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On the right:
Despite signals that Senator John McCain would have new prescriptions for the economic crisis after a weekend of meetings, his campaign said Sunday that Mr. McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, would not have any more proposals this week unless developments call for some.
And on the left:
"Today, Senator Obama will be in Toledo, OH where he will deliver a major economic policy address to lay out his economic rescue plan for the middle class. Our economy is facing its greatest uncertainty in over 70 years, we have lost 760,000 jobs this year and the unemployment rate is expected to reach 8 percent. Families, who saw their incomes decline by $2,000 in the economic “expansion” from 2000 to 2007 now risk seeing deeper income losses. Retirement savings accounts have lost $2 trillion. Millions of homeowners who played by the rules have seen their housing values plummet and are having a hard time making their mortgage payments. And credit markets are nearly frozen, preventing businesses large and small from accessing the credit they need to meet payroll and create jobs." -- Obama campaign statement
It's unclear to me why McCain doesn't come up with some kind of alternative proposal to alleviate economic distress. Well, not unclear to me on policy terms: The economics of conservatism don't have convincing answers for these problems. But, politically, it seems like his best chance to gain ground on Obama. Perhaps it's a once bitten, twice shy situation -- rolling out his rapidly shifting, now-all-but-abandoned mortgage purchasing program last week was more or less a disaster. But the big question over the weekend was, what will McCain's message be? It seems like he hasn't decided yet.
-- Tim Fernholz
