As Ari Melber and Matt DeLong have reported on our site, both presidential candidates are keeping up their war of words over Wall Street’s financial crisis and the state of the nation’s economy. You might think that things have changed a lot since last week, when I pointed out that both candidates had been ignoring the credit crunch in their campaigns, preferring not to address directly an issue so complex and with so much potential for downside. After Black Monday, it would seem the crisis should be front and center on the trail.

And it is - sort of. Both candidates are talking, in general ways, about change and reform. But they’re not going a whole lot deeper, notes L.A. Land’s Peter Viles, who blogs on real estate for the L.A. Times.

From Viles:

We are in the middle of a historic housing downturn, and a rolling financial crisis that has already seen unprecedented levels of government intervention in the private sector. It’s quite possible the government will intervene further, perhaps with a sweeping solution to recapitalize struggling banks and take bad assets off their books. Sadly, we know very little about the thoughts of the two presidential nominees on how this rolling crisis should be handled, what they will do about it when they take office, and what level of government intervention they believe is appropriate. In anticipation of your comments, I fully understand that both candidates have talked about the need for new regulations and “reforms” of both Wall Street and the mortgage market. Good enough. That’s about preventing the next crisis. What about the one we’re in right now?

Let’s see if either side comes up with something substantive in the next few days.

It’s not likely, given the fear that saying anything could make the markets even more jittery. But also unlikely because there’s just no simple solution to this crisis.

It would be a bold move on the part of either candidate to take the lead on this.

Voters don’t need more bickering over failed policies or promises for reforms. They deserve to know, in detail, how each candidate might handle the biggest financial crisis facing the country since the 1920s, and the unprecedented level of government intervention in the private markets that is taking place because of it.