McCain and Obama meeting Bush over Economy crisis talks

[Flagg]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7634810.stm

Presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama are due to meet President George W Bush at the White House for emergency talks on the economy.

Mr Bush has warned that the entire economy is in danger, and that failure to act now would cost more later.

He has been pushing for Congress to pass a $700bn (£378bn) rescue package to bail-out the financial markets.

Mr McCain has suspended his campaign over the crisis, but Mr Obama says voters need to hear from candidates.

WORLD ECONOMY ON THE BRINK?
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World economy on the brink?

The two men will attend a meeting with administration officials and congressional representatives on Thursday at 1400 GMT in an attempt to broker a mutually acceptable bail-out deal.

Later, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson - architect of the existing bail-out plan - will appear before a Congressional committee for a third successive day.

Debate concern

In a joint statement, the two presidential candidates described the Bush administration's planned bail-out plan as "flawed", but said efforts to protect the economy must not fail.

"This is a time to rise above politics for the good of the country. We cannot risk an economic catastrophe," they said.

JUSTIN WEBB'S AMERICA
For McCain to go on television with his dramatic statement but not mention that Obama had called him earlier in the day was simply bizarre


Meanwhile, the two rivals have disagreed on delaying a TV debate over the economic turmoil.

Mr McCain said he was suspending his campaign to return to Washington to help agree a deal, saying he feared the rescue package would not pass "as it currently stands".

He also called for his first presidential debate with Mr Obama on Friday to be suspended - something Mr Obama did not support.

Americans needed to "hear from the person who in approximately 40 days will be responsible for dealing with this mess", Mr Obama told journalists.

'Excesses on Wall Street'

Mr Bush made a televised address to the nation on the economy on Wednesday evening.

Major sectors of America's financial system were at risk of shutting down, he said, and without action a "distressing scenario" would unfold.

His administration is calling on Congress to approve the proposed bail-out - under which the Treasury would use public money to buy bad debt from troubled financial institutions - as soon as possible.

The fund would aim to sell off these mortgage-related debts in the future when, the Treasury says, their value might have risen.

But lawmakers from both the Democratic and Republican parties have voiced doubts about the plan and the speed at which they are being asked to approve it.

Many have been overwhelmed by the volume of e-mail correspondence from voters concerned about the potential use of public funding to fix problems caused by bad corporate practice on Wall Street

Lawmakers want assurances that it will benefit home-owners as well as Wall Street, and be subject to adequate oversight.

"This makes me angry," House minority leader John Boehner, a Republican, said on Wednesday night.

"I think it makes the American people angry that their taxpayer money has to be put at risk."

Mr Bush said he understood the frustration of "responsible Americans" who "are reluctant to pay the costs of excesses on Wall Street".

"But given the situation we're facing, not passing a bill now will cost these Americans much more later," he said, calling for a bipartisan commission to oversee the plan.


Finally, after months of hearing that bullshit from Bush that "Our economy is strong" he finally admits it's not. This guy surely has got to be the worst President in American history. But anyways, 0.7 of a Trillion dollars to bale the economy out? Wonder where that's going to come from..
And what's everyone thoughts with how the Candidates are handling things. I agree with Obama, that McCain SHOULD do the debate still. It's not about prioritising things, it's about letting the public know WHATS GOING ON and how THEY will solve it. He could be the next President for christ sakes!

[redz]

Its a real mess they will be in shambles if they do the bail out and they will be in shambles if they dont catch 22. One thing is for sure the US dollar will plumit if this goes through. I`m Canadian and travel alot so its not that bad for me but alot of people will lose jobs during the recession that is coming in the US.

[Flagg]

Gordon Brown is also going to this crisis meeting and thinks that the bail out plan must go ahead. He also thinks the key to this is Africa and that more money should be pumped into Africa to create a better infrastructure so that more crops can be grown in Africa to feed the world.

I mean, Africa have only been trying to feed themselves for christ knows how long, but it's only until the shit really hits the fan that people are prepared to do something about Africa, but with the sole purpose of saving their own bacon.

[Flagg]

Redz I think the US is already in a recession but this could be really bad. In 1929 when Wall Street crashed, there was TWENTY FIVE PERCENT unemployment. One in four people, that' a scary thought. Im pretty interested to see what Godfather or Pooks think about this, they seem to have ungodly amount of understanding about american politics.

Like you say, this is a caught between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea sceanario. America is already borrowing 3 billion dollars a day from Asian banks. I think the American dollar is on its way out. Remains to be seen if the Yen or Euro will take over or if this insidious "Amero" is about to be unveiled.

[Carlos_E]

This is all about Sarah Palin and the VP debate. McCain wants to delay the first debate and reschedule on the day the VP's are to debate. Pushing back or canceling the VP debate. It'll give Palin more time to prepare or she gets a pass all together.

Take a look at how prepared she is.

http://forums.steroid.com/showthread...09#post4221009

[Carlos_E]

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com...g-vp-debate-2/

(CNN) — McCain supporter Sen. Lindsey Graham tells CNN the McCain campaign is proposing to the Presidential Debate Commission and the Obama camp that if there's no bailout deal by Friday, the first presidential debate should take the place of the VP debate, currently scheduled for next Thursday, October 2 in St. Louis.

In this scenario, the vice presidential debate between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin would be rescheduled for a date yet to be determined, and take place in Oxford, Mississippi, currently slated to be the site of the first presidential faceoff this Friday.

Graham says the McCain camp is well aware of the position of the Obama campaign and the debate commission that the debate should go on as planned — but both he and another senior McCain adviser insist the Republican nominee will not go to the debate Friday if there's no deal on the bailout.

[Flagg]

I agree Carlos that I think McCain is essentially "ducking a fight", I mean the Biden/Palin debate is gonna be almost comical. Im sure he will go for the "The interests of the people matter more to me than the presidency" and so will say he wants to concentrate more on this Economic Crisis Resolution. And this IS A HUGE PROBLEM, probably the biggest crisis our generation is facing, but I have to agree with Obama. If McCain can't even be bothered to turn up on Friday to suggest what he will do about this in the future, if elected...well what does that tell the public?

[Carlos_E]

McCain has not suspended his campaign. His attack ads are still running in battle ground states and his surrogates made their rounds on the news this morning attacking Obama.

This is nothing but a political stunt and I hope Americans take notice. Haven't had enough political stunts with Bush?

[Hoggage_54]

^ We're dealing with similar BS in Canada with our federal election coming up in October. The current conservative/republican PM is doing everything he can to avoid the media, planning staged events and then dissapearing as soon as they are over, no questions, muzzles his MPs... taking a page right out of the Republican politics book. The sad part is that people here are buying it.