Economic midgets ...

So now we face the absurdity of having one presidential candidate who claims to know nothing about the economy (John McCain) and one who doesn't know anything. Both, in the exigency of the financial mess on Wall Street, are striking populist tones, prattling about "greed" and proposing new regulations to cure it. Political expendiency? You bet.

Neither said a word during the last eight years as the housing boom drove the economy upward. As during the dot.com bust of the 1990s, the market corrects errors like overspeculation quite nicely. Bankruptcy and liquidation serve their purposes.

The vilest rhetoric is coming from Barack Obama, who takes for granted the ability of the economy to create wealth and then recommends throttling it. Wall Street blunders, for which Wall Street should pay, are his new source of political glee. Ignoring all the good free enterprise has brought, ignoring government regulations that helped foster sour mortgages, Obama attacks the "trickle down" economy, the "on-your-own" economy. Well, if you're not on your own (some call this individual responsibility), the alternative is to be under someone's thumb. Whose does he have in mind?