How much control do our politicians really have over the economy?

The President and Congress all seem to have been caught off guard by this financial crisis and are scrambling to figure out what to do. That there is so much disagreement only leads me to believe that they had little control or understanding to begin with. Did they just let Wall Street play fast and loose with our economy all this time?How much control do our politicians really have over the economy?
Not as much as the media which was singing gloom and doom during the glory days, so some of us ignored them and just went about our business.





I think everyone was okay while they were making money and other nations were buying in.





But you're over-looking a fundamental disagreement about the role of government in the economy.How much control do our politicians really have over the economy?
Too little as we are now all caught in the vice between world-wide forces and corrupt politicians!





It is little better in the UK.





What is needed (in the UK at least) are fewer but better paid MP's - professionally qualified, much better paid, and subject to far sterner controls.


If we pay for monkeys we will get what we pay for. Professional politicians (and less of them) should be propery paid at at least the rate of their peers in industry and finance!
The President could have stepped in an told Greenspan to stop monkeying around with interest rates. Greenspan wouldn't need to comply, but he kind of did his own thing for decades.





Bush didn't know 1+1 when it came to the economy.
the reason for this mess is because congress decided to tinker with the banking practices that set up this mess. it did not catch any politician off guard and if you think it did i can sell you the golden gate bridge.
This is a free market society. Government, regardless of party, SHOULD NOT have control over the economy. Setting income caps on private corporations (as proposed by some with this bailout) is communist.
Very little control. We live in a free market capitalist society. Things went south when borrowers got greedy and lenders became unethical.