Obama on Financial Meltdown vs. McCain's Head in the Sand

SEIU is spending $2 million+ to air this ad in 6 battleground states – NM, OH, PA, MI, WI, IA

In response to the recent tumultuous events in the mortgage banking industry and the financial markets, Barack Obama issued a statement taking the GOP's economic policies to task. Excerpt:

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.

Meanwhile, it's evident that John McCain still has his head in the sand:

You know, that there's been tremendous turmoil in our financial markets and Wall Street and it is -- people are frightened by these events. Our economy, I think, still the fundamentals of our economy are strong. But these are very, very difficult times.

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan begs to differ, seeing our current situation as the worst economy he's ever seen, by far.

Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton had this to say: "Today of all days, John McCain's stubborn insistence that the 'fundamentals of the economy are strong' shows that he is disturbingly out of touch with what's going in the lives of ordinary Americans ... apparently his 26 years in Washington have left him incapable of understanding that the policies he supports have created an historic economic crisis."

As we go forward, it will only become more apparent to everyone that McCain still believes in the deregulated, trickle down economics that have resulted in this worldwide meltdown. His campaign offers nothing to address and fix the problems that are causing havoc. McCain offers only more of the same. Like it or lump it.

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