Read the last couple of paragraphs, it is amazing stuff.

It will be interesting to see when Federal Parliament resumes on Tuesday what the feds know about how the different Quueensland Members have spent their Printing allowances and which state pollies benefited.

This whole rotten business must be awfully distressing for Gerard Henderson too. Poor thing.

What is â??insider tradingâ??? Below is a handy definition from the US SEC:

“Illegal insider trading refers generally to buying or selling a security, in breach of a fiduciary duty or other relationship of trust and confidence, while in possession of material, nonpublic information about the security. Insider trading violations may also include â??tippingâ?? such information, securities trading by the person â??tipped,â?? and securities trading by those who misappropriate such information.

Examples of insider trading cases that have been brought by the SEC are cases against:

Corporate officers, directors, and employees who traded the corporationâ??s securities after learning of significant, confidential corporate developments;

Friends, business associates, family members, and other â??tippeesâ?? of such officers, directors, and employees, who traded the securities after receiving such information;

Employees of law, banking, brokerage and printing firms who were given such information to provide services to the corporation whose securities they traded;

Government employees who learned of such information because of their employment by the government … ”

I note that Andrew Bolt, the egregious warrior for the Far Right, as well as booster and unofficial PR hack for the Coalition, this morning on Insiders TV program, put the boot into (1) Santo (2) the PM and his Santo clause (3) Peter Debnam and the NSW Liberals, (4) the dismal performance of Coalitions at state level, and also reckons that John Howard’s startegy of fighting the next election on Iraq is a doomed strategy.

Has the Bolter been given riding instructions from New York to drop the Rodent?

The reason for this is simple. Newspaper proprietors like to be on a winner. If they consistently back a loser then it is evidence that not only that they are out of touch with the mood of their customers, it also blows the gaffe about their alleged power. They don’t want to encourage notions that punters are ignorning their editorial stance because then governments may start to take less notice of them, especially when it comes to making laws regulating the media.

Geez, looks like someone at the Telly has actually gotten-off his arse.

I love this bit:

“A spokesman for Mr Howard said yesterday the Prime Minister had made his statements (denying that Santoro’s share trading involved companies on which his Ministerial portfolio would have had any direct impact) on the basis of Senator Santoro’s word.

The Prime Minister accepted those assurances, the spokesman said.”

Shades of the AWB.

I seem to recall Downer & Co “investigating” US and UN allegations involving the AWB”s payment of bribes to Saddam in similar fashion: Ring ‘em-up, ask the question and accept their “assurances” that nothing of the sort was going on.

That didn’t work out so well, as I recall.

I am sure there is a lot more to this and I predic t it will be a running sore for the Howardistas.