Just where, exactly, is this financial crisis going to end - with the collapse of the entire banking system, plunging London into a Mad Max purgatory of burnt-out cars and howling dogs, as survivors of the disaster stab each other for a last hunk of bread? Now impotence is on clear display and it is spreading alarm around the world, writes Jonathan Freedland. For people desperately want someone to get a grip. The left has been warning for years that corporations now enjoy more power than nation states, but never has it been clearer than it is now. The realisation is dawning that this is not just a financial or economic crisis, but a democratic crisis - the people and their representatives have little or no control over what affects them directly. Jonathan Freedland The Guardian
Full article: Our leaders are impotent to tame the beast: this crisis is one of democracy

The fact that regular people were asking most of the questions was bound to make it very hard for John McCain to pivot away from talking to a regular voter about his or her economic problems to saying, "and oh, by the way, let me tell you about Bill Ayers" and so on, writes Michael Tomasky. Add to that the fact that the stock market has lost 850 points in the last two days. The voter-questioners – far preferable to journalists – wanted answers to actual problems. There were no culture war questions – not one, about abortion or the Supreme Court or anything of the sort. And there was no room for McCain to hoist the red flags that so excite his base. There was a lot of jabbing back and forth, in fact too much of it, on both candidates' parts. And it didn't work for either candidate. Michael Tomasky Guardian Unlimited
Full article: What wasn't said in Nashville
Candidates fiddle while America burns

Neither the Chancellor nor his increasingly inadequate shadow, George Osborne, has talked about the lethal effects of putting too much money into circulation, writes Simon Heffer. That is because they either don't get monetarism, or because they do but wish they didn't. Politicians feel they win elections not by confronting people with reality, but by assuring them that life will get better. This is the Greenspan/Clinton thesis: make money available and people will be able to borrow whatever they want for new cars, holidays, swimming pools, the lot. And as for paying it back: in the long run, as Keynes said, we are all dead. So no politician likes to admit that governments can control the money supply and therefore stop reckless lending if they choose to do so; because they don't like to choose to do so. Simon Heffer Daily Telegraph
Full article: Here are the lessons of the credit crunch - but will we learn them?