The Presidential candidates and their campaigns must be apoplectic by now; the "most exciting election in generations" has been pushed to the back pages, supplanted by the credit meltdown, scramble to save America's economy and, in election-rich Ohio, just how to fix the Browns and the Bengals.
Maybe they should be asking themselves why Obama/McCain have been marginalized by the ery events calling for their leadership.
My pal Matt Agnesi in Orlando, Florida forwards the following bit of wisdom to chew on as Congress finally wakes up and remembers they have a role to play in the snafu called Wall Street's mortgage meltdown:
"The great Brazilian economist Celso Furtado said we must not allow speculators' profits always to be privatized, while their losses are invariably socialized. We must not allow the burden of the boundless greed of a few to be shouldered by all. The economy is too serious an undertaking to be left in the hands of speculators. Ethics must also apply to the economy."
What is sad is this quote isn't new; Furtado died in 2004.
Looking over events of the past week:
Obama/McCain won't commit to returning to Washington from the campaign trail to attend hearings on the crisis, and may not even make it back under the dome to vote on a bailout bill. But they have a plan.
Obama/McCain won't specifically address how they will vote or what they consider deal breakers in the bailout bill. But they have a plan.
Doesn't it strike anyone else as odd the two men vying to become the decision makers can't even be counted on to reveal the decision breakers or even if they will show up in person to do their jobs?
Here's a thought: both sides agree to suspend their personal campaigning for three days and return to Washington and earn their paychecks. Let the surrogates continue to spin bull with the public, who increasingly tune this all out anyway because the public is now worried on what is happening, not what the campaigns say is happening.
Start with the agreement that both sides have the stench of greed on them; the original kick to Wall Street's mismanagement of the American dream came in 1998 under both GOP and Democrat leadership; CEO pay skyrocketed the most under the Clinton years (see Economic Policy Insitute/NY Times graphic at left) but CEO corner-cutting skyrocketed the most under the Bush years; the defacto CEO of the world economy used to be Alan Greenspan but now his name is mud for creating this environment; Bernanke and Paulson are painted as the little dutch boys plugging the holes in the dike but it was on their watch this system imploded; the very congressional pontificates promising a fix now were the ones too willing to belly up to the Freddie/Fannie/Countrywide/AIG/Lehman buffet when the feedbag was on; the banks crying about bad debt now are the same who sold the debt to the investment banks in complicated economic schemes few even understood; we as voters allowed society to forget the basics of WHY it's important to own a home (self-investment, self-responsibility) and settle for the goal of EVERYBODY owning a home, even if they can't afford it; the easy money to be made by real estate speculation that allows people to own multiple homes in the hope of cashing in big.The list is endless, but the real leadership to face up, take responsibility, and chart the course is limited. Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown's exchange with Ben Bernanke asking if Wall Street should apologize was good to listen to from an emotional point but from the point of problem solving it's like asking the UN Secretary to apologize for all the pain in the world: Wall Street is an abstract of the hunger by CEO's, companies, pension investment funds, speculators, and every one of us looking to get more for less.
Padding our pockets is not a truly CEO experience, they just have more commas before the decimal point.
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