Washington: The US presidential candidates, Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain are bidding for advantage as two giant Wall Street investment firms vanished into the spiraling American financial crisis.
With 49 days remaining to presidential balloting, Americans were jarred awake on Monday to news that further deepened anxiety about the stumbling economy.
It is the number 1 issue in the country consuming voters even as the country fights intractable wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Campaigning in battleground Colorado, Obama sought to paint McCain as fundamentally out of touch with the budget-busting economic fallout for the vast American middle class.
He called the crisis ''the most serious financial crisis since the Great Depression'' of the 1930s.
''In 19 months he (McCain) has not named one thing he would do differently from this administration on the central issue of this election. Not one thing,'' Obama said.
The first-term Illinois senator is fighting to regain a lead in the polls after McCain's surprise announcement that Alaska Governor. Sarah Palin, would join him on the Republican ticket.
McCain sought to ease voter concerns by vowing to ''clean up Wall Street,'' and promising during a Florida campaign stop that ''The McCain-Palin administration will replace an outdated, patchwork quilt of regulatory oversight and bring transparency and accountability to Wall Street.”
Obama was quick to jump on the latest economic bad news by responding to the news that Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. has announced that it was filing for bankruptcy protection.
Lehman Brothers is a 158-year-old investment banking firm. It fell victim to $60 billion in soured real-estate holdings spawned by the US mortgage crisis.
That shock was compounded by what was essentially a forced sale of Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc. Bank of America Corp. bought the investment institution for $50 billion in stocks.
And an even more dangerous shoe may yet fall.
McCain declared the US economy was fundamentally strong and acknowledged ''these are very, very difficult times, so I promise you: We will never put America in this position again.''
His campaign also issued a television ad that further muddled his economic message about sound fundamentals.
''Our economy in crisis,'' the commercial says. ''Only proven reformers John McCain and Sarah Palin can fix it. Tougher rules on Wall Street to protect your life savings. No special interest giveaways. Lower taxes to create new jobs. Offshore drilling to reduce gas prices.''
The Obama campaign ridiculed the commercial.
''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,'' spokesman Bill Burton said in a statement.
''Even as his own ads try to convince him that the economy is in crisis, apparently his 26 years in Washington have left him incapable of understanding that the policies he supports have created an historic economic crisis,” the statement added.
In a fiery campaign speech in Grand Junction, Colorado, Obama said chaos in the financial markets was ''the most serious financial crisis since the Great Depression. I certainly don't fault Senator John McCain for these problems. I do fault the economic philosophy he subscribes to.''
''Can you afford to take a chance on someone who's voted against the minimum wage 19 times,'' Obama asked a crowd of thousands.
The address to an outdoor rally closely mirrored the statement Obama had issued early Monday as Americans were awaking to the fearsome news from Wall Street.
Meanwhile, Obama running mate Sen Joe Biden, accused McCain of adopting what he termed the serve-the-rich policies of Bush and the divisive tactics of ex-Bush strategist Karl Rove.
''If you're ready for four more years of George Bush, John McCain is your man,'' Biden said at a high school in a Detroit, Michigan, suburb.
Palin also attended a rally in Colorado and said Obama ''wants to raise income taxes and raise payroll taxes and raise investment income taxes and raise business taxes and raise the death tax.''
''But John McCain and I know that's not the way you grow the economy,'' she added.
In fact, independent groups such as the Tax Policy Center have concluded that four out of five US households would receive tax cuts under Obama's proposals.
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