Revolution is a tricky thing.

There's a lot of noise. Yelling in the streets. Flags wave energetically. Television news anchors descend like a pack of well-coiffed lemmings, spouting platitudes about hope and history.

And then reality sets in. Cold, hard and, yes, very depressing reality.

That's pretty much what's going on in Egypt these days, the most populous country and one of the most important economies in a very troubled Middle East. And, if you're not paying attention, you should be.

In short, Egypt's economy is a mess. And it's only getting worse.

BOSTON — In Tuesday night's State of the Union speech, President Barack Obama made one thing perfectly clear: the American middle class is key to the world's largest economy.

And, yes, it's in trouble.

Here's the money quote from the speech:

The chatter this week in global economic circles is all about the coin.

The trillion dollar platinum coin.

The growing movement, naturally, has its own hashtag: #MintTheCoin.

It also has a simple idea, and one that took off yesterday when Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman came out in support of the measure.

Here's how Krugman explained it in a post that went viral yesterday:

With the Nov. 6 presidential election disappearing into our foggy and distant past, the speculation over who will do what in Obama II has arrived.

Of course one of the most important jobs for the US and global economies will be filling the chair soon-to-be vacated by US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

And, oh yes, the guessing game has begun.

Jack Yew, the current White House Chief of Staff, and close Obama pal? (Dr. Doom — aka Nouriel Roubini — predicted that pick on Twitter).

What about Lael Brainard, Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs? She's already at Treasury, and has a good handle on things.

Sheryl Sandberg, the current COO of Facebook — as well as a former executive at Google after stints at both Treasury and the World Bank — is another intriguing choice now making the speculation rounds on the web.

So, too, are familiar names like Erskine Bowles, Roger Altman, Sheila Bair, Larry Fink, among others.

But the most interesting argument I've heard today comes from Mark Dow of the blog Behavioral Macro, published today on Business Insider.

His pick?

Hillary Clinton.

Now stay with him here:

"The last four years, actually five, were about financial repair. The Treasury Secretary was in triage mode, trying to fix the plumbing of our financial system and trying to support an environment that would allow balance sheets to heal ASAP. You wanted someone with deep financial expertise. Today, as I see it, our future challenges will be predominated fiscal, not financial. Fiscal issues are profoundly political. And the only path to sound fiscal policy runs straight through Capitol Hill."

And that means political skill may end up being more important than a resume featuring top jobs in Treasury or on Wall Street.

But that's not the entire argument Dow is making.

The most compelling part is his analysis that America's greatest economic challenges are global in nature. No single country — and certainly not one with the fiscal and structural problems of these United States — can work alone to fix its problems.

Again, here's Dow: