Roundup: McCain, Obama focus on Wall Street

— -- After one day of separate campaigning, Sen. John McCain planned a mid-day rally in Tampa, Tuesday before reuniting with running mate Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin in Ohio, a key battleground.

Their stop in Vienna, Ohio, will their first joint appearance since Palin made her initial solo stop Monday in Golden, Colo. McCain, the Republican presidential nominee was on his own Monday in Orlando, where he drew considerably less crowds than when the pair stumped together.

Sen. Barack Obama, who was campaigning in Colorado on Monday, plans his own rally Tuesday in Golden, a Denver suburb, before flying on to Los Angeles for a huge fundraiser featuring Barbra Streisand.

The Oscar-winning singer and actress was to perform Tuesday night on Obama's behalf in Beverly Hills. It was to be a two-step evening with a reception and dinner costing $28,500 a person followed by a later event featuring Streisand at $2,500 a ticket.

Both candidates were riveted on finance Tuesday, but the focus was on the Wall Street kind as the campaigns sought to address the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers investment firm and the 500-point plunge by the Dow Monday.

McCain, who made the rounds of morning TV shows, on Tuesday called for a high-level commission to study the current economic crisis and claimed that a corrupt and excessive Wall Street had betrayed American workers.

Obama, continued to criticize McCain's remark Monday that "the fundamentals of our economy are strong." In a television ad released Tuesday, Obama's campaign asks: "How can John McCain fix our economy if he doesn't understand it's broken?"

McCain sought to parry his earlier comment by defining the fundamentals of the economy as American workers and said that these fundamentals were in crisis.

The Arizona senator called for a review of the financial crisis along the lines of the one led by the Sept. 11 commission. That bipartisan panel studied the events leading to the 2001 terrorist attacks and recommended changes to avert another attack.