By STAR PARKER, Scripps Howard News Service

How can you not feel that emptiness in the pit of your stomach as you watch our financial markets spin downward? The broad stock market indices are down well over 40 percent since the beginning of the year. Losses are somewhere in the neighborhood of $9 trillion.

I retrieve and open a large envelope from today's pile of mail.

Inside is a press release announcing "Chik-fil-A Founder to Receive 2008 William E. Simon Prize for Philanthropic Leadership."

John McCain has a knack for the bizarre. But he outdid himself, appearing on Saturday Night Live the weekend before election day to make fun of it all.

It was evident from the polls that only a miracle could pull this election off for McCain. But the SNL appearance made it clear that there would be no miracle.

Pushing back on accusations from John McCain that he's a socialist, Barack Obama said, "I don't know what's next. By the end of the week, he'll be accusing me of being a secret Communist because I shared my toys in kindergarten. I shared my peanut butter and jelly sandwich."

According to the California Teachers Association and the California School Boards Association, the Proposition 8 marriage initiative has nothing to do with what is taught in California's public schools.

When successful companies fail, when winning teams start to lose, what we're most likely to hear is an announcement from the CEO or the coach about returning to basics.

It's not unusual for success to lead to a loss of focus that indeed there are basics from which it all started. In the language of proverbs, pride precedes the fall.

As our financial markets totter, as homes go into foreclosure, as Wall Street executives lose millions, as Americans have more and more difficulty getting loans, can anyone be happy?

Certainly. Those on the left who now, with unbounded glee, pen obituaries for the free market.

One can sense their joy as they have, they think, the last laugh.

As our presidential candidates drone on about our current financial crisis being caused by greedy Wall Street CEOs, a study just released by Canada's Fraser Institute points to what the real problems are in the United States.

My sense is that the attention that most Americans are paying as the power brokers of our government re-mold our future is not too deep.

Sure, we're watching to see which Wall Street firm emerges as the basket case du jour.

Barney Frank isn't just another liberal. And he is much more than just an openly gay congressman. He is a powerful legislator who happens to be chairman of the House Financial Services Committee.