OK, so Barack Obama wants to deal with the economic crisis by introducing more regulation of the markets. John McCain is against more regulation. Instead, his solution to the crisis is to fire the SEC chair.
I’m not against firing the guy. It does appear that he missed something about his job in letting all this happen. But I think McCain’s approach sends mixed signals: he is trying to appear very dramatically concerned about the crisis (to match Obama’s own lashing of the government), but he’s sticking to his conservative guns at the same time, without actually proposing any new strategy. Just firing people, Palin-style, isn’t going to solve this problem. We clearly do need more regulation–or, if regulation for things like how much of a capital margin you have is already on the books–we need to enforce it more. We need to do more than just fire people. We can’t just take the emotional steps and leave off the smart, strategic ones because they’re less fun and cathartic.
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