During the Enron era, I read the Wall Street Journal for the crime news -- accounts of high-flying CEOs and companies brought low by scandal. Now I read it for drama.

As you would expect, the Bible of Wall Street is covering America's biggest financial crisis since the Depression with an all-hands-on-deck sense of urgency and thoroughness. In retirement, I have time to devour it all every morning.

During the September week that Morgan Stanley and AIG both disappeared, the Journal's page ran two-line banner headlines -- what I call "end of the world" headlines -- on four of the five weekdays.

Another end-of-the world headline appeared Monday:

"Bailout Plan Rejected, Markets Plunge,
Forcing New Scramble to Solve Crisis"

Historic stuff. And some superb and provocative commentary has shown up on the Journal's oped pages. A worthy example is economist Judy Shelton's Monday oped headlined, "Loose Money and the Roots of the Crisis."

The root of the current crisis, Shelton declares, is funny money.

=> Read more!

U.S. Reps. Adam Smith of the 9th District and Dave Reichert of the 8th District stopped by today, fresh from yesterday's momentous House defeat on the $700 billion economic rescue plan.

Smith was a yea vote; Reichert a nay.

Smith said the bill was tainted the moment it got packaged as a "Wall Street bailout."

"This is not a Wall Street bailout," he said. "It's a bailout of our credit system."

Smith said his office was deluged with protests against the bill: "For every 500 calls we got against it, we got one in favor."

On that point, Reichert agreed. His office got about 2,500 emails and calls on the issue, he said, and the sentiment was "overwhelmingly no."

=> Read more!

Transportation dollars are hard to come by these days. We hope House Speaker Frank Chopp isn’t in no-dissent-allowed mode on his proposal for a very expensive box for Alaskan Way along Seattle’s waterfront.

We recommend voters support seven tax increases for fire and emergency medical services, as well as the proposed annexation of the Puyallup fire department into Central Pierce Fire and Rescue.

If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to patrick.ocallahan@thenewstribune.com. Editorials represent the consensus view of The News Tribune's editorial board.
Want to sit in on a daily ed board meeting? Email cheryl.tucker@thenewstribune.com to make an appointment.

If John McCain is elected president, what are the chances that he would need to be replaced by Vice President Sarah Palin?

According to the Associated Press, an Atlanta company that specializes in estimating life and health expectancy says there's a 1 in 4 chance that Palin would need to replace McCain as president due to death or bad health – if he's elected to a second term. McCain, 72, has a "health expectancy" of 8.4 more years, compared to 21.9 years for Barack Obama, who is 47.

Factors that went into McCain's health profile include his history of skin cancer (three melanomas), degenerative arthritis from his Vietnam war injuries, moderately high cholesterol, mild vertigo and the fact that he is a former smoker who quit in 1980. For Obama, the biggest health threat is that he's a smoker. Although he has said he's trying to quit, he's not considered a former smoker until he's been off tobacco for 12 months.

The upshot is: Actuarially speaking, McCain's choice of Palin is more important than Obama's choice of Biden because she has a better chance of moving up the chain of command.

We let Democrats off the hook too easily today in our editorial on the U.S. House of Representatives' rejection of an economic rescue plan yesterday. A majority of House Republicans did vote against the plan – but so did 40 percent of House Democrats. The failure to address the financial crisis was thoroughly bipartisan.

Some of the lawmakers were voting their conscience, but many have simply been spooked by their constituents' anger about the plan. It could turn out to be a national tragedy that this decision is being made so close to the election. And a shame that so many politicians – right on up to Nancy Pelosi – are still exploiting the crisis to score partisan points.

There are times when elected representatives just have to buck public sentiment – and risk losing their seats – to do what's best for the country. Let's hope we see a few more profiles in courage when the bill comes up again later this week.

If you liked the lead editorial cartoon today (T-Rex terrorizing the economy), here's another one from the same cartoonist, Scott Stantis of the Birmingham (Ala.) News.