Obama Gets It Right-- He Doesn't Blame McCain For Wall Street Meltdown, He Blames Republican Economic Philosophy

Earlier this morning, we pointed out that Wall Street is having its worst time since... well you know-- that time that McCain's economic advisors demand we stop talking about.

For Republicans, deregulation has been like a religious mania. It isn't just Bush, Cheney and McCain who have bought into it. Every single Republican member of Congress has cast caution to the wind and worked hard to wreck the federal regulatory system. And so have members of Congress, Blue Dogs and their ilk, from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party. As Paul Krugman explained in yesterday's NY Times, they have been largely successful. And now the American economy and the American people will pay the piper.

Obama's response to the crisis was so indicative of the correct analysis that I was really surprised he issued a statement about it. It's harsh and it's true and it needed to be said. The McCain-biased A.P. carried it this morning. Here's Obama's actual statement though:

This morning we woke up to some very serious and troubling news from Wall Street.

The situation with Lehman Brothers and other financial institutions is the latest in a wave of crises that are generating enormous uncertainty about the future of our financial markets. This turmoil is a major threat to our economy and its ability to create good-paying jobs and help working Americans pay their bills, save for their future, and make their mortgage payments.

The challenges facing our financial system today are more evidence that too many folks in Washington and on Wall Street weren't minding the store. Eight years of policies that have shredded consumer protections, loosened oversight and regulation, and encouraged outsized bonuses to CEOs while ignoring middle-class Americans have brought us to the most serious financial crisis since the Great Depression.

I certainly don't fault Senator McCain for these problems, but I do fault the economic philosophy he subscribes to. It's a philosophy we've had for the last eight years-- one that says we should give more and more to those with the most and hope that prosperity trickles down to everyone else. It's a philosophy that says even common-sense regulations are unnecessary and unwise, and one that says we should just stick our heads in the sand and ignore economic problems until they spiral into crises.

Well now, instead of prosperity trickling down, the pain has trickled up-- from the struggles of hardworking Americans on Main Street to the largest firms of Wall Street.

This country can't afford another four years of this failed philosophy. For years, I have consistently called for modernizing the rules of the road to suit a 21st century market-- rules that would protect American investors and consumers. And I've called for policies that grow our economy and our middle-class together. That is the change I am calling for in this campaign, and that is the change I will bring as President.

What can McCain say? Well, aside from removing all mentions of "social security" and his plans to privatize it from his campaign website and from mumbling some Herbert-Hoover sounding crap about how the fundamentals of the economy are strong all he's got left is... deception.