The presidential campaign starts for real

Last week marked two major turning points in the presidential campaign. It was the week that Romney was finally forced to venture beyond the warmth and comfort of Fox News, and it was the week that Obama decided to engage with a brutal ad declaring, "Mitt Romney's not the solution. He's the problem."

The Romney camp does not seem to have been prepared for this onslaught.

They want to be talking about the economy, but Team Obama have forced them to incessantly respond to questions about Romney's tax returns, his status as a 0.01%-er and unflattering questions about his business career.

After months of attacking Obama with blatant lies, Romney is reduced to demanding an apology for the suggestion that he was 'responsible' for the activities of Bain Capital at a time that SEC documents list him as its sole shareholder, President, CEO and chairman (while at the same time, FEC documents, curiously, list him as "retired").

It is not hard to see where the Obama campaign will be going next.

Romney has set himself up as the poster child for the Wall Street culture of wealth without responsibility that caused the fiscal crisis in the first place. And while the leveraged buyouts that made Romney rich may seem far removed from the mortgage securities collapse, the basic mechanism was remarkably similar: Overstate the value of an asset, borrow against it, pay yourself a huge management fee from the borrowed money, and make sure someone else picks up the bill when the whole scam collapses.

Expect to hear that it doesn't take any real business knowledge or expertise to make money the way Romney did. All it takes is connections to the right circle of cronies and a complete lack of moral scruples.

And they'd be right.