By John J. Sweeney

Read more from President Sweeney.

Welcome to the world of unfettered free markets. Today's headlines are brought to you by Bush-McCain economic policies, deregulation of financial markets and lapdog devotion to the speculative economy at the expense of the real economy in which working families live and struggle.

Welcome to the widespread realization that an economy built on Wild West behavior, without legitimate government oversight, brings disaster. Maybe a lightbulb is finally going on over the heads of Bush-McCain economic brains shedding light on this cold fact: The engine of our economy—debt-financed consumer spending—sputters on falling house prices, disappearing jobs and shrinking paychecks. When a housing bubble bursts and homeowners lose trillions in assets that had been funding their spending, the engine dies.

If anyone out there still believes we can trust Bush-McCain Republican economic policies for another four years, we have a Bridge to Nowhere we can sell you.

John McCain, who has been maintaining that "the fundamentals of our economy are strong," has built his campaign and fundraising team on lobbyists, Wall Streeters and the very people who deregulated banking and exploited loopholes to make this financial meltdown possible. He's voted in lockstep with President Bush, still supports tax breaks for the rich and Big Oil rather than the middle class and has plans to dig us deeper into disaster by privatizing Social Security and taxing our health care benefits. McCain's claim now of being the "reformer" who can straighten out this mess doesn't pass the laugh test.

There's broad agreement that government bailouts of financial giants Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and AIG had to happen to stave off national and even global economic catastrophes.

But one person—Barack Obama—is talking about applying as much zeal to fixing the real economy. He knows and is fighting for what America needs to turn around and get back on track. He knows that real people in the real economy have been in a crisis for a long time. He understands that nationalizing loss while abandoning the middle class is not the answer—that we need an immediate response to the economic crisis afflicting middle America.

Obama is calling for $1,000 tax breaks for middle-class families to bridge the crisis; the re-regulation of Wall Street so the savings, pensions and 401(k)s of working people are safe; fast-tracking investments in clean, American energy that will create millions of jobs; a crackdown on lobbyists; and ending the Iraq war so we can rebuild our own country and its bridges and highways and schools that are crumbling.

We're calling for immediate congressional approval of a new economic stimulus plan that includes a moratorium on the foreclosures that are causing the economy at every level to hemorrhage.

America's working men and women have lost 600,000 jobs this year and the end isn't in sight. In addition to worrying about rising gas and food prices and paying precarious mortgages, now working people are uncertain whether their savings and retirement plans are safe. Call your members of Congress today to demand new economic stimulus legislation designed to help working families in the real economy as much as the speculative economy of Wall Street’s high rollers.