Sarah Speaks

When E.F. Hutton spoke, people listened.

Of course E.F. Hutton never called its audience “guys and gals,” but then again E.F. Hutton never had Sarah Palin’s legs.

So it was with great anticipation that we watched Palin take the stage today to address the implosion of Wall Street over the weekend, which incidentally resulted in a 504-point drop in the Dow Jones today – the worst single-day free fall since the market opened after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

“Fear is in charge,” one fund manager observed wryly during the day’s carnage.

By the time the closing bell rang $600 billion in assets had vanished, and the worst may be still be ahead for an American economy that is – like the firms which went belly-up today – leveraged to the hilt.

But there’s no need to fear “guys and gals,” Sarah Palin is here.

Sure, when we first introduced our audience to Palin a mere six weeks ago, all we knew was she was hot. She’d yet to be christened as the saving grace of a Republican Party that – let’s face it – ain’t a whole lot different than the Democrats when it comes to mismanaging our money.

Yet there Palin was, on a podium in Golden, CO, making a helluva lot of sense:

“Guys and gals, our regulatory system is outdated and needs a complete overhaul. Washington has ignored this. Washington has been asleep at the switch and ineffective management on Wall Street has not run these institutions responsibly and has put companies and markets at risk,” Palin told the cheering crowd, “They place their own interests first instead of their employees and the shareholders who actually own these companies.”

Palin also said she was glad taxpayer money wasn’t being used to bail out Lehman Brothers like it was Bear Stearns, or for that matter quasi-government mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – all prior victims of America’s housing bust.

“It’s taking a toll on our economy and that means people’s life savings and I’m glad to see in this case the Federal Reserve and the Treasury have said no to using taxpayer money to bail out another one – this time Lehman Brothers.”

Of course while Palin was pontificating, the Bush administration was still refusing to put the Fannie and Freddie bailout on a federal budget ledger that is already $407 billion in the red for the year – and climbing.

And New York Gov. David Patterson was authorizing a $20 billion line of credit for AIG, another embattled Wall Street giant, which responded to the guarantee by promptly losing 61% of its value in today’s market bloodletting.

Glad that plan worked out so well, Governor.

Palin pledged that she and her running mate (what’s his name again?) would restore “confidence and integrity” to America’s battered financial markets.

“We are going to reform the way Wall Street does business and stop multi-million dollar payouts and golden parachutes to CEOs who break the public trust.”

So basically, we’re confronted with a choice – dwelling on a tanking economy or Sarah Palin, who to her credit is a helluva lot better at turning a phrase than any politician we’ve seen since Ronald Reagan, and a lot easier on the eyes than any politician we’ve seen since … well, ever.

In the event you want to focus on the tanking economy, here are two stories which put things in perspective (here and here).

In the event you want to focus on Palin, here’s a nice shot of her legs.

The choice is yours, people.