WHOOPI: If we are bailing out the bank system, who has sent all of these people into this downward spiral by saying, “Listen, we got your back. You take this loan, you can live the American dream.” And suddenly everybody said, “Oh, well this was just built on sand.” But nobody is saying, “Why are you credit card companies sending these kids, at the end of high school, six and seven and eight credit cards?” Why is that legal?

LIZ: It’s terrible. Well, you know, I think both Hillary and Obama have vowed to attack these credit card companies and make them straighten up and fly right. I hope so.

WHOOPI: Why isn’t this being screamed about on the floors of the Senate and the Congress and the House? Why isn’t this discouragement of people being able to live a dream – why isn’t that being talked about? They’re killing the country. They’re killing the country.

JOAN: It is the credit card companies, absolutely. It is the banks that are making the money off the students by offering them these loans that balloon up. And it’s the profit motive all along the line — it’s a complete lack of social conscience about what builds a society. And that vanished somewhere.

LIZ: Well, no. This is why people have responded to Barack Obama — because he’s talking about hope and ethics and all of that. And it’s great. But I’m so afraid that neither he nor Hillary, if elected, can accomplish even a portion of their hopes and promises.

JOAN: I don’t think they can do it.

LIZ: Idealistic. Ideas don’t get done.

WHOOPI: Well, at this point in time, the truth of the matter is it doesn’t matter who gets it; they are screwed for the first four years.

LIZ: That’s right. You’re exactly right. They’re going to be so disappointing to their backers because they’re inheriting the biggest shovel of trouble that’s ever been heaped on anybody, except maybe after the Civil War.

WHOOPI: And that’s the first thing that everybody has to sort of gear themselves to, is that it doesn’t matter who gets in. It is such a big pile of — as you said — a big pile of dog doo that it’s going to take four or eight years to just clean it up. So trying to get anything done new, through Congress or the Senate, is going to be difficult — not because they’re going to be voted against. But because there’s so much other crap to take care of to keep the ship, not just afloat, but from really falling apart. We are as close to falling apart, in my lifetime, as I’ve ever seen.

LIZ: Oh, you’re so right. This is a terrible moment for a great nation. It looks like it’s going to hurdle down and imitate the Romans.

JOAN: Could this be why there is only one shaky candidate for the Republicans? Could this be why —

LIZ: Well they only need one.

JOAN: But could it be that nobody particularly wants to be the guy steering the Titanic?

LIZ: Oh, there were a lot of people trying to get their hand on the helm.

WHOOPI: If the Democrats win, it’s the best thing that could happen to the Republicans because for the next 8 years they’ll have something to bitch about. And they can say, you know, it’s the Democrats —

LIZ: Well, there are people who say we should elect John McCain and let him take the brunt of what’s going to happen next. Then we could elect a Democrat, later.

WHOOPI: Yeah. I mean, it’s going to be — as the Chinese say — “It’s going to be a very interesting …”

LIZ: May you live in interesting times. And they weren’t wishing you well.

JOAN: Electing a Republican and then, you know, waiting eight years, four years, for the good Democrat. That’s like waiting for Him to call, you know.

LIZ: Exactly. You’re right. It’s a very depressing thought. I don’t want to do that. And anyway, I don’t think there’d be two terms for whoever gets it.

WHOOPI: No, I don’t think so either. And their hair is going to go white instantaneously, as soon as they find out exactly what’s really been going on because, you know, they keep saying, “Well, we didn’t know that this was happening with the White House.” But, in fact, that was done four years ago. When they find out all the stuff that has gone on that nobody knew about, except them — the deals that were made, the selling of the United States of America to all these countries. And countries that don’t even know they own pieces of us. We are so … we are so screwed.

JOAN: I’m very, very polite to every Chinese person I see on the subway because I know —

LIZ: You know they own your ass.