The Melbourne Press Club have put up the MP3 recordings of last month’s “Public Transport: Ticket to Where?” debate. Their web page is a bit confusing (you have to click on the Quicktime logos), but here’s a summary of the MP3s:

• 1. Introductions — Not really worth listening to.
• 2. Paul Mees — You can’t see the slides, but it’s worth a listen. The bus stops he’s referring to are pictured here. Towards the end he refers to the Department of Transport’s new org chart.
• 3. Jon Faine talks to Mees
• 4. Brian Negus (RACV)
• 5. Bernie Carolan (Metlink) — his reference to “all our eggs in one basket” refers to some guy in the paper that morning.
• 6. Jon Faine talks to Bernie Carolan, and audience questions — Myki, buses, Commonwealth Games, Rail capacity
• 7. Audience questions — rail capacity, my question to Brian Negus, and some guy rambling on about connections to Tasmania?!
• 8. Audience questions — oil prices, plug for Jon Faine’s Melbourne to London road trip

Happy listening.

If you were wondering (because I was), about the Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae names that are way too cutesy to be companies managing $6 trillion in funds… turns out they are actually the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation and the Federal National Mortgage Association respectively.

There’s also:

• Farmer Mac (the Federal Agricultural Mortgage Corporation)
• Ginnie Mae (the Government National Mortgage Association)
• Sallie Mae (SLM Corporation, formerly the Student Loan Marketing Association)
• and the latest one in trouble, IndyMac (Independent National Mortgage Corporation)

Hmm. It seems our friends across the pond have a liking for giving gigantic monolithic corporations cutesy names.

Which is fair enough. Though you know where you are with an acronym like NAB.