In one of the lamest excuses ever used the democratic congress is trying to say that they were unable to do anything about the financial crisis because the president wouldn’t tell them.  Do they actually expect us to believe that, without the president providing answers, they are incapable of action?  How interesting to know that every law ever written in congress was written on information provided by the government.

We constantly hear of congress having hearing with a multitude of people.  All of them have ties to people of knowledge, power, or influence that are not in government.  If congress, repubs and dems alike, wanted to know what was going on in the financial sector they could have found out.  The truth of the matter is they didn’t want to know, at least not until it was too late.  No one wanted to mess with a problem that at the time was an economic boon, even if the boon was floating on a title wave of irresponsibility and bad debt.  Sorry dems, you all failed.

Both candidates have serious issues in their past that will be used against them in this campaign.  Obama is guilty for less that savory ties to Freddie and Fannie, its former CEO’s and their checkbooks.  Make no mistake about it, this current crisis has its base in these two institutions and the dems are the ones that forced them to open up to higher risk loan.  McCain has his own problems for supporting deregulation.  This didn’t start the problem but it did perpetuate it.

McCain is calling for more regulations now.  He needs to stop this, with his past history it is a point he can’t effectively win.  What he needs to point out is that the government has hundreds of bills on banking regulations, none of which seem to work.  The answer isn’t a hodgepodge collection of more and more regulations.  The answer is better regulations, a cohesive set of new regulations that make sense for the 21^st century.  It is time for the government to start being proactive instead of reactive.

For Obama I have no advice.  He seems convinced that only he and his economic advisors, the ones that helped get us into this mess, have the answers and they don’t need any outside help.  Well good luck with that.