Oh ye of little faith - a little pricing power causes wholesale abandonment of confidence in markets to sort out supposed hubris. So much for a robust free market economy.

The bank mania sweeping Canberra, whipped along by the usual populist commentaries, is starting to take on bizarre proportions as the two major parties compete to sound the most interventionist and to display the least confidence in the market mechanisms. The outbreak of posturing by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission isn't a good look either.

Rise like lions after slumber

In unvanquishable number.

Shake your chains to earth like dew.

Which in sleep has fallen on you.

Ye are many - they are few.

These days, the stirring lines of Percy Shelley's The Mask of Anarchy may seem unattainable. I don't think so. Shelley was both a Romantic and political truth-teller. His words resonate now because only one political course is left to those who are disenfranchised and whose ruin is announced on a government spread sheet.

from Crikey .....

Reclaiming reform: why Labor needs to explain itself better

Canberra correspondent Bernard Keane writes:

Note: the list is in no way complete but comes from a reputable source... and of course does not include all the armaments supplied by the US, and other sundries...

say cheese

Shrill political attacks have saturated the airwaves for months, but behind them is the real problem of this demoralizing election: the dark flow of dollars, often secretly provided by donors with very special interests.

The amount is staggering: Nearly $4 billion is likely to be spent once the final figures are in, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, far more than in the 2006 midterms, which cost $2.85 billion. It could even eclipse the $4.14 billion spent in the 2004 presidential campaign.

Yemeni authorities have arrested two women on suspicion of sending explosive devices to US synagogues. Yemeni security forces arrested the women in their homes, where it was claimed that they had been hiding. The women had been identified through the contact phone numbers they had given to UPS when arranging to forward the parcels. Authorities are convinced that the parcels were bombs sent on behalf of the Saudi Arabian branch of al-Qaeda, even though the contents were still subject to analysis.

Editorial, The Australian, September 9: