Fiscal emergency: What to do?

The financial meltdown of the last couple weeks is as serious as it is complicated, confounding and frightening to the American public.

What to do is the big question. And so far all the answers that have been offered up seem to have serious downsides, with a common denominator: No one is clear if any of the solutions will actually be effective in stabilizing a financial system that has been crippled by excessive debt and shrinking capital.

The Wall Street Journal has been packed from front to back with news and opinions on the crisis for weeks, and the chattering class on television has piled on. The sheer volume of information is overwhelming to the public, so it must be even more daunting to the regulators and policy makers who are charged with doing "something" about it.

Every day there are new developments, some of them encouraging. Financial tycoon Warren Buffett, for instance, on Tuesday announced that he will invest at least $5 billion in the troubled Goldman Sachs Group. It's a bet that amounts to a vote of confidence in the financial system, sending a strong signal to other investors.

The next day, Sen. John McCain boldly suspended his presidential campaign to return to Washington, D.C., and join other lawmakers in trying to sort out the problem. It is a scary prospect that a Congress with record-low approval ratings will be involved in deciding any fix, but McCain and others are at least expressing a serious determination to tackle the problem.

In his announcement, McCain made clear that the current proposal from the Bush administration - a $700 billion government cleanup of bad debt - is not the best solution. It is a bailout of such a grand scale that it has already attracted considerable public opposition. By one account, the cost amounts to $10,000 for every American household. Taxpayers have every right to be concerned and skeptical of such a huge burden that does not even come with a guarantee of success.

"It has become clear that no consensus has developed to support the administration's proposal. I do not believe that the plan on the table will pass as it currently stands, and we are running out of time," McCain said with urgency. "We must meet as Americans, not as Democrats or Republicans, and we must meet until this crisis is resolved."

McCain's opponent, Barack Obama, rejected McCain's request to postpone Friday's debate on foreign policy, saying "it's more important than ever" to hear from the candidates.

He may be right, but we can only hope that McCain and other politicians actually rise above politics to find the wisest solution, one that will spare costs to the broader economy and taxpayers as much as possible.