carbon trading.

as soon as you let the market decide what they can and cant do with the price of anything public (in this case the air we breath), you have just made more banks and bankers richer men. (yes men).

Labor’s always entertaining PM laid it out about the way he hated Howards Neo_liberalism, then he allows the biggest piece of legislation through the parliament to be steered by bankers…

what a fucking joke.

It was the Labor Party that, much to the major banks’ horror, opened them up to foreign competition in the 1980s.

It was the union-backed industry funds that created Members Equity, the “super funds’ bank”, in 1999 to compete on a low-cost basis with the big boys.

You appear to have jumped the early nineties when the labour governments, under Mr Keating took away the two biggest banks (state banks of Vic and SA) to form the big four in the first place and take away competition on fees, rates etc.

Second, on the main point about the AAA guarantee neutralizing RMBS support, please tell me if this is a dumb question: why couldn’t the government have supported liquidity by simply making cash deposits into the embattled institutions (or bought their bonds, which is the same thing), instead of underwriting them? The taxpayer might even have earned some interest on it.

So the Big 4 are tightening home lending, but to ensure there is an endless flow of finance to potential property buyers and to ensure investors don’t go AWOL, and to guarantee house prices from any healthy correction…the govt strengthens the second tier lenders under-written by the tax payers.

If I have misunderstood…please say so.