Obama can only disappoint
Sell Obamas now, says Simon Jenkins. They are overpriced and the forward market has gone crazy. If he becomes president, the bubble will burst, I guess in the spring of next year. To millions of Americans he will seem like a messiah. There are millions whom he can only disappoint. Abroad, this leader would have to end not one war but two, and bring sanity to an American diplomacy that is chaotic in an arc of instability from eastern Europe to the Himalayas. The anticipation that he will be a harbinger of peace, friendship and economic salvation is probably greater than for any American since Roosevelt. The burden of expectation is awesome and unrealistic. The qualities of charisma and rhetoric that Obama brings to this task may be a match for it. His declared policies are not. Simon Jenkins The Guardian
Full article: Obama stock is overpriced, and a crash could really hurt 
US Election latest: Obama's poll lead narrows
Bush can do whatever he wants
From November 5 to January 20, George Bush will exercise the freest, most unaccountable form of power the democratic world has to offer, writes Jonathan Freedland. At the weekend, US forces crossed the Iraqi border into Syria to kill Abu Ghadiya, a man they said had been funnelling "foreign fighters" allied to al-Qaida into Iraq. However we are meant to read it, the attack on Syria looks a lot like a parting shot from Bush, an end-of-the-movie reminder of what this long and bloody saga has been about. A small operation, causing eight deaths, it nevertheless captures much of the Bush ethos that has ruled the globe these past eight years. It was unilateral; it trampled on state sovereignty; and it relied on force as a first, not last, resort. As a souvenir of the Bush era, it would be hard to top. Jonathan Freedland The Guardian
Full article: Brace yourselves - George Bush will soon be free to do just what he wants
Pic of the Day: Sarah Palin gets the Halloween treatment
The Ross/Brand saga
The BBC's apology on Monday seemed to reflect more a fear of sections of the press than a proper sense of moral obligation, says an Independent leader. From day one, the corporation has behaved with that confused combination of formality and buck-passing we know so well from the saga of Andrew Gilligan and the Today programme and the distorted editing of the documentary The Queen. Something that should have a simple answer - what was the chain of editorial responsibility and who signed off on the pre-recorded show? - requires a full-blown inquiry. The BBC has enormous departments, long chains of editorial authority and large numbers of highly paid executives who routinely receive "performance" bonuses. Yet when something goes wrong and legitimate questions are raised, every which one of them vanishes into the ether. Leader The Independent
Full article: The real questions that the BBC needs to answer
People: Anna Ford lays into Ross and Brand
What do you get if you cross a Spanish waiter with an ill-judged prank - 10,000 complaints and rising, says Natalie Haynes. Interestingly, it seems to be Sachs's age that has caused most disquiet. A straw poll of my colleagues suggests that even other comedians don't think it's funny to badger an elderly man. Yet we've all heard jokes about John McCain's age without being worried. Again, it's about power. McCain has thrust himself into the public eye. If he wants to have his finger on the nuclear button, goes the reasoning, he should be able to take a joke. But Sachs is someone people remember fondly - and he wasn't looking for publicity.
Natalie Haynes The Times
Full article: First rule of comedy: don't mock the weak
Staggering trillions
How did we get into a situation when derivatives, an instrument that few people understand (even bankers), were worth $283tr, seven times more than the entire world produces in a year? It's the numbers that are staggering - so much so as to be incomprehensible, says Rory Bremner. When Barings went bust in 1995 (the year after its chairman Peter Baring told a director of the Bank of England that "it's not actually terribly difficult to make money in the securities business") its loss was £862m. Today that seems almost laughably small. When announcing its $700bn bailout plan this month, a US Treasury spokeswoman admitted the amount of money involved was "not based on any particular datapoint. We just wanted a really big number." Rory Bremner The Times
Full article: This banking crisis is no laughing matter...
Business Pages: Global rally
In Brief
Pinner, Hendon and Finchley
My family have been chased all over the world by people with big ideas. We've fought in their wars, starved in their prison camps, died in their gas chambers, fled their conquering armies, sewn on their yellow stars and surrendered our property to their armed guards. Now we live in places such as Pinner, Hendon and Finchley. Give me the Citizen's Charter and the Cones Hotline and you can keep your big ideas. Daniel Finkelstein The Times
Full article: Doing nothing can be a sign of greatness
Fixated 10-year-olds
Culture focuses relentlessly on three things: sex, buying pointless things, and how to eat and drink incessantly without getting fat. Who could read, day after day, about X's cellulite and Y's paunch, about carbs, sweeteners and pear shapes, and breathe none of this in? We should be pleased that 10-year-olds are fixating on their body shapes, because not to do so would make them alarmingly unobservant or else sociopathic.
Zoe Williams The Guardian
Full article: Getting the kids in shape
Prescott isn't working-class
The joke is that John Prescott's working-class credentials are ever so slightly suspect. He wasn't a hewer of coal, a hammerer of rivets, a founder of iron. He was a steward on a cruise liner - mixing a decent G&T was the true metier of this horny-handed toiler.
David Hughes Daily Telegraph
Full article: John Prescott is not a national treasure: he's an oaf
Trick or treat
Trick or treat - in truth the mass commercialisation of Halloween - is the nastiest American import since tobacco. Even the nation's paranoia about predatory paedophiles has failed to quell the rise of it. If you don't cough up then the little Talibans will throw eggs at your windows, push dog excrement through the door or deploy some other, possibly more imaginative, variety of criminal damage.
Sean O’Grady The Independent
Full article: The dread of that ring on the doorbell
Droit de seigneur
Perhaps Allen Stanford is an ageing letch who flatters himself that, with his neat moustache and bulging portfolio, he can still attract young women. That, I imagine, is why the cricketers' wives perched on Texan thighs and allowed arms to stray. Stanford, after all, is putting up $20m on Saturday for a winner-takes-all game between his side and their men. Claims that they feared that by rejecting the paymaster's advances their families would suffer make it sound like a Hardy novel. Patrick Kidd The Times
Full article: As football drops WAGs, cricket drops catches
People: Sir Allen Stanford apologises for getting too close to cricketers WAGS
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