Let's drop the drivel and find a real story.

We've come to a pretty pass when journalists are again engaging in petty cut-and-paste politics, and puerile analysis, this time about disunity in the Federal Liberal Party.  

The leaked email, leapt on first by the leaper of leapers Glen Milne, was initially referred to as a liberal party squabble, nyer, OK, maybe he has a point, but then it became a division in the party and not just in one paper. Almost as soon as the story has been whipped up out of nowhere, poorly analysed and reported, we get a flurry of contradictory stories suggesting poor Mr Nelson is calling for party unity, burying the hatchet (in whom we might ask), and generally trying to ease his way out of a major conflagration.

A major conflagration entirely lit and fed by poor analysis on the part of headline grabbing journalists, editors, sub-editors and the rest.

With thousands of words and dozens of column inches now dedicated to this drivel, I can only bury my fingers in my keyboard to bemoan this kind of cheap trick journalism, and hope that it soon gives way to some real investigative reporting which will contribute, rather than detract from, our democratic process.  

Who comes first, the customer or the shareholder?

We all knew it was coming.

The buy-out of St George bank has been imminent since it acquired its banking license and listed on the ASX back in 1992. That's a long time coming by anyone's measure, and certainly Westpac is far from the first suitor. NAB and the ANZ have sauntered past previously but the timing wasn't right, and let's face it, what's really going to make this deal work is golden girl Gail Kelly.

But that's precisely what has me worried. With Kelly in the wings, this deal is not only likely to work, it's likely to be smoother than the vast majority of banking takeovers, not only because she brought into Westpac an intimate understanding of her former employer, but also because she's just so damn good at making one plus one add up to three.

Why does this whole credit crunch look so damn familiar?

Greg Mumford wrote a fabulous analysis this morning in the AFR pointing to the similarities between the current US market maladies and those sparked by the Savings and Loans crisis in 1990.

According to Mumford the 1990 domino-like collapse of over 1000 financial institutions, cost the US economy $125 billion, or about 3 percent of GDP, and precipitated a 20 percent decline in the value of the stock market.

Similarly the mass foreclosure on poorly drawn loans in the US, will come at an estimated cost $400 billion, or a shade under 3 percent of US GDP, and has precipitates a 20 percent decline in the value of the stock market.

(it's being called the credit crunch, but that sounds to me like something you eat, while this is a market shift which is eating houses, or at the very least turfing people out of houses)

Predictably all the other elements also fall into place, oil prices are at record highs, consumer confidence is swan diving, the US dollar is tanking and a range of financial institutions are looking wobbly.

Rather than pulling up stakes and heading for the hills, Mumford suggests the 1990 crisis lead to a ten-year bull market, and that investors facing the current market should in fact be looking to get in and buy into companies with a good long-term outlook which are currently undervalued.