THE ECONOMIST'S POLL OF ECONOMISTS: "Examining the candidates: In our special report on the election we analyse the two candidates' economic plans," The Economist, 4 October 2008. REGULATION AND TRADE: "Changing the rules: The candidates offer divergent responses to the credit crunch and differ sharply over free trade," The Economist, 4 October 2008.

Very ouch, as Austin Powers used to say. The Economist polls all these economists about McCain and Obama and their economic plans. 70 percent say McCain's plan will be "very bad" or "bad" and almost 50% says Obama's plan will be "very good" or "good." Who picks the better economic team? 80% for Obama, and about 15% for McCain. Similar proportions for "who has the better grasp of economics" and "for whom would you rather work?" Most interesting, and explaining some of the skew: a bit over 40% say they're Dems and a bit over 40% say their independent, while only about 10 percent say they're Republican. Those numbers explain why Obama scores so high, but not why McCain scores so low. As with the election, Obama captures more of the independents. Can it be that hard for the Economist to find GOP economists? Don't they exist anymore or has 8 years of Bush-Cheney driven them from the ranks? On the question of future regulation: a wash. About one-third like each and one-third seem to like neither. But the killer chart to me comes on page 7 of the special report, regarding tax plans much discussed in the debates: • Under Obama, the top 1% (including me) pay more taxes and the lowest 20% pay less (meaning the top 1% have less after-tax income and the bottom 20% have more); about an 8% loss of income for richest and a 5-6% gain for lowest • Under McCain, the top 1% pay less taxes (about 2%) and the bottom 20% pay about the same (virtually no change)