Wendi Deng

Some people might say my life is in a rut,
But I'm quite happy with what I got
People might say that I should strive for more,
But I'm so happy I cant see the point.
Something's happening here today
A show of strength with your boys brigade and,
I'm so happy and you're so kind
You want more money - of course I don't mind
To buy nuclear textbooks for atomic crimes

And the public gets what the public wants
But I want nothing this society's got -
I'm going underground, (going underground)
Well the brass bands play and feet start to pound
Going underground, (going underground)
Well let the boys all sing and the boys all shout for tomorrow

Some people might get some pleasure out of hate
Me, I've enough already on my plate
People might need some tension to relax
Me I'm too busy dodging between the flak

What you see is what you get
You've made your bed, you better lie in it
You choose your leaders and place your trust
As their lies wash you down and their promises rust
You'll see kidney machines replaced by rockets and guns

And the public wants what the public gets
But I don't get what this society wants
I'm going underground, (going underground)
Well the brass bands play and feet start to pound
Going underground, (going underground)
So let the boys all sing and the boys all shout for tomorrow

We talk and talk until my head explodes
I turn on the news and my body froze
The braying sheep on my TV screen
Make this boy shout, make this boy scream!

Going underground, I'm going underground!

The new Liberals leader is just one of many privileged elites who have given us Big Shitpile:

Kathleen Day, a spokeswoman for the Center for Responsible Lending, a consumer-oriented research group, explained the regulatory lapses more starkly: "The job of regulators is that when the party's in full swing, make sure the partygoers drink responsibly," she said. "Instead, they let everyone drink as much as they wanted and then handed them the car keys."

Either we learn the lessons from Wall Street today, and make adjustments to our own system, or we go the same way.

UPDATE: And I would love to know who paid whom to insert the following anonymous quote at ABC Online:

Shareholders at the Australian Stock Exchange in Sydney say it is a good time to buy.

"I'm not very worried. I think if the market goes down a little bit more and you don't have to sell you may as well just hang in there for the long haul," one investor said.

"I think it's a great opportunity to buy. No risk buying now."

Are you fucking kidding me????! I think it's about time the ABC started adding journo tags to their stories, so we can at least see who is pulling our chains. Somebody should lose their job for that bullshit.

Malcolm "Moneybags" Turnbull's ascension to the leadership of the Libs spells the end (at last) of John Howard's miserable Conga Line of Suckholes. And that's the main reason Turnbull got the job: all the other former Cabinet ministers are still on the nose, and always will be.

Howard surrounded himself with ambitious fools and immoral sycophants who served only to push their master's agenda. Maybe now the Liberal faithful can finally stop idolising Howard and begin to admit how much damage he did to the country, and to their own party.

PS: But don't take this as an endorsement of Turnbull. The only decent thing he has ever done was challenge Howard on Kyoto. He is a pompous aristocratic twat who will happily distort the truth in whatever way he can to champion the cause of the global financial elite. With Wall Street currently convulsing after 8 years of economic irresponsibility, the last thing Australia needs is more of the same. The Liberals remain the party of Big Business, and Turnbull makes a fitting poster boy.

UPDATE: OK, Peter Martin reminds me of another Turnbull achievement prior to joining the Howard cabinet. As the leader of the failed pro-Republic referendum movement (surely now back on the agenda, Kev?) he dissed Howard for "breaking the nation's heart.” He has also made some half-sane comments about carbon emissions trading. Perhaps the long, crazy era of "inventing our own realities" is finally drawing to a close?

The Wall Street bears have their picnic.

This is it, folks. This is the tsunami. Just remember who brought it to you: Bush, Blair and Howard.

ABC: Wall street "on the brink".

The Guardian: Wall Street's "model" is "broken".

The future of Wall Street is up for grabs -- and changing by the minute.

CNN: Wall Street's troubles are yours too:

The sale of Merrill and demise of Lehman would reduce the number of independent firms on Wall Street to two - Goldman Sachs (GS, Fortune 500) and Morgan Stanley (MS, Fortune 500) - from five at the beginning of the year.

Remember, Goldman Sachs is the Bush gang's banker of choice. But even they are now looking shaky:

Analysts also question whether No. 1 investment bank Goldman Sachs Group , which has avoided major damage so far and earlier this year considered acquiring a commercial bank to reduce reliance on market funding, can confidently stand above the crowd.
Goldman, which releases its third quarter results Tuesday, is widely expected to report lower profit with revenues down across the board.

As Atrios notes that the 18th largest company in the world, American International Group (AIG), is also on the brink of collapse if the Fed doesn't prop it up:

We're All Communists Now

And:

It's all blowing up.

Exciting!!

WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Alan "Don't Look At Me" Greenspan:

"There's no question that this is in the process of outstripping anything I've seen and it still is not resolved and still has a way to go and, indeed, it will continue to be a corrosive force until the price of homes in the United States stabilizes. That will induce a series of events around the globe which will stabilize the system."

He adds that the USA cannot afford McCain's tax plans.

Meanwhile, back on Wall Street:

I'm standing outside Lehman Brothers (LEH, Fortune 500) headquarters on 7th Ave and 50th street in New York City watching Lehman Brothers die.

Employees, some in suits, others in casual clothes, are filing out with all they can carry as time runs out.

They are walking down the sidewalk past police barricades as scores of New Yorkers and tourists gawk...

How did it come to this? Prof Q tries to tease out some answers:

My candidate answers:

(1) A big chunk of income goes to the top 1 per cent of households and isn’t captured by the survey. The seminar gave some support to this idea, at least insofar as this group seems to have a big enough share of the total that the choice of the point where the Census Bureau stops measuring income makes a big difference.

(2) A lot of income is flowing to the corporate sector and never being recorded as household income, perhaps because it is distributed in the form of capital gains, which aren’t counted. Again, a very large chunk of these would go to the top 1 per cent.

Anyway, here's the cunning plan on which the future of the Western world depends:

Bank of America, Barclays, Citibank, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, and UBS, said in a joint statement they "initiated a series of actions to help enhance liquidity and mitigate the unprecedented volatility and other challenges affecting global equity and debt markets."

They agreed to create a "collateralized borrowing facility" of 70 billion US dollars, with each bank contributing seven billion US dollars, to help ease access to credit...

The 10 banks would be able to tap this facility, with any bank eligible for up to one-third of the fund. The amount may be expanded if more banks join the program.

What could possibly go wrong?

You must be talking to me, because there's nobody else here.

Had to laugh at this. Every anti-Howard pundit's dream has come true. Abbott and Costello are hitting the road together at last.

First, some pure comedy gold. Rupert Murdoch's Sky News reports that the Liberals want Peter Costello to take over the leadership. And how do they know this? Because Rupert Murdoch's News Limited reported it!

Will Peter Costello be able to convince the plebs that he has not orchestrated this takeover very carefully since last November? With Murdoch's help, yes.

Will a leadership takeover boost sales of his upcoming book? Oooh yes, especially if he comes across as The Nice Guy Who Should Have Won The Election.

This news comes just a day after Tony Abbott wrote an OpEd in Rupert Murdoch's Australian which basically sealed the deal. As the Canberra Times reported it:

For most of yesterday, Opposition frontbencher Tony Abbott's phone was switched off.

Caller after caller got the outspoken shadow minister's voicemail and if some of his colleagues are to be believed more than one of the messages left there were of the unprintable variety.

Abbott's ''tribute'' to former treasurer Peter Costello, as deputy Liberal leader Julie Bishop labelled the Quadrant essay published in edited form in yesterday's Australian, described Costello as the Coalition's ''best political asset''. It's worth nothing that he managed to deliver backhanders, not only to current leader and apparent non-asset Brendan Nelson by using the present tense and failing to mention him even once but also to Costello by qualifying the praise with ''now that John Howard has gone''.

This apparently thinly-veiled attempt at wooing Costello pleased those of his colleagues who are dearly hoping against hope that he will return to lead them from the wilderness. But it sent a few others into orbit.

Abbott, of course, has been the #1 fan of his former boss, which explains this frosty Canberra resception:

In a move some saw as an attempt to play self-styled kingmaker, Abbott went to see Costello recently to persuade him to stay. Second-hand reports suggest that Costello was amused, nothing more.

In any case, the deal is done. but will this be enough to put the Libs back in contention?

Errr.... no.

But you have to give them credit. At least these power-hungry bastards realise that the media narrative is what it's all about. Labour wonks are still fixated on policy, as if that's what the Plebs want. Get real! We want entertainment!

Meanwhile, Dr Haneef is set to sue Australian taxpayers for several million dollars (well, who do you think is going to pay for it?) for all the entertainment his long-running saga provided us. Fair enough. This shit doesn't come cheap.

Hooray!

A legal brief has been sent to the International Criminal Court (ICC) alleging former prime minister John Howard committed a war crime by sending troops to Iraq.

A loose alliance of peace activists, lawyers, academics and politicians is behind the brief, organised by the ICC Action group in Melbourne.

Organiser Glen Floyd says Mr Howard should be held accountable for sending troops to a war not sanctioned by the United Nations.

"We have produced a 52-page brief of evidence which states to the chief prosecutor of the criminal court that we allege John Howard's actions are war crimes under article 8 of the Rome Statute," he said.

Democrats Senator Lyn Allison says the legal brief sent to the ICC is justified.

Senator Allison, who is one of several eminent people supporting the move, says accountability is important.

"This action has been taken to hold those accountable for their action, so it's essentially our prime minister - he was the one at the time [who] was the executive of government, made the decision," she said.

'It wasn't put to the Parliament and as we all know, it turned out to be unjustified."

A similar brief has been sent by a group from the United Kingdom regarding former prime minister Tony Blair. The United States is not a signatory to the court.

The NSW division of the Medical Association for the Prevention of War has supported the move.

You can visit the ICC Action website here.