Day 2 of candidates on Wall Street crisis

The presidential candidates are responding for the second day to the Wall Street meltdown.

Republican John McCain, making the rounds of the morning TV news shows, called for a commission along the lines of the one that investigated the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to uncover what went wrong.

"I warned two years ago that this situation was deteriorating and unacceptable," McCain said on ABC's "Good Morning America." "And the old-boy network and the corruption in Washington is directly involved and one of the causes of this financial crisis that we're in today."

McCain was even more strident in his populist tone today, praising rank-and-file workers who he called the fundamental strength of the US economy and railing against greedy speculators and CEOs on Wall Street.

"Too many people on Wall Street have been recklessly wagering," he told a crowd in Tampa, Fla., in an "endless quest for easy money."

While shareholders and consumers get hurt, only the CEOs escape the consequences, McCain said, calling their multimillion-dollar severance packages "disgraceful."

"I've spoken out against the excesses of corporate executives," he said. "On my watch we are never going to let these abuses go uncorrected."

McCain also vowed to overhaul regulation of the financial sector, streamlining a dozen federal agencies that haven't done the job with a comprehensive regulatory framework that emphasizes transparency.

"They haven't been doing their job right," he said. "Otherwise we wouldn't have these massive problems on Wall Street. And that's a fact."

Democrat Barack Obama, in a forceful economic address at the Colorado School of Mines outside Denver, blamed the country's financial crisis on weak oversight and challenged McCain's vow to bring more accountability to the financial sector.

"What we’ve seen the last few days is nothing less than the final verdict on an economic philosophy that has completely failed," Obama told 2,200 people packed into the college gym. "It is time to put an end to the broken system in Washington that is breaking the American economy. It’s time for change that makes a real difference in your lives."

He added, "This is what happens when you confuse the free market with a free license to let special interests take whatever they [can] get."

Obama said McCain's history of pushing for deregulation shows he will not be a president who brings that change.

"John McCain can't be trusted to re-establish proper oversight of our financial markets for one simple reason," Obama said. "He has shown time and again that he does not believe in it."

Obama also attacked McCain's suggestion this morning that the government create a special commission to study the housing market collapse and the resulting financial mess.

"Senator McCain offered up the oldest Washington stunt in the book – you pass the buck to a commission to study the problem," he said. "This isn't 9/11. We know how we got into this mess. What we need now is leadership that gets us out. I'll provide that leadership. John McCain won't and that's the choice for the American people."