NEWS Corporation Chairman and Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch has warned Australia will miss out on an approaching 'golden age' of prosperity and freedom unless we undertake radical reform, scale back Government and embrace the free market.

Delivering the first of six Boyer lectures at the Sydney Opera House today, Mr Murdoch declared Australia was not prepared for future challenges it faced such as the global financial crisis and lamented many would learn the hard way as a result. 

Muscle man-turned-actor-turned-politician Arnold Schwarzenegger has called on Barack Obama to beef up his policies - and his body - at a high-voltage campaign rally for Republican John McCain. 

Australian Industry Group head Heather Ridout has criticised the Government's modelling of an emissions trading scheme as a 'Tardis' approach which lacks key details.

Ms Ridout says Australia should not 'be wedded' to a 2010 start up date for an emissions trading scheme, especially if international moves to cut emissions are looking doubtful. 

The Vatican acknowledges that psychological tests could help identify candidates for the Catholic priesthood who show homosexual tendencies, according to a document. 

While condoning the use of such tests by Catholic seminaries, the document approved by Pope Benedict XVI says they must be strictly voluntary. 

Exxon Mobil Corp. smashed its own record for quarterly profits today, ringing up $14.8 billion in net income in the third quarter powered by soaring summertime crude oil prices. 

Exxon Mobil's earnings, at $2.86 a share, are up 58 percent from the same period in 2007 and higher than what analysts expected, capping a week of strong profit numbers from the world's biggest oil companies, all of whom benefited from the spike in oil prices in July.  

Presidential candidate Barack Obama has reached out to US voters in a half-hour, prime-time advertisement on seven US TV channels six days before polling. 

The broadcast came as the Democratic senator appeared with former president Bill Clinton at a rally in Florida. 

On channel Seven 4:30 afternoon news today, (29/10/08) Westpac's Global Head of Economics, Bill Evans, said something stupefying... Amazingly, he did not understand the way money was ebbing and flowing anymore...

Imagine!!!!

On this site we've pointed out way before the financial crisis that Greenspan was asleep at the wheel..., same went with Costello. That's our opinion and some people are entitled to express views to the contrary.  

Many serious cartoonists in the US are already joining the bandwagon. Here is my serious contribution for the day... 

With the final week of campaigning ahead, Senator Barack Obama redoubled his efforts to tie Senator John McCain to the Bush administration by seizing on Mr. McCain’s remark Sunday that he shared a “common philosophy” with the president. 

The Federal Government and Opposition have both given the thumbs down to calls to change or abandon the Lord's Prayer recited at the beginning of each day of federal Parliament. 

But the Greens want the prayer replaced with a period of reflection and a conscience vote in both houses on the issue. 

World leaders vowed today to overhaul the global financial system in the face of recession fears, but US President George Bush urged nations to 'recommit' to free markets despite economic turmoil. 

After a week of growing economic gloom and plunging stock markets, Asian and European leaders meeting in Beijing promised wide-ranging reforms, while UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon also called for quick change. 

Democratic Sen. Barack Obama reported spending $82 million on advertising during the first two weeks of October - more than half of what Sen. John F. Kerry spent on television commercials for the entire 2004 presidential campaign. 

Iraq: a potted history (full version: in various places, including this one, not the official history records that are bullshitting us) 

Who was the highest paid individual in Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign during the first half of October as it headed down the homestretch? 

Not Randy Scheunemann, Mr. McCain’s chief foreign policy adviser; not Nicolle Wallace, his senior communications staffer. It was Amy Strozzi, Gov. Sarah Palin’s travelling makeup artist, according to a new filing with the Federal Election Commission on Thursday night. 

Facing a firing line of questions from Washington lawmakers, Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve chairman once considered the infallible maestro of the financial system, admitted on Thursday that he “made a mistake” in trusting that free markets could regulate themselves without government oversight.