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GOLDEN, Colorado: White House foes Barack Obama and John McCain vowed to crack down on Wall Street excess Tuesday but slammed one another as unfit to fix the economy as global markets took another pounding.
Democrat Obama vowed to purge a financial system and accused his rival of doing nothing to prevent the meltdown sparked by the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy, and condemned McCain's comment that the economy was still strong.
McCain bemoaned recklessness and "corruption" on Wall Street and pledged to end the corporate "greed" that he said had damaged the US economy, and his campaign said Obama brought nothing new and pessimism to the debate.
Obama warned during an appearance in the battleground state of Colorado that every American was now reaping the results of a refusal to regulate Wall Street by President George W. Bush's Republicans.
The crisis "is nothing less than the final verdict on an economic philosophy that has completely failed," he told supporters here.
"It's time to put an end to a broken system in Washington that is breaking the American economy. It's time for change that makes a real difference in your lives," he said.
"Senator McCain's approach was the same as the Bush administration's: support ideological policies that made the crisis more likely; do nothing as the crisis hits; and then scramble as the whole thing collapses. My approach has been to try to prevent this turmoil."
Obama's "21st century regulatory framework" would require mortgage brokers and investment houses to submit to the same regulatory supervision as commercial banks.
Minimum capital requirements would go up for all firms, and credit risk agencies would be monitored to prevent conflicts of interest.
The Securities and Exchange Commission should be given new powers to stop "trading activity that crosses the line to market manipulation," which has been "especially problematic" in this crisis, Obama said.
In a speech in Florida, Arizona Senator McCain, who has a slim one per cent lead over Obama in latest daily tracking polls ahead of the November 4 election, denounced the "recklessness of Wall Street."
"People have a right to know when their jobs, pensions, investments, and our whole economy are being put at risk by the recklessness of Wall Street," he said.
"I can assure you that if I am president, we're not going to tolerate that anymore. In my administration, we're going to hold people on Wall Street responsible," McCain promised.
Each candidate is trying to leverage the latest crisis, and the punishing debt, foreclosures and rising job losses hurting the US economy to their own political gain, just 49 days before the election.
A new Obama ad repeatedly showed McCain's remark in Florida on Monday that the economy was fundamentally "strong" superimposed with news-style captions detailing current economic woes.
Obama also took a shot at McCain's extensive property portfolio.
"If you own seven homes, the judge is free to write down any or all of the debt on your second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth or seventh homes," Obama said in Colorado.
"Now that may be of comfort to Senator McCain, but that's the kind of out-of-touch Washington loophole that makes no sense."
But Tucker Bounds, McCain's spokesman hit out at Obama's prescriptions for recovery.
"Barack Obama offered nothing new except for sharp criticisms of the most fundamental elements of the American economy and pessimism about genuine efforts to restore our country's prosperity," he said.
"More important than understanding that raising taxes on small businesses during a struggling economy is a bad idea, is respecting the strength of American workers and ingenuity," Bounds said.
"Sadly Barack Obama demonstrates neither."
As he tried to train his focus on the economy, McCain was hampered by an apparent misstep by one of his top advisors.
Economic aide Doug Holtz-Eakin said his boss was partly responsible for the "miracle" of the BlackBerry, stirring a flurry reminiscent of Al Gore's claims to have helped develop the Internet.
Obama's campaign immediately pounced: "If John McCain hadn't said that 'the fundamentals of our economy are strong' on the day of one of our nation's worst financial crises, the claim that he invented the BlackBerry would have been the most preposterous thing he said all week," said spokesman Bill Burton.
- AFP/yb
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