Instead of prattling on about the automakers, health insurance, unions and defense spending, why hasn't Congress impaneled a committee to investigate the high crimes on Wall Street now affecting the lives of all Americans?

I was wrong. I predicted Hillary Clinton would make a bid at the Convention to wrest away the nomination from Barack Obama that she and Bill figured was rightfully theirs. At least the theory gained legs and created drama and excitement to an otherwise dull affair.

And I wrote John McCain could still win even as the odds stacked higher and higher against his bid for president. In the end he did manage to garner 46 percent of the popular vote, despite what is considered one of the worst-run campaigns in US history. And Obama's organization was frighteningly efficient, as if the team studied and learned from every previous race to apply what works for Democrats to the fullest extent. They even unashamedly recruited school teachers to propagandize kids.

The Obama team registered anyone that moved – and some that didn't, as evidenced by the dodgy tactics of ACORN. They simply got out the vote, whether eligible or not. And while the elusive youth vote and the application of the Internet to campaigns had not panned out in the recent past, Obama's strategists reached out and touched their comrades-in-arms at Google for help.

The omnipresent and omnivorous search engine – exposed now as very left-of-center – harnessed the chaos of the net and landed voters who had never thought about pulling the lever. And, obviously, Google was the mechanism that raised an obscene amount of money for Obama. Whether or not this cash came from legitimate donors will come out in the wash.

But it took an economic catastrophe four weeks before the election to cement the win for Obama. As the mortgage crisis turned into a global financial meltdown, it was revealed that Obama and other senators and congressmen encouraged Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – the huge semi-governmental secondary market for mortgages – to facilitate dicey loans to minorities with bad credit in a massive affirmative action mission. Somehow McCain, who was on record complaining about the excesses at Fannie and Freddie, got left holding Obama's bag. And the rest is . . . well, history.

Enduring the worst financial collapse right before the election while the Republicans held the White House appeared insurmountable. But the McCain team's handling of this unfortunate stroke of fate was so ineffective he was bound to lose. In effect, the best team won, but with a lot of help from their friends – the blatantly biased and unethical media – local and national – who have since the election boasted they abandoned the basic principles of journalism to help their man win the White House.

But I predicted one thing right. I wrote in April that the Obama phenomenon should be compared to the drama created by the death of Princess Diana, so aptly portrayed in the film The Queen. Elizabeth II did not understand the outpouring of grief over Diana until she was hit with the insight there was a "subtle shift" in her subjects. Over here the subtle shift came sooner than expected with the adoration and beatification of Barack Obama, a candidate with little substance but who uttered the platitudes a nation conditioned by 30 years of multicultural and politically correct doctrine voters today wanted to hear. It's not a brave new world, it is political terra incognita – an America we don't know anymore. But, based in the uncontroversial appointments by Obama thus far, he appears to be seeking the middle ground and "change" will arrive as the re-establishment of the Clinton administration. Even better, Obama smokes.

So here we are in the midst of a crippling global financial disaster that has trickled down from the corridors of haute finance to contaminate the so-called "core economy" of small businesses and hard-working employees that makes America tick. Our new president is one of the responsible parties and our media outlets are untrustworthy – undermining the very essence of our representative democracy. The financial gurus can't put the fallen Humpty Dumpty of our collapsed economy back together again and the lame duck Congress is just that – lame, while the new Congress coming in 2009 is allegedly poised to take us down the road to socialist solutions – the great idea that doesn't work.

Gazing over the scarred ground and casualties littering the landscape of this just recently vibrant economy, you have to ask – how did this happen? We know massive affirmative action by Congress forced the bad mortgage loans. But what about the ensuing global collapse? The criminals who brought down the economy are actually identifiable, but no one has sought to punish them – yet.

America would feel a lot better and gird its loins to fight out the downturn if the culprits were metaphorically hanged in public. Supposedly, there are a dozen or so FBI investigations in progress to expose the financial crooks, but why is it kept from the public? And why aren't there any arrests? What about the credit default swap scam? And let's ask the banks under oath why they aren't lending the bailout money provided with our tax dollars (see my column "Don't Bank On Banks" in the November 2008 Metro).

Instead of prattling on about the automakers, health insurance, unions and defense spending, why hasn't Congress impaneled a committee to investigate the high crimes on Wall Street now affecting the lives of all Americans? I'd haul the investment bankers, hedge fund managers, big bank executives and financial product salesmen before the hearing room cameras so the nation can hear how they screwed us to the wall.