One of the most senior federal ministers has had his political allegiances, views on police corruption, drinking habits, friendships and other personal details secretly documented by the nation's top criminal intelligence body. 

Cherie Blair has never knowingly avoided saying and doing stupid things, but her latest remark – that her husband Tony is comparable to Sir Winston Churchill, the wartime leader, Nobel prize-winner, soldier and historian – will attract understandable mirth.  

"Working together, we are confident we will pass a responsible bill in the very near future," they said.

The House is not due to meet again until Thursday as many members have gone home for a Jewish holiday.

Bush Warning Over Bail-out Delay

The Tories are under fire after it emerged they have been bankrolled by City 'wolves' who have made a killing from the financial crash.  

The party has received hundreds of thousands of pounds from hedge fund managers who raked in vast sums by short-selling shares in British banks.  

Our buddy from two lifetimes ago, Carl Lavin over at Forbes.com, points out a fascinating paragraph buried in a story on his website late last week by Brian Wingfield and Josh Zumbrun. 

The plan to rescue the US financial industry arrogates virtually unlimited money and power over the financial affairs of the state to the office of Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. Paulson is a figure with a long history of intimate connections to the political and financial elite. 

European shares were mixed Tuesday, following a similar pattern in Asia, as investors refused to panic about the failure of American lawmakers to pass a financial bailout and were encouraged by gains in futures contracts on Wall Street indexes.

There was disappointment that lawmakers rejected the $700 billion emergency rescue plan Monday and more fears about European lenders after Dexia, a Brussels-based lender, was given a 6.4 billion euro, or $9.2 billion, government-backed rescue Tuesday.

Friends,  

Let me cut to the chase. The biggest robbery in the history of this country is taking place as you read this. Though no guns are being used, 300 million hostages are being taken.  

Turning Olympic Park into a V8 Supercars street circuit would attract between $100 million and $110 million to the NSW economy over the five years of the race, Premier Nathan Rees said today. 

Formally announcing the State Government's support for the event at the site, Mr Rees said that the organisers would be able to use "the best city in the world as a backdrop".

The government’s planned financial bailout is a significant if costly step intended to avert economic calamity, but it may not be the last one, according to economists and finance experts. 

The submissions made on Dr Haneef's behalf contain a detailed analysis of the different factual statements made by government agencies against other documents and the now known facts.  

In carrying out this analysis, we were startled by the degree of factual error that we discovered.  

Just days after the United States government brokered the sale of the nation’s largest failed savings and loan, Washington Mutual, regulators in Britain and Belgium swooped in this weekend to engineer emergency rescues of two leading European banks with heavy exposure to soured mortgages. 

Once upon a time there lived an emperor who had three sons.  

The emperor was getting old, and began grooming a replacement. He soon concluded that one of the sons, a simpleton called Clever Jorg, could never succeed him.  

You've got to love the banking industry.

As our friends in the financial sector were passing the hat among taxpayers last week for $700 billion in bailouts to cover their crappy mortgage investments, they were simultaneously condemning the House of Representatives' passage of a "Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights," which aims to crack down on some of the industry's more troublesome practices.

 

Enraged by the prospect of $700 billion of their taxes going to reimburse Wall Street speculators for their dubious investments, about 500 protesters paraded through Lower Manhattan's financial district Thursday afternoon, their chants of "You broke it, you bought it" reverberating through the narrow office building canyons and off the flag-draped wall of the New York Stock Exchange.