I think that Barack Obama will have a more imeadiat impact. It looks as though he will have the backing of more people and that will give him the clout that he needs to get things done.

Hillary has too many people who don't like her both in Washington and around the country as well.

I'm afraid I'm stumped on the subprime issue. On the one hand, I am discouraged that lenders cannot be more flexible in making arrangements to defer payments or at least price rises for those coming off fixed-rate mortgage deals - after all, we are talking about people's HOMES. It's too reminiscent of the Depression (which I was not around for, but my parents told me about) and the Farm Crisis of the '80s and early '90s (which I was around for). The immediate solution is legislation. But on the other hand, this is just a bandaid. For too long, the American economy has been fundamentally and intrinsically flawed. "How?", you might ask? The United States is the only industrialized country with a negative savings rate - meaning that even including the super-duper-rich who stash the bulk of their wealth away, Americans collectively still have more personal debt than they have assets. The credit boom may have been good for banks (and, with all due respect, realtors) but the housing bubble created a false sense of prosperity. Americans largely live way beyond their means, and the idea that they had deed to a property which value would just go up fueled even more consumer spending. People did not put away any rainy day money, because they thought, "If I get into financial trouble, I'll just sell my house and downsize". WRONG!

We currently owe about $50,000 on our home (which today is worth about $575,000 - who knows what it'll be worth tomorrow?). To reduce the overall cost of the loan we only took a 10 year mortgage. Our credit card debts are in the hundreds of dollars (not thousands), our car is three years old and we don't plan on replacing it any time soon, we have quite a bit in savings and the real blessing is that I hate shopping - always have - and both my husband and I grew up with very little, and with parents who never even had credit cards, paid cash for their houses and socked every spare penny away "just in case". I have read posts from plenty of people who say, "Why should I be penalized because other people live beyond their means?" but I don't think that way. I know young people who can't even get a foot on the housing ladder because of high prices unless they take out a risky mortgage and cross their fingers. I don't advise it, but what else are you going to do if you're 25, married with children? Sleep in your "old bedroom" at your parents' place?

Anyway, I digress. Healthcare is an issue I consider myself to be a bit of an expert on, having lived overseas and experienced the "universal" healthcare systems of other countries. I am always concerned when people say, "Oh, you'll never be able to negotiate with insurance companies or pharmaceutical companies or doctors" because what on earth do you think countries which DO have "universal healthcare" have done? They use insurance companies! In the UK, they basically nationalized everything and the system stinks. In France, they negotiated prices down to a truly affordable level, and defray the cost to the poor with taxes. The taxes they collect are no more than what U.S. social security collects for Medicaid and Medicare programs now (in fact, it's much less: the United States spends a higher percentage of national GDP on these two programs than any other country spends on systems with universal coverage). There are other things that other countries do that we should to keep people from getting sick in the first place - like providing home help and helping with winter heating bills for the elderly, or providing taxis to take people undergoing chemotherapy treatments to and from the hospital. Call it "socialism" if you like, but doing this actually works out much cheaper than having these people occupying hospital beds.

Also, Senator Obama was right when he said "Not everybody will want health insurance". In France, the system reimburses 80% and the citizen is responsible for the other 20% of their care. Employers generally take care of their employees' 20% (and before you accuse this of being a burden on employers, imagine a system where the government has negotiated costs down to a rate of $25 for a visit with a specialist, and only having to take care of 20% of that); the self-employed and others can choose to pay the 20% when they get sick, or to take out inexpensive co-insurance to cover it. Now, you can think what you want about France, but they have the best healthcare system in the world without exception.

Having been part of that, having seen it work in practice, I truly believe Obama has the better healthcare strategy.