From Victoria Rollison

The legend of Icarus is a weirdo. 

You can talk of trading currency, share markets and stuff
but here's way to know we're screwed that's adequate enough
Forty hours a week you go out working like a dog
and then the bastards go and shrink the size of of your Freddo Frog

Chocolate is spendable, as everybody knows
Whenever things are plentiful, interest in it grows
It's value's more important than the price of a mug of grog
and then the bastards go and shrink the size of your Freddo Frog

Not mentioned here are Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Sudan and a lot of "North" Africa...

Tony Abbott has admitted at the highest international level that Australia's policies towards China are driven by two emotions: "fear and greed".

The Prime Minister's candid appraisal of Australia's primordial motivations, given with a grin in private conversation with Germany's Angela Merkel last November, is a long way from the prolix platitudes of official documents.

And it sits in awkward contrast with Mr Abbott's personal assertions of friendship, such as the one that he made to his Chinese counterpart the following day.

Late in life, William F. Buckley made a confession to Corey Robin. Capitalism is "boring," said the founding father of the American right. "Devoting your life to it," as conservatives do, "is horrifying if only because it's so repetitious. It's like sex." With this unlikely conversation began Robin's decade-long foray into the conservative mind. What is conservatism, and what's truly at stake for its proponents? If capitalism bores them, what excites them? 

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The Federal Government has formally revealed it will not go ahead with a promised company tax cut for big businesses.

But nor will larger companies be forced to pay a levy that was designed to help fund the Prime Minister's dumped paid parental leave scheme.

from the Monthly ….

Peter Costello’s claim to “legendary treasurer” status rests on three pillars.

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Florida, pulled no punches Monday evening when he hammered home his message against a potential 2016 presidential candidate rival, Democrat Hillary Clinton. "Yesterday is over, and we are never going back," he declared in his formal announcement of his 2016 presidential bid.

A consumer advocate who was spied on by the Commonwealth Bank now faces a legal action that should send shivers down the spines of whistle-blowers around the country.

The bank is funding a defamation action filed against the advocate, Michael Fraser, by a senior executive at the bank.