Joan, sorry I disagree. This is not a routine financial crisis. Its time to bring in some of the best economist and regulators in the country to try to get this situation under control. We are bailing out banks, investment companies and now the largest insurance company in the country. Even the mighty US treasury can't keep spending money like this. The whole order of our financial system is being overtuned and its too important to figure this out properly than to leave it to a bunch of ill informed politicians in Washington spouting crackpot right wing ideology or persons with vague charges of leadership. McCain is a non-sarter on economics and Obama is no economist. We are funding two wars, have massive budet deficits and paying for these costly natural disasters. We don't need another 9-11 commisision but we do need a bipartisan commission with real power untied to Wall Street with the power to regulate the market, set capital requirements, and set in place the financial structure that will regulate the 21st century mcuh the way Roosevelt did it for the 20th.

I nominate Michael Bloomberg to head it. He's a billionaire, a moderate, and wants to maintain New York as the financial capitol of the world.

Remember that scene in the Godfather? The one that happened in a bank. The one where a wary Don Corleone, who had resisted the lucrative drug trade finally caves in but warns his fellow mobsters that there greed will be their undoing. Well the right has finally done it. They gutted regulation and enforcement in the banking and securities industries. They got everything they wanted in a Bush Presidency and at the end of the day they are the biggest loosers in this catastrophic Presidency. No amount of spin can pretty up this pig. The US treasury has been effectively looted. Paulsen will throw dollars at the problem and try to bail out Wall Sreet but it won't work. These days dollars don't count for much in the gobal economy. The public will abandon the stock market until fundemental reform occurs. Wall Street, the GOP and the US economy are living on borrowed time.

Why the stampede to do a bailout? Why not wait and take the time to do it right so we aren't hosed again in another 10 years? Why give unilateral authority to one man? This is so Iraq war with its doomsday scenarios and trust us, don’t ask questions rhetoric. We must hurry or it will be too late. Obama and McCain like lemmings are going to support this bailout with no conditions The politics of shift and shaft espoused by the GOP wins again. Shift the liability and losses away from the rich and shaft the little guy.

You are not describing the whole picture. That Rock ribbed Republican money manager is running to the government saying bail me out, those unqualified minorities are the reason for the mortgage bust. You, Uncle Sam forced me to give them a mortgage. Not the bond ratings industry, not their adjustable rate mortgages, not their deregulation orthodoxies. Its the minorities as the scapegoat. Somethings never change. And when he gets his bailout - he will still denounce the government as the problem. Can't say I have much sympathy for him.

Charles Krauthammer was right in the primaries: If Obama wins, then Bill becomes a minor president who was very lucky economically, a minor president between two HUGELY consequential and much greater presidents and men, Reagan and Obama.

-- jeanrenoir

Strange Democrat don't you think? A man who likes to quote rightwing journalist Charles Krauthammer and actually believes Ronald Reagan was a consequential and not catastophic President. The right, still stirring the pot and posing as Democrats in its lame attempt to keep the Clinton and Obama supporters at each other throats. People like jeanrenoir just can't get over Bill Clinton. They always want to make him an accident. Rewrite history as if by wiping him out they can redeem their ideology. You got everything you wanted in Bush II and we know how well that turned out. Another major book comes out about Bill Clinton tomorrow jeanrenior. Do you realize how much people such as yourself have contributed to his mystique. Keep on hating, Clinton's laughing all the way to the bank. My god even Richard Mellon Scaife has come around.

What a spiteful column. Really. Sure her politics are abominable but does that mean we have to keep kicking and kicking the woman when she's down. You are so like those obnoxious cheerleaders from high school that targets a ugly or poor girl because they are fair game and never lets up. At this point the media has given us more than enough information on Sarah Palin to make an informed choice about she who is without a clue. When you get finished beating up on Sarah, you might want to ask that Joe Biden about the bankruptcy bill that helped kill the credit market, or his plans to divide Iraq into three parts, or how he came up with the idea that Franklin Roosevelt got on tv during the Great Depression. And as a feminist you might want to ponder why old Sarah and Hillary, got far more scrutiny and far more brutal treatment from the press than their male counterparts.