Never Bet Against America

I was chatting with a former co-worker living in Los Angeles yesterday and was asked -in a tone you'd expect following a natural disaster, an earthquake, a flood, not during casual conversation - how my family was doing. Thing is, being insulated here from what's going on back in the States, it seems that the credit crisis and the potential collapse of the stock market may be weighing just as heavily on the collective American mind.

Perusing internet news about $700 billion bailouts, the WaMu buyout and imploding cross-aisle talks has been, to say the least, frightening. With so much of Wall Street in free fall, it's not difficult to imagine a bleak economic future rivaling, as some pundits have suggested, the Great Depression. Although I doubt that conditions will ever get that bad, I'm certain that the economic environment that I return home to and will eventually enter into will be vastly more different than I, just a year ago, could have imagined.

And amidst all of this, political theater seems to have dominated what should be a period of rapid crisis prevention. While McCain attempts to play White Knight and Obama begrudgingly is forced to follow suit, real progress is being hampered. The Paulson Plan, I believe, may be flawed and may be too interventionist, but I believe that action needs to be taken. I'm disappointed in the splinter group of Republicans who have turned their backs not only to the (in this case) agreeable Democratic core, but their own party leadership and constituency. Yes, we shouldn't ever rush into things, but we must begin to see that something needs to be done now. The details can be ironed out once things settle down -- perhaps that is when it'll be all right for us to drag the issue through the political wringer.

Like Obama said earlier this week: "When you inject presidential politics into delicate negotiations, sometimes it's not helpful. Right now, the key is not people worrying about who gets credit or who gets blamed, but just getting things done."

Above you'll see some clips of Clinton on Letterman getting to the core of the issue. Yeah, the interview definitely has some interesting political implications, but I'm most impressed with his stance on the crisis.