Bush can limit financial damage with stroke of a pen: McCain

DES MOINES: Republican presidential nominee John McCain is urging the Treasury Department to intervene aggressively to limit damage from the financial meltdown, action that McCain says President Bush can take with the stroke of a pen.

Opening a business round-table Tuesday in Des Moines, Iowa, McCain said he has urged the Treasury to use its exchange stabilization fund "as creatively as possible" to backstop the market crisis. He says officials also should use the authority granted in a housing bill to purchase up to a trillion dollars in mortgages.

McCain decried the defeat of the financial bailout measure in the House, and he warned that the nation's political leaders will have to take risks even though solutions to the crisis may be unpopular.