TREASURY officials are working on options to extend the Government's bank guarantee to some cash management funds under which the funds would open their books to prove that their assets are bank quality.
Regulators then would assess whether the bank deposit guarantee should apply to the funds, The Australian reports.
The plan could provide an acceptable compromise to Kevin Rudd's reluctance to extend the $1.2 trillion bank deposit guarantee to market-linked investments and offer greater security for cash management trust investors.
Australia would become the third country in the world to run an electric car network with the infrastructure already set up in Israel and Denmark.
The visionary project is the brainchild of US software entrepreneur Shai Agassi, founder of Better Place, who dreams of replacing the world's petrol guzzlers with more environmentally friendly vehicles.
Keen to cut our dependence on oil, he devised the plans that would make electric cars cost competitive and appealing.
"Leaders pledged to undertake effective and comprehensive reform of the international monetary and financial systems," the 40-member Asia Europe Meeting (ASEM) said.
"They agreed to take quickly appropriate initiatives in this respect, in consultation with all stakeholders and the relevant international financial institutions."
China's Premier Wen Jiabao called for more regulation of the world's financial system, saying after the summit: "We need to draw lessons from this crisis.
"We need financial innovation to serve the economy better. However, we need even more financial regulation to ensure financial safety......
The latest victim is blue chip funds manager Perpetual which froze redemptions today in seven of its funds containing around $2 billion in investors savings.Back in 1946 Henry Hazlitt wrote the free market classic Economics in one Lesson. The lesson can be summarized into one sentence: "The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups."
The Perpetual move comes hard on the heels of Challenger Howard, the biggest mortgage fund in the country ($2.9 billion) freezing redemptions earlier this week.
Before Perpetual's freeze today, some 24 funds in the mortgage and property sector holding $14.4 billion of savings on behalf of 93,000 investors had suspended redemptions. Any other fund in the sector still open must be seriously considering its options.
have plenty time to digest this information because I find myself in a traffic jam. Unlike in the halcyon days of yore, before Canberra's state-like status went to the heads of the ruling left-wing junta, traffic jams have become common, caused by a combination of scaling down the number of lanes for general traffic (because of bus and cycle lanes), lowering the speed limit by 10km/h and some highly inefficient and expensive roadworks.
So, as I creep along, I mull over my almost $1000 water bill and my $2000 electricity and gas bill, the highest charges per unit of any jurisdiction in Australia, including some new taxes, the legality of which are being challenged. The price of water has gone from 47c a kilolitre in 1991, when I first came to Canberra, to $4.20. And it is not as if we are allowed to use much.
One Canberra economist, Terry Dwyer, a visiting fellow at the Australian National University, has estimated that new water prices and restrictions have cost Canberrans almost as much a head as the cost of George W. Bush's US bank bailout.
Rudd's comments remind me of the ideological nonsense I used to hear at ACTU meetings from left-wing trade union officials in the '90s. Bob Hawke and Paul Keating were repeatedly attacked by the political Left for their neo-liberal policies of global integration and deregulation. Doug Cameron, now a Labor senator, gave a speech to the Tasmanian Fabian Society in 2005 in which he attacked, among others, the Labor Right for being neo-liberal. It's an example of the ideological typecasting the political Left habitually uses. Anything that doesn't conform to their world view of greater government intervention is described as neo-liberal. This epithet is a favourite of the anti-globalisation crowd. Indeed, there is nothing more old Labor than protectionism and industry subsidies.
Australians may not be able to opt out of the government's Internet filtering initiative like they were originally led to believe. Details have begun to come out about Australia's Cyber-Safety Plan, which aims to block "illegal" content from being accessed within the country, as well as pornographic material inappropriate for children. Right now, the system is in the testing stages, but network engineers are now saying that there's no way to opt out entirely from content filtering.
Mr Abbott said he was in favour of world history but said the focus should be on Britain.
"People have got to know where we came from, they've got to know about the ideas that shaped the modern world, and in a very significant sense, the modern world has been made in England," he said in Canberra.
"I think (the curriculum) needs to be history that pays credit where it's due." "We are a product of western civilisation, in particular we are a product of English-speaking civilisation."
Because we spent a ton of money and had a bigshot Queen's Counsel and exposed the joke jurisprudence and (at the federal "human rights" commission) systemic corruption, the kangaroo courts decided that discretion was the better part of valor. The Ontario "Human Rights" Commission ruled they weren't able to prosecute the case because of a technicality - I offered to waive the technicality, but the wimps still bailed out. If you have the wherewithal to stand up to these totalitarian bullies, they stampede for the exits. But, if you're just an obscure Alberta pastor or a guy with a widely unread website or a fellow who writes a letter to his local newspaper, they'll destroy your life....
Now it's stock and awe in Baghdad!
As the Dow plummeted nearly 700 points yesterday to fall well below the 9,000 mark, the Iraqi stock exchange - where this broker was merrily keeping up with her booming business - was flourishing, buoyed by four-year lows in violence and hopes of a reconstruction windfall.
Last month, Iraq's general index went up nearly 40 percent, about the same percentage the Dow dropped over the past year.
The jovial trading-floor mood is reminiscent of Wall Street's bygone "greed is good" era of the 1980s.....
With the world's market crisis dominating public attention, Mr Howard today urged the Australian Government not to ignore the long-term threat of terrorism.My concern is that in January the West will end up being lead by a US President who will do exactly what Howard fears.
"(There is a) need not to take the eye off the ball as far as terrorism is concerned," Mr Howard said.
He said terrorists would be rubbing their hands with glee over the problems with the capitalist west.
"Terrorists would see advantage in the economic meltdown," he said.
"Anything that puts an added strain on the budget demands of western governments that perhaps means that fewer dollars or euros or pounds might be spent on defence or intelligence gathering, would be a good thing.
"Terrorism plays a very long game - it's a five, 10, 15, 20-year game - it's not something that's played in the short term."
The overwhelming message seems to be this: we support a woman's right to choose but, at 24 weeks, the pregnancy is too far advanced.
The mother of six-year-old Thomas Sharples, who was born at 26 weeks, is one of many weighing in to the debate, expressing her disgust.
"You are murdering this child. I know they talk about them being a foetus or embryo but Thomas was a baby to me."
AUSTRALIANS are getting bored with climate change, and many still doubt whether it is actually happening, says a new survey.However Australians are concerned about real issues that they have some control over:
Only 46 per cent of Australians said they would take action on climate change if they were in charge of making decisions for Australia, a dip from 55 per cent last year, according to the Ipsos-Eureka Social Research Institute's third annual climate change survey.
And almost one in 10 Australians (nine per cent) strongly agreed with the statement "I have serious doubts about whether climate change is occurring". A further 23 per cent agreed to some extent
Ipsos-Eureka director of Sustainable Communities and Environment Unit Jasmine Hoye believes Australians are becoming more concerned with other environmental issues that they can have more direct control over.I'm always heartened by the good sense of the average Australian Just relax, put on the BBQ and go to the beach. Enjoy the summer weather.
"We believe the public is currently overwhelmed by other, more pressing environmental issues - namely water and river health - and sees climate change as something that is largely out of their control," she said.
An American travel and cuisine television program went on a Toadbust with cane toad elimination group FrogWatch last week.
And after helping catch 69 of the pests at Lee Point, host Andrew Zimmern ate them.Zimmern's chef prepared the toad legs in a garlic and white wine sauce, and deep-fried them with sweet chilli sauce.
Chefs skinned the legs and avoided toxins when preparing them.FrogWatch assistant co-ordinator Erin Britton took Zimmern's lead in trying the legs, and said they tasted like chicken....
OPPOSITION resources spokesman Ian Macfarlane will lead a partyroom push to persuade colleagues to consider adding nuclear power to Australia's greenhouse abatement arsenal.
He said last month's Liberal leadership switch from Brendan Nelson to Malcolm Turnbull had left the party's policy on nuclear energy in limbo but he strongly believed the nuclear option had to be explored in case clean coal technology failed to live up to its promise.
"There hasn't been that discussion in the last week but no doubt there will be," Mr Macfarlane told The Australian. "I'll be arguing that in the partyroom at some point, and I expect that I will be supported."....
Here is what Team McCain is telling me: Expect McCain to make the case on television, but don't look for him to turn to Obama in the next debate, point his finger, and say something like this (courtesy of the Ace of Spades HQ blog):The reasons given for such restraint appear poor to me and is causing much dissension among Republicans. By not defending the market they are making it easier for more damaging regulation should the Democrats win.
I stayed away from making these partisan attacks, even though you lied ridiculously about me and your own attempts at 'reform.' I held back, because partisan attacks—even truthful ones—would harm our country and reduce the chances of getting a vital bill passed. Well, the bill is now passed. I put country first. You didn't, and you lied on top of that. And now—only now that this crisis has been dealt with, to the extent we can—I'm going to give you a bit of straight-talk about Fannie, Freddie, my attempts to reform it, and your attempts to block reform on behalf of your big donors and friends in ACORN.....
The Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal has recommended a 12 per cent average increase on fares over and above inflation by 2012.
With inflation running more than 4 per cent, the total average price of a ticket could jump almost 30 per cent over four years.
But for journeys between 35km and 175km - from Penrith or Blacktown to the city for example - the price of a weekly ticket will jump 25 per cent before inflation and probably around 40 per cent in total. Inner city residents by contrast will only be slugged 10 per cent, meaning a weekly ticket for someone commuting from Redfern will rise just $3 to $24 while someone from Blacktown will pay an extra $12, bringing the cost to $53.....
JEERING onlookers goaded a teenager in Britain to jump to his death, undermining police efforts to talk him down, and then took pictures of the body.God, I pray we can expect better here.
Yesterday as 17-year-old Shaun Dykes prepared to jump from the top of a multi-storey carpark in Derby, northern England, spectators allegedly shouted to him: "How far can you bounce?", the UK's MailOnline reports....
Sheep and cattle production is highly vulnerable to the biophysical impacts of climate change, such as water scarcity," he says.
"Australian marsupials emit negligible amounts of methane from enteric fermentation. This could be a source of international comparative advantage for Australia in livestock production.
"For most of Australia's human history of around 60,000 years, kangaroo was the main source of meat. It could again become important."
"Nobody's denying the fact that kangaroo meat's probably a good product if you can get hold of it, but there's major issues, just from an animal welfare perspective about farming kangaroos. For a start they can't be transported, they can't be killed other than in the field and it's just clearly, the background to a statement like that is ridiculous."
