Special Report: U.S. presidential election 2008　

Backgrounder: U.S. vice presidential debate

     WASHINGTON, Oct. 2 (Xinhua) -- U.S. vice presidential (VP) candidates Joe Biden and Sarah Palin clashed on economy as they debated at Washington University in St. Louis, Miss., Thursday night.

    Biden and Palin started their debate with a discussion of the economy.

    Palin, a female Republican governor from Alaska, blamed some of the U.S. financial crisis on Wall Street.

    "You're darn right it was the predator lenders," she said. "There was greed and corruption on Wall Street."

    Biden blamed some of the crisis on deregulation policies that Republican presidential nominee John McCain believes in.

    "McCain voted for deregulation and that is why we are in the crisis that we are in," he said.

    Biden said the economic bailout bill is evidence that the United States has had the "worst economic policy we ever had."

    Palin said a barometer for how Americans are feeling about the economy can be felt at kids' soccer games.

    She said Americans are "scared."

    Palin said Democratic presidential nominee Obama's economic plans are "the backwards way of trying to grow our economy" because she believes he would raise taxes too high on too many people.

    She noted that Biden said recently it would be "patriotic" of the wealthy to pay higher taxes.

    "That's not patriotic," she says. In her view, millions of Americans believe government is "the problem" and doesn't need more in taxes.

    She added that "millions of small businesses" would pay higher taxes because Obama would raise them on those who earn more than 250,000 U.S. dollars a year while Biden said the fact is that 95 percent of small businesses earn less than that amount.