October 10, 2008 Election causes uncertainty on Wall Street Play video

(Greg Wayland, NECN) - Barack Obama and John McCain are both confident they can take control of the nation's financial problems. But as stocks tumble, it the White House creating a confidence problem on Wall Street?

Bush: This is an anxious time, but the American people can be confident in our economic future.

Timing is everything in politics and the tumbling numbers suggest no one is listening to the president.

Jittery investors apparently remain unconvinced a lame duck president can help them.

Meanwhile, the presidential candidates -- their leadership abilities untested -- had been calibrating their stump speeches and debate performances to convince voters they are the ones to can stop the market free-fall.

But John McCain, campaigning in Wisconsin and calling himself the underdog now, hammered away at barrack Obama’s character instead.

Obama, campaigning in Ohio, saw his opening -- and attacked.

Financial and political observers, watching the market plunge, are beginning to see a basic problem. It’s that problem of timing.

It's unfortunate in one way that this is all happening in the run-up to Presidential elections....

It is unprecedented for this kind of cataclysm to happen so late in an election cycle.

And in the last days of an unpopular president. Bush: Fellow citizens: We can solve this crisis -- and we will.

We can't say for sure that things would be better if it was the early

days of a new administration and the president could stand up there the way Franklin Roosevelt did with his jaunty look and his cigarette holder and say, you have nothing to fear but fear itself. And people believed him. And no one would believe Bush if he said that.