Economic Redux

There is a detailed piece in the NY Times today outlining the differing approaches the two candidates have proposed and their records suggest. Here are a few highlights:

"On the campaign trail on Monday, Mr. McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, struck a populist tone. Speaking in Florida, he said that the economy’s underlying fundamentals remained strong but were being threatened “because of the greed by some based in Wall Street and we have got to fix it.”
But his record on the issue, and the views of those he has always cited as his most influential advisers, suggest that he has never departed in any major way from his party’s embrace of deregulation and relying more on market forces than on the government to exert discipline…

Mr. Obama set out his general approach to financial regulation in March, calling for regulating investment banks, mortgage brokers and hedge funds much as commercial banks are. And he would streamline the overlapping regulatory agencies and create a commission to monitor threats to the financial system and report to the White House and Congress… In March 2007, he warned of the coming housing crisis, and a year later in a speech in Manhattan he outlined six principles for overhauling financial regulation. On Monday, he said the nation was facing “the most serious financial crisis since the Great Depression,” and attributed it on the hands-off policies of the Republican White House that, he says, Mr. McCain would continue."