McCain: You know, that there's been tremendous turmoil in our financial markets and Wall Street and it is -- people are frightened by these events. Our economy, I think, still the fundamentals of our economy are strong. But these are very, very difficult times.

With the bad news hitting Wall Street about the demise of Lehman Bros and the sell off of Merrill Lynch---the financial markets are collapsing all around us and it's all because of conservatism. McCain's policies are the same as Bush and when McCain says that he is a reformer, well....that has no bearing on fixing the failing financial institutions. Republicans do not want regulations. Period. McCain will not fundamentally change anything regarding our economy except to come up with new talking points about how bad CEO's are. If nothing else, the last eight years have shown us that conservatism is dead. Update: McCain had to come back out today and quickly try to take back these remarks.This just proves the point that he does not understand the economy enough to lead us out of this quagmire.

Obama's camp:

Today of all days, John McCain's stubborn insistence that the 'fundamentals of the economy are strong' shows that he is disturbingly out of touch with what's going in the lives of ordinary Americans. Even as his own ads try to convince him that the economy is in crisis, apparently his 26 years in Washington have left him incapable of understanding that the policies he supports have created an historic economic crisis," said Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton.

They need to immediately produce a series of ads attacking McCain on conservatism and that puts the blame squarely on his shoulders for this latest Wall St. meltdown. This is a time when Obama can control the news cycle and make McCain respond to him.