Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

"Australia has weathered some economic storms over the last decade — storms every bit as deadly as the cyclones that lashed the north of our continent in the early part of this year. We have weathered the Asian financial crisis, a global downturn, a one in a hundred year drought. We have had threats to our international tourism from new diseases such as SARS. We have had terrorist attacks and the security response has brought huge additional costs and challenges. Our military forces are in theatres of war." The Honourable Peter Costello MP

"I have a very serious question for all you Margostanis out there. What is it about Aussie clerics that causes so much bunkum to emerge from their mouths?" Irfan Yusuf

"Do you want to know which video clip will soon be scaring the daylights out of policymakers throughout the world? In a scenario that looks uncannily like the spread of a global pandemic, the economist Thomas Holmes has prepared a dynamic map simulation showing the spread of Wal-Mart stores throughout the United States. Starting at the epicenter in Bentonville, Arkansas, where Sam Walton opened his first store in 1962, giant boxy Wal-Mart stores have now multiplied to the point where the average American lives less than seven kilometers from an outlet." Kenneth Rogoff