I could tell you what happened to get us here- Obama could do a fair job of it. McCain would garble some version of Bush, "the economy got drunk", coupled with, "I promise to never let that happen again!". Good good, we'll take your word over an actual plan anytime Johnny. The veracity of your moral tender is that good with us.

Holy toledo if that's not an opportunity. "John McCain is perhaps the only one in America that doesn't know what created this crisis- excessive risk taking and a failed philosophy of deregulation- and is clearly not qualified to resolve it. That shouldn't be a surprise, because he and his party were chiefly responsible". Or some such. This is the best shot he has to knock McCain back on his heels over an issue (and can we please get Bill Burton to refrain from muddying the message by picking up on the impolitic silly gaffes of surrogates??).

And Bill Burton is picking up on the stupid gaffe instead of this news report which amplifies his candidate's message that McCain is more of the same, and makes McCain look like a double talker to boot. This is where Tucker Bounds and Howard Wolfson have a huge leg up on Obama staff. The latter are simply not good at driving a message.

Sorry rhawk52, but the McCain campaign's 10¢ per post was wasted here. I'm afraid it's your side of the aisle that's screwed the pooch resulting in the economic debacle we now confront, and history won't have a difficult time sorting that out. The thin side of the wedge of deregulation was actually that of Nixon & Ford of the 70's and, more so, the Regan deregulation of the 80's- these were foremost in enabling the excesses we have seen.

Robert Reich is pretty egregiously wrong about the Glass Steagal reform legislation- in any case, sponsored by Phil Graham if memory serves- didn't bear on the explosive growth of the shadow banking system that has been primary institutional culprit in this decade's dangerous ballooning of the credit bubble. Alan Greenspan was a Regan appointee, albeit unfortunately not canned by Clinton. He is public enemy number one as far as this mess goes, with numerous incompetent contributions. The guy who would have acted to prevent these developments before this great unraveling, as indicated by his public statements along the way, Chairman Volcker, was a Carter appointee. The Bush administration responded to the scandalous behavior of rating agencies in the 90s by... helping to kill investigations into their misconduct and rewarding them with an even more exclusive monopoly.

I could go on, but notwithstanding all that, it bears pointing out that the entire stock of mortgage debt in this country FULLY DOUBLED from 2000 to 2006, under a Republican administration and Congress. Now, what underwriting standards do you think were necessary to double the entire stock of mortgage debt in a six year period that FOLLOWED a rollicking 10 year boom in the housing market? I'll give you two guesses- alternatively you can just copy and paste from any given newspaper.

Now why is it that the Bush OCC, SEC and Fed weren't remotely interested in inquiring after any of that, or requiring after the anecdotes of wayward underwriting that were circulating extensively by 2006 if not before? Perhaps for the same reason that he wasn't interested in inquiring after the briefings he received about the impending Hurricane Katrina or the plans for post-invasion Iraq or the Presidential briefing entitled, "Osama Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States", that warned of potential preparations for hijackings? Are you getting the pattern here?

And now you guys want to argue that Palin's lack of preparedness or intellectual curiosity (combined with her belligerent decisiveness and record of appointing cronies and punishing enemies) is not an issue. The mind well and truly boggles.

How can a message test get around so quickly that people from all corners are reporting it straight away. That's a freaking push poll and if we allow this group to get away with saying otherwise we're doing ourselves a disservice, (btw, their explanation on Ben Smith's blog at first glance doesn't gel with this one).