The Treasury is proposing a fund worth up to $800bn to buy back a large proportion of the US mortgage market, media reports say. 

Legislation for the plan will be pushed through as soon as possible, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said. 

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”.  

Just three days after it went on sale, copies of The Costello Memoirs by former federal treasurer Peter Costello have been dumped in the bargain bins. 

Staff at the Paper chain Bookstore in Manuka, the closest bookshop to Parliament House, reported 'pretty decent' sales yesterday at the full price of $54.99.  

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.  

The Federal Opposition Leader, Malcolm Turnbull, is taking a hard line on the Government's Budget legislation in the Senate. 

Government Budget measures, including the inceased luxury car tax, are still stuck in the Senate.  

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.

Invoking extraordinary powers granted after the 1929 stock market crash, the government seized control of the insurance giant American International Group to preserve a crucial bulwark of the global financial system. 

The move to lend the Wall Street giant up to $85 billion in exchange for nearly 80 percent of its stock effectively nationalizes one of the central institutions in the crisis that has swept through markets this month. 

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.  

Ousted Liberal leader Brendan Nelson has stood by his decision to hold a leadership spill and has pledged to get behind the newly-elected Malcolm Turnbull. 

At a media conference with his wife at his side, the at times emotional Dr Nelson also said he would not seek or accept a position on the frontbench. 

The Federal Reserve and Treasury Department struggled yesterday to contain the fallout from an upheaval among the country's largest investment banks as they moved on to their next challenge - engineering a $75 billion private rescue of the nation's largest insurance company. 

But if he is unworried about God getting a foot in the Royal Society's door, many other fellows find recent developments troubling. 

from Crikey ….. 

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

Belated applause for a stand up comic... 

I laugh sometimes at the SUPERB hypocritical aplomb of the Liberal Party's personnel....