FACTBOX: Vice presidential candidates on financial crisis

(Reuters) - U.S. vice presidential candidates Sarah Palin and Joe Biden squared-off in their only debate of the 2008 campaign on Thursday at Washington University in St. Louis.

Here are some of the candidates' comments on the current U.S. financial crisis.

ALASKA GOV. SARAH PALIN, REPUBLICAN:

"It is a crisis. It's a toxic mess, really, on Main Street that's affecting Wall Street. And now we have to be ever vigilant and also making sure that credit markets don't seize up. That's where the Main Streeters like me, that's where we would really feel the effects."

"We have John McCain to thank for at least warning people. And we also have John McCain to thank for bringing in a bipartisan effort people to the table so that we can start putting politics aside, even putting a campaign aside, and just do what's right to fix this economic problem that we are in."

"I think that the alarm has been heard, though, and there will be that greater oversight, again thanks to John McCain's bipartisan efforts that he was so instrumental in bringing folks together over this past week."

"Darn right it was the predator lenders, who tried to talk Americans into thinking that it was smart to buy a $300,000 house if we could only afford a $100,000 house. There was deception there, and there was greed and there is corruption on Wall Street. And we need to stop that."

"Let's commit ourselves just every day American people, Joe Six Pack, hockey moms across the nation, I think we need to band together and say never again. Never will we be exploited and taken advantage of again by those who are managing our money and loaning us these dollars."

"We need to make sure that we demand from the federal government strict oversight of those entities in charge of our investments and our savings and we need also to not get ourselves in debt."

DELAWARE SEN. JOE BIDEN, DEMOCRAT

"I think it's neither the best or worst of Washington, but it's evidence of the fact that the economic policies of the last eight years have been the worst economic policies we've ever had. As a consequence, you've seen what's happened on Wall Street."

"What we should be doing now -- and Barack Obama and I support it -- we should be allowing bankruptcy courts to be able to readjust not just the interest rate you're paying on your mortgage to be able to stay in your home, but be able to adjust the principal that you owe... That would keep people in their homes, actually help banks by keeping it from going under."

"If you need any more proof positive of how bad the economic theories have been, this excessive deregulation, the failure to oversee what was going on, letting Wall Street run wild, I don't think you needed any more evidence than what you see now."

"It was two Mondays ago John McCain said at 9 o'clock in the morning that the fundamentals of the economy were strong. Two weeks before that, he said George -- we've made great economic progress under George Bush's policies. Nine o'clock, the economy was strong. Eleven o'clock that same day, two Mondays ago, John McCain said that we have an economic crisis. That doesn't make John McCain a bad guy, but it does point out he's out of touch."

"John McCain while Barack Obama was warning about what we had to do was literally giving an interview to "The Wall Street Journal" saying that I'm always for cutting regulations. We let Wall Street run wild."

"You had actually the belief that Wall Street could self-regulate itself. And while Barack Obama was talking about reinstating those regulations, John on 20 different occasions in the previous year and a half called for more deregulation."

(Reporting by JoAnne Allen; editing by Alan Elsner)