect Barack Obama wants to make "a major foreign policy speech from an Islamic capital during his first 100 days in office." But from which one? As NYT staffer Helene Cooper explains, it's a question that's fraught with diplomatic, religious and personal complications. After a day of calling around Washington, she found a consensus:

It’s got to be Cairo. Egypt is perfect. It’s certainly Muslim enough, populous enough and relevant enough. It’s an American ally, but there are enough tensions in the relationship that the choice will feel bold. The country has plenty of democracy problems, so Mr. Obama can speak directly to the need for a better democratic model there. It has got the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist organization that has been embraced by a wide spectrum of the Islamic world, including the disenfranchised and the disaffected.

(Photo: Obama image in Jakarta, 25 Oct 2008/Dadang Tri)

That's a diplomatic answer, the kind you'd expect to get inside the Washington Beltway. Let's look at this more from the point of view of religion. If the American president gives a major speech in a Muslim country, it will be seen as an indirect comment on the type of mosque-state relations found in that country. It's not for him as a non-Muslim to endorse a certain type of Islam over another, say Sunni over Shi'ite. But as a politician from a country where church-state relations are a lively issue, one could expect him to ask what message his choice will send concerning the political relationship with religion in the state he chooses.

There is no obvious answer. There are Muslim states with close or distant links to violence in the name of religion, which should rule them out from the start. There are Muslim states that do not respect full equality for women, religious minorities and other groups -- that's a strike against them. Others Muslim states seem stuck in a time warp, or are politically unacceptable because they are not even barely democratic. This is where the diplomats start to see some daylight. But there is also overlapping among these groups, so no model candidate emerges. The world is a complicated place, an insight that should now return to U.S. foreign policy after eight years of denying this reality.

Seen that way, the diplomats Cooper consulted seem too cautious. While there is no ideal candidate, two Muslim countries seem to represent more of what Obama might want to see than Egypt -- Indonesia and Turkey. On Indonesia, Cooper writes "the very fact that Mr. Obama once lived and went to school there would make choosing it seem like cheating." Says who? It's the most populous Muslim nation in the world and it has an Islamist problem that it is fighting better than many others.

Cooper also rules out Turkey because a Turkish diplomat told her his country had no problem with its Islamic identity but it had a secular system. Turkey's certainly not perfect, but isn't it trying more than many other Muslim countries to harmonise its faith, its past and its future in a globalised world?

(Photo: Saudi women pose with Obama cutout in Jeddah, 6 Nov 2008/Susan Baaghil)

So those are my picks. Where do you think Obama should deliver this speech?

Private employers are slashing jobs and the services sector, which powers most of the economy, is in its worst slump ever. “It’s impossible to find any ray of light here,” Joel Prakken, chairman of Macroeconomic Advisers in St. Louis, Missouri, said of the job losses last month.

With the government working to bail out banks, and possibly automakers, and with a top adviser to President-elect Barack Obama underscoring the need for an economic stimulus package, do you think things will get better and when?

If Hillary Clinton is confirmed for secretary of state in President-elect Barack Obama’s cabinet, New York Gov. David Patterson must name a replacement to fill her Senate seat. The front-runner is New york Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, son of former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo. Former President Bill Clinton’s name has also been thrown in the mix.

Patterson can name anyone, famous or not, to fill the seat. Who should he select and why?

As part of our Year in Review package, we’re inviting you to place a virtual bet on the outcome of what we think will be some of the top stories in 2009. Clicking on one of the questions below will take you to the Hubdub news prediction site, where you can place a bet on the outcome and peruse other questions set by Reuters.

The graphs below reflect the current betting by the Hubdub community. We’re also inviting you to set your own questions on 2009 events, either via Hubdub or via the comments field below. We’ll feature the best ones here and add more of our own questions in coming days. If you create a 2009 question on Hubdub, you can flag it to us by sending a challenge to the Reuters account. We’re 100 percent likely to check it out.

Question 1:

Which G7 economy will record the strongest growth in the first quarter of 2009?

Question 2:

What will President Obama’s approval rating be after his first 100 days in office?

Question 3:

Will North Korea come under the control of South Korea in 2009?

Question 4:

Which of the “Big 3″ US automakers will declare Chapter 11 bankruptcy first?

Question 5:

Will there be a takeover of Yahoo in 2009?

Question 6:

Will the cheapest iPhone cost less than a barrel of oil at the end of 2009?

Question 7:

Will the U.S. close the military prison camp at Guantanamo Bay in 2009?

Question 8:

Will the U.S. unemployment rate reach 8.5 percent in 2009?

Question 9:

What will be the highest close for the DJIA in 2009?

Question 10:

Will Israel bomb an Iranian nuclear site during 2009?

Presidential candidate Barack Obama spoke at the “Victory Column” in Berlin’s Tiergarten park in front of thousands of Germans and tourists in his only formal address during his week-long foreign tour. He called on Europe to stand by the United States in bringing stability to Afghanistan and confronting other threats from climate change to nuclear proliferation.

Relations between the United States and Germany reached a post-war low under former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, who strongly opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq. He said Germany would “not click its heels” and follow President Bush into war — a position that tapped into wells of German pacifism but infuriated Bush. But Chancellor Angela Merkel, who grew up behind the Wall in the communist East, has worked hard to repair ties with the U.S. and has emerged as one of Bush’s closest allies in Europe.

Obama and Merkel met for the first time on Thursday and touched on Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Middle East peace, climate change and the global economy during their talk.

A Pew Research Center poll showed Germans favor Obama over John McCain by a 49 point margin. But some German officials have said Obama risks disappointing Europeans because their expectations are so high.

Can a new president repair relations with Europe?

For the full article on Barack Obama’s speech in Berlin, click here.

For full election coverage, click here.

(Pictured above: A man holds a banner reading ‘Obama For Chancellor’ before a speech of Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama during his visit in Berlin July 24, 2008. REUTERS/Tobias Schwarz)

(Pictured right: Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama poses with German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the chancellery in Berlin, in front of Reichstag building, July 24, 2008. REUTERS/Hannibal Hanschke)