McCain: 9/11 Commission-Style Probe Should Fix Wall Street

Washington, D.C. (AHN) - Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) began Tuesday with a round of morning TV appearances attacking Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) and calling for a 9/11 Commission-style panel to probe the turmoil in the nation's financial markets.

Speaking from Florida, McCain said on CNN the nation had been "the victim of greed, excess and corruption on Wall Street" and that "we're going to need a 9/11 Commission to find out what happened and what needs to be fixed."

The Arizona senator said his earlier assertion that "the fundamentals of the economy were strong" referred to the American worker as "the fundamental strength" of the economy. He has received strong criticisms for the statement from Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL), who launched a TV ad the same day reminding voters "how disturbingly out of touch [McCain] is with what's going in the lives of ordinary Americans."

McCain repeated his clarification on MSNBC's 'Morning Joe.' ""I was talking about the fundamentals of America, which is the workers, their productivity, their innovation, their incredible performance for many, many years," the four-term senator said.

Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE) issued a rebuttal from Washington slamming McCain's "profligate tax cuts" for the wealthy.

"Who got us in this hole, whose policies?" the Democratic vice presidential candidate said on CBS's 'The Early Show.' "This has been a Republican philosophy of letting Wall Street do what they want and the middle class be damned. It's about time we change it."

Lehman Brothers, the nation's fourth largest investment firm, announced on Monday it would file for bankruptcy. The 158-year old investment bank had been in negotiations with potential buyers over the weekend but was unable to convince Bank of America and Barclays after the federal government refused to use taxpayer funds as guarantee.

The announcement was followed by news that Merrill Lynch agreed to sell itself to Bank of America for $50 billion, and that the nation's biggest insurer, American International Group (AIG), is in dire need of capital and had asked the help of the Federal Reserve.

President George W. Bush issued a statement from the White House the same day seeking to calm the turmoil on Wall Street. Calling the recent upheavals in the nation's financial sector "short-term adjustments," the President recognized the "pain" investors and workers from the firms were going through but said the economy was "flexible and resilient" enough to cope with such changes in the long run.