The Bush-McCain 500

The stock market plunged more than 500 points on Monday, and no one knows how far it will fall today. Government bailouts of several major financial institutions, the fire sale of others and now bankruptcy of one over the weekend led directly to this moment, but both the causes and the ultimate effects go far beyond the financial world of wealthy speculators that seems to be a world of its own.

Charlie Rose assembled a panel of economic experts and reporters, and I couldn't keep up with their doomsday predictions. There was talk of global recession, of a deep and longlasting recession in the U.S., of hard times extending into 2011 or 2012. Another group of economists on Larry King spoke of "a financial system that is coming apart at the seams."

Who is responsible? For the specific failures, a combination of deceptive managment, and overall a combination of greed, fear and ignorance. But for the broad failure of the economy that is likely to get much worse, the blame falls on the economic policies of the Bush administration and the McCain Congress that held power until the 06 election, by which time it was already too late to stop what is happening now.

Washington failed to regulate these industries, partly based on ideology, partly at the behest of lobbyists like those running the McCain campaign. The financial institution catastrophe can be traced to deregulation, specifically legislation passed with the leadership of Phil Gramm, the chief architect of McCain's economic philosophy and his likely Secretary of the Treasury.

The economic disaster for millions of Americans and potentially billions of people around the world also has its roots in the Bush-McCain economy of paying off the rich with tax cuts and paying out the wealth of the country to Halliburton and other crony corporations, resulting in a $500 billion deficit and the weakening of the dollar.

Add this to the money flowing to buy foreign oil and all the jobs that corporations exported, a process encouraged by Bush-McCain economics, and the result is high unemployment that is going to go even higher, low consumer confidence and drops in U.S. production.

When all of this came to a head Monday, John McCain insisted that "the fundamentals of the economy are strong." That's what Herbert Hoover said as America plunged into the Great Depression.

So now Americans have to decide whether they are going to entrust this dangerous situation to John McCain, who has supported the policies that led to this ongoing catastrophe, even though he admits he doesn't know much about economics, and his VP candidate Palin, who increased debt as mayor and governor, and whose chief economic accomplishment in both offices was to extract millions from the federal government for pet projects.

Or will they turn to the Democrats, to Barack Obama and Joe Biden, who have both warned on the record that those Bush-McCain policies were going to lead to disaster, and who already have plans to attack these problems and repair this economy spiraling out of control, with judicious policies (advised by economists who managed the prosperity and budget surplus of the Bill Clinton years) and bold plans to protect jobs and pensions and social security, and to re-industrialize America with a Green Deal for the future.

That choice is only going to become more dramatic in the coming weeks.