It might be just my frame of mind, but I smell a complete setup starting with last night's speech by Mr. 19%.  To think that the white house is NOT coordinating with the McCain campaign on how to handle this is naive.  Will someone please answer this question for me (and I mean this sincerely): If this is such a dire crisis, we have a global economy, and the world as we know it will end, then WHY AREN'T THE EUROPEAN BANKS ON BOARD?  How does a US recession and potential currency devaluation help them?  Or China?  Or India? If the US goes in the crapper, it's not going alone.

The credit problems are real, but the smell of bullshit is simply overwhelming.  I cannot help but think that his solution to an attack that left thousands of Americans dead and supposedly represented an "existential threat" to the American way of life was (1) a tax cut; (2) an exhortation to "go shopping" and (3) a completely unnecessary war that has bankrupted the treasury and cracked the military.  This augurs for a slow, incremental approach to the problem rather than the panic that the Paulson proposal (and in many respects the Dodd proposal) demonstrates.  Schumer's idea was a good one: here's 50 billion a month.  Let's see if it works.  Remember, this is the same Administration that politicized 9/11 to brand opponents to the president's -domestic- programs as traitors.  Oh, and that seven hundred billion dollar number?  "Not related to any data point."
FISA? Military Commissions?  Homeland Security? Iraq?  Could the M.O. be any freaking clearer? And why the #$!$^%#Y#& would any right-thinking individual give the authority to fix this mess to those that not only created it, but have thus far refused to accept any accountability for any of their policy disasters thus far?  Especially when your own candidate is primed to provide different solutions to these problems--ones that you ostensibly support?

If the last eight years have taught the Democrats nothing (and they have), the current ongoing felony operation cares about nothing other than amassing, wielding and abusing power. 

For the luvva Pete, please go slow.

Seems McCain doesn't like the way the game's going and wants to call a time out.  A big one.
Let me see if I understand this.  McCain wants to call off the debate, call time out, and then bring Obama in so that he can point to his "mavericky" and bipartisan credentials?   This is the October Surprise, folks.   (Obama, to his credit, seems to understand that this is a set-up.). 
Here's what I think.  They had their internal "mock-up" debates against former lt. governor Steele and they were a complete disaster.  McCain is a seasoned (dare I say "thoroughly cured") senator and, when on his game, a good orator.  His campaign simply cannot lower the expectations for him the way one could for Bush.  McCain has run on perceived gravitas.  Bush ran on swagger.  
Once stripped away from prepared speeches and the teleprompter, it will be just him up there in the face of revelations that his entire staff (indeed his campaign manager) is up to his eyeballs in this mess.  A debate opens the door to tie this economic maelstrom and Phil Gramm's role in it to the issue of national security.  (And if it's as serious as they say, it is absolutely an issue of national security).  No doubt Rick Davis et al would love to be involved in working this all out, and given the trend lines, a debate disaster will doom his campaign and his campaign staff's clients.   It's an easy judgment call.  (If it wasn't this, who knows? It could have been Georgia).
This is becoming a sitcom, where the cantankerous old grandpa parks the car in the septic tank and when the son asks why he did that, grandma says "You know how he is.  He's mavericky!" (cue laugh track).   The question is whether the press are members of the live studio audience.

Is it possible that the reason that the markets have not responded well to the proposed bailout is because the more sophisticated folks realize that it doesn't solve anything?

A couple of thoughts on the bailout.  Under Bushco's unitary executive theory, the sole power that Congress has to check the executive's action in almost any respect is to refuse to fund it.  By handing over $1 trillion to Paulson et al. they cede yet more of their power to the White House, and it's not likely that any of it will ever come back.  Remember what this administration has done... flouted subpoenas, spied on Americans in blatant derogation of federal law (they couldn't even get Ashcroft to sign off on it)... torture, the list is well known and damn-near endless.  As a policy matter, it seems stupid.  As a constitutional matter, it's a disaster.  It's a bad idea and a bad precedent.