Hope amid the rubble for Barack Obama

Amid the embers of the meltdown on Wall Street - one of the most devastating in the nation's history as Lehman went broke, Merrill Lynch was swallowed up by Bank of America and AIG tottered to the Fed, begging bowl in hand - John McCain insisted that "the fundamentals of our economy are strong". He called for a commission to probe the root causes of the country's financial mess.

Thus does the man who tells his crowds he wants the McCain-Palin ticket to shake up Washington opt for one of Washington's oldest ploys for fending off trouble: appoint a bipartisan commission run by safe insiders, set them up with a big staff and tell them to take their time. Point one: the fundamentals of the US economy are not sound. Point two: we don't need a commission to tell us how the country got into this mess.

Over the past quarter-century the US manufacturing economy went offshore. Lately the so-called new economy of the 'Information Age' has been moving offshore too. Free trade has left millions without decent jobs or prospects of ever getting one above the $15 an hour tier.

Below a thin upper crust of the richest people in the history of the planet, there's the rest of America which, in varying degrees of desperation, can barely get by. Millions are so close to the edge that an extra 25c on a gallon of fuel is a household budget-breaker.

Wages have stagnated. For decade after decade the bargaining power of workers has dwindled. We've had the macabre spectacle of US-based workers ordered to train their overseas replacements before being fired.

Bipartisan ruses like the Clinton-inspired exclusion of energy and food costs from the measures of 'core inflation' ensure that social security payments don’t keep up with real inflation, which, if you take in the soaring costs of groceries and fuel for heat and transport, is double the official rate -