First-term headwinds look set to turn Victory has given Barack Obama a happy opportunity: the chance to write himself a positive economic legacy. The headwinds that buffeted Mr Obama's first term - financial crisis, falling house prices and consumers paying off debt - are set to become tailwinds in his second term. Based on current Federal Reserve forecasts, by 2015 Mr Obama should be presiding over an economy growing at 3 per cent or more, with unemployment well below 7 per cent. Instead of merely avoiding a deeper recession, the signal economic achievement of Mr Obama's first term in office, he will have the chance to work on policies that change the prospects of struggling middle-class Americans. But first there is one big danger to avoid: an overzealous round of fiscal austerity. "I think the economy is getting better and will continue to, barring some adverse policy action," says Alice Rivlin of the Brookings Institution, who served on the president's deficit commission and has held most senior economic jobs in Washington. In almost every quarter of Mr Obama's first term, the housing sector was a drag on growth; in his second term he can look forward to a positive contribution of 0.2 or 0.3 per cent. Solid consumption should add about 2 percentage points. Add in some business investment and 3 per cent growth should be easy to achieve - as long as the drag from government is not too great. Ms Rivlin says that the president's immediate question is how to resolve the short-term fiscal cliff in a way that sets up action to reduce longer-term deficits. But she says it would be a bad idea to tighten fiscal policy quickly. "I think the lesson of Europe is that austerity is bad for weak economies," she says, noting that there was already a lot of restraint on spending built into last year's deal between Republicans and Democrats to resolve the debt limit. Given the pressure to put the nation's finances in order, Mr Obama will have to be wary of putting on such a fiscal straitjacket that it leaves him no room for action later in his term, in order to generate more, and more equally distributed, growth. If Mr Obama can get through the fiscal cliff and start to enjoy the benefits of lower unemployment and faster growth then the politics of economic policy are likely to change significantly. Instead of being all about the number of jobs and the size of deficits, the focus will switch to the quality of those jobs and the ability of the US economy to generate rising living standards for the majority of its population. That may allow Mr Obama to drive through some of his broader agenda of investment in infrastructure, education and scientific research - and make the economic debate in 2014 and 2016 elections sound very different from that of 2012. The immediate decisions for Mr Obama, though, are on personnel to implement his economic programme. The biggest job to fill is at the Treasury. Given that the immediate challenge is to reach a deficit deal with Congress, the candidate widely cited by people close to the administration is Jacob Lew, currently White House chief of staff. Mr Lew has served twice as the White House budget director and is regarded as close to Mr Obama.