Candidates Differ on Terms of Financial Sector Rescue

What we're looking at right now is to provide the Treasury and the Federal Reserve with as broad authority as is necessary to stabilize markets and to maintain credit.

We also need a more institutional response to create a system that can manage some of the underlying problems with bad mortgages, help homeowners stay in their homes, protect the retirement and savings of working Americans.

I think it's critical at this point that the markets and the public have confidence that their work will be unimpeded by partisan wrangling and that leaders in both parties work in concert to solve the problem at hand.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Obama stressed the urgency of putting the country's capital markets on sound footing first so there will be stability, and changes can be made to financial regulations later.

SEN. BARACK OBAMA: We're going to have to take some critical steps, and I think the next administration has to be committed to upgrading those financial regulations.

But right now, what we have to do is make sure that the capital markets are working, so that people, small businesses, folks who are waking up in the morning, they know that their money market funds are protected, they know that they can make payroll, and that as much as possible we are able to ensure that on Main Street, some of the pain is limited.

And I think what has to be clear is, is that whatever is set up is not bailing out shareholders and CEOs. They need to take their losses, because they were enjoying the upside when times were good.

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN: We've heard a lot of words from Sen. Obama over the course of this campaign. But maybe just this once he could spare us the lectures and admit to his own poor judgment in contributing to these problems.

The crisis on Wall Street, my friends, started in the Washington culture of lobbying and influence-peddling, and he was right square in the middle of it.

JUDY WOODRUFF: McCain did not mention that his presidential campaign has received $169,000 from directors, officers, and lobbyists of Fannie and Freddie, more than 10 times what Obama has received from them, this according to the Federal Election Commission.