With the national crisis over a financial bailout as unsettled as the coming election and media doing what media is infamous for in any dilemma---second guessing and offering bias under the guise of fair comment---the larger question, I think, is will Barack Obama or John McCain be capable of engineering  an economic rebound in 2009?

I have my doubts.  The doubts come from listening to both in debates as they try to explain what clearly they aren’t sure about.  Obama has spent a good part of any discussion in recent weeks  doing the “put the blame on George” routine that, in fact, is a copyrighted Democratic tool and has been for eight years.  His answers typically are vague and theoretical.  McCain, by contrast, gives the inference that whether he knows how many cars he and Cindy own, America can overcome this.  Just don’t ask me how right now.

I can’t recall a presidential election in my lifetime that had such an ominous issue affecting everyone cascading over the candidates and the country at the same time. 

Yes, it appears to be very similar to the stock market crash of 1928-1931. Seventy-nine years ago this month Wall Street lost approximately $50 billion when trust in the American banking system as well as corporations evaporated in a similar fashion. Tuesday,  Oct. 29---the Black Tuesday oldtimers remember---  was considered the beginning of the financial collapse.

It was the Boston Stock Exchange, not the New York market, that triggered the slide.  In two days, the Boston market, a trusted institution over l00 years old,  lost over 25 percent of its value.   The newspapers of the day really had no idea the size and scope of what happened.  The Worcester (MA) Telegram and Gazette carried a headline that said “Bankers Fail to Check Tumbling Stock Prices” along side a story that assured readers that Wall Street was “Placing House in Order.”  Any reader of history knows that, like today, media and so-called experts who now number in the thousands, wildly speculated about their own thoughts, opinions and make prognostications sound like fact.   

The country’s manufacturing in Massachusetts, for example, was already laying off thousands and soup kitchens and bread lines for unemployed shoe workers were growing weekly.  Yet, the country breezed on with the  October, 1927,  release of the first feature length film of the “Jazz Singer” with Al Jolson and the famous line that told the world America was coming ready or not: “ You ain’t heard nothin’ yet!”

We didn’t have enforceable regulations in place because the year before the collapse Republican conservative Herbert Hoover had been elected on a platform of hear no evil, do no evil (government intervention) and certainly see no evil.

Things went down hill for three years and longer until Franklin Delano Roosevelt arrived  in 1933 to give Americans a strong dose of governmental reform to  dampen our enthusiastic capitalism. 

Today?  Some believe the same exuberant capitalistic spirit---the kind westerner Dick Cheney loves to champion---has placed us at the crossroads again even though we have  far more government regulation than ever before. No question Wall Street has needed more supervision and there has been a growing demand for stricter enforcement of rules to deal with powerful global and domestic people.  Public rage explodes over the fact that compensation for CEOs of large American corporations leaped 275 times beyond that of the average worker in 2007. While it may be perfectly legal many believe it is criminal.    Media and government have continually suggested that self-policing works and is the best possible answer.   You won’t find many Americans feel that way.    

Take a look at the polls of millions of Americans who believe that (1) Wall Street and its over-paid executives were the real source of our economic difficulties and (2) such people should be held responsible and not rewarded.  

The $700 billion bailout that was proposed in the latter part of September was nothing more than “economic socialism” says Sen. Jim Bunning, a Republican from Tennessee who made his living on a baseball diamond. 

Socialism?  Said a New York state socialist: “. . .this is certainly not socialism.  I think what is going on is basically a plundering of the public purse to reward greedy and irresponsible activities. . . This irresponsible behavior, motivated by profit margins, generated billions of profits, but they have already been taken out by the corporations, paid to wealthy investors and to CEOs, other executives, corporate officers and board members.  Now, after they’ve taken out the profits, they want the public to absorb the losses.”

Will Barack or John know how to frame  and pursue a just bi-partisan policy in the coming four years? Is there a chance to return to  normalcy for those of us who have to live with the results? Finally, can the Stock Market survive?

What do you think?  Write me at jbehrens@roadrunner.com.