On Thursday morning, September 18, 2008 a tragedy almost befell the 450 billionaires and 3,000,000 millionaires that live in the United States.  

The billionaires were on their way to becoming millionaires and the millionaires were about to leave the club.

Luckily, Hank Paulson, U.S. Treasury Secretary, felt their pain.  

ANZ Bank chief executive Mike Smith says Australian banks are looking very strong, despite the current financial market turmoil. 

Mr Smith, who was speaking at an Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce (AICC) lunch in Sydney, said the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) had been ahead of game in dealing with the ramifications of the crisis, which began in the US. 

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George Bush: proof there is life on Mars 

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Vanstone may have to walk over mafia visa 

Barry Everingham writes: 

Why should American taxpayers give US Treasury Secretary "Hank" Paulson a blank check to bail out the shareholders of busted banks?  

Why should the Treasury turn itself into a toxic waste dump for their bad loans?  

Even as policy makers worked on details of a $700 billion bailout of the financial industry, Wall Street began looking for ways to profit from it.  

Financial firms were lobbying to have all manner of troubled investments covered, not just those related to mortgages. 

The scandal is not that government is acting.  

The scandal is that government is not acting forcefully enough - using its ultimate emergency powers to take full control of the financial system and impose order on banks, firms and markets.  

Few Americans had ever heard of a SOFA until earlier this year, when the Internet lit up with a revelation many observers of US foreign policy had long predicted.  

Despite repeated claims to the contrary, US officials were pressing the Iraqi government to accept an indefinite US military presence, including—and here was the shocker—up to 58 American bases on Iraqi turf. 

Since 1945, American has bombed 25 countries round the  world, killing many millions of people (some estimates put the figure as high as 20 million).  

But bushit has a message for all the families grieving as a result of his contribution to this horrendous scale of mass slaughter. He recently expressed his sorrow, following the US attack in Afghanistan which killed 90 civilians: "I am a partner in your loss & that of the Afghan people." 

During the past two terms of this Presidency we have learned in-depth about signing statements, the “Unitary Presidency”, numerous Executive Orders that remain secret from the Congress, extraordinary “rendition”, and torture to include inflicting injuries on another human being “to the point of, but not exceeding organ failure”.  

US Republican presidential candidate John McCain has rejected the view that the US is in decline as the country faces economic turmoil.  

"I reject the doom and gloom that says our nation is in decline. America's best days are ahead of us," McCain said in a visit to a factory of US car manufacturer General Motors, in Lake Orion, Michigan.  

One of The Today Show reporters said that Lehman's employees were disappointed because they had been told by senior management everything was all right.  

Of course that is what senior management said. All senior managements lie in a crisis. Everyone knows senior managements lie – except their employees. This is the Enron factor.

Alfonso 'Alfy' Fanjul Jr is 'Big Sugar', the patriarch of the Cuban family which dominates the huge sugar industry of Florida, and he is not the kind of man who needs a business degree to know how to sweeten a deal.  

His is the fifth generation of a family which owned the lion's share of the Cuban sugar industry, slave plantations and all, before Fidel Castro's revolution seized their land, smoke-stack refineries and Havana palaces in 1959.

President Bush says the Iraq war is not about oil but his actions belie that claim.  

In the months before the March 2003 invasion, members of the U.S. State Department "Oil and Energy Working Group" met to plan how to open Iraq to international oil companies.  

from Crikey ….. 

dead-end for lehman bros: what the pundits say …..