Remember the kind of loopy homily from the 1960's, "What if they had a war and nobody came?"

Now, it's "What if you wanted a mortgage and nobody loaned?" We may not be quite there, yet, but we're close.  It's an issue we all need to be tuned into.

Not that we can do much about it, I guess.  It's kind of in the category of  the world's biggest countries ignoring mitigation of global warming, or complaints that the No Child Left Behind law isn't working:  It may upset us, but there's not much we can do about it. At least, it feels that way.

I heard a good analogy of what happened to Lehman Bros. and Wall Street this morning on CNBC. It's as though they had a dollar and used it as collateral to buy $30 worth of stuff that was worth maybe $35 for a while, then suddenly $20, but all they have left is the dollar.  That's sort of what's happening all around--over leveraging, falling value of assets. As taxpayers who bailed out Fannie and Freddie, we have a bunch of mortgage loans whose underlying assets--the houses loaned on--aren't worth the loan amounts.

We'll come out of it okay, in my view, because everyone in the world has too big of a stake in the U.S. economy. If America goes tap city, they can't sell their stuff (oil, TV sets, etc.) to us. Also, no one should underestimate Americans' resolve to fix things when pressed. But there will be a new paradigm at hand.

Such as, say, a group of Wahabi sheiks, flush with our petrodollars saying something, like, "OK, U.S., of course we'll buy your companies' debt.  Safe, good interest rate. But, uh, by the way, would you tell Israel to move all its West bank settlements? By next Friday would be fine." Or the Chinese politburo telling our Secretary of State, "Ms. Rice, of course we want to help shore up your country's debt.  Shall we discuss it over dim sum at our new offices in Taipei as we celebrate Taiwan's merger with us? Oh, and tell those carriers to stay docked in San Diego, would you?"

I don't think this scenario is exactly what either of our presidential candidates is talking about when he says change is coming. But I wish they both would talk about it, because it's a conversation all of us on Main Street need to have.