I’m going to whisper it…

(because the media is full of apocalyptic predictions at the moment)

I think that the Irish government’s decision to guarantee all deposits held in Irish-regulated banks is essentially a massive bluff-calling exercise. They’re potentially exposed to losses of EUR 400 billion (although this theoretical maximum exposure would only be realised if the Irish banks’ assets turned out to have a combined value of zero euro – even with plummeting house prices, that won’t ever be the case!).

In the event of a total banking collapse, with all assets being worth zilch, the government would obviously never be able to pay out EUR 400 billion (amounting to EUR ~100,000 for every man, woman and child in the state!).

I can see why they’ve said it, and it’s (as far as I can see) quite sensible but…what they really mean is:

Well…we’ll try to guarantee your savings (or any loans that you might have made to the banks), but…y’know, if more than one bank goes under, we’re all fecked so don’t expect any more than a copper coin and the address of a soup kitchen (run by a chinese international aid agency).

firebug is back – but was never really gone

Firebug has become an indispensible part of web development, in particular wrt writing and testing client-side code. However, I’ve been at a loss for the last little while on account of the fact that when I upgraded to Firefox 3, the Plugins manager told me that Firebug wasn’t compatible with Firefox 3. Turns out it is though, you just need to go and download the more recent version manually.

A story that’s too good to ignore

Companies often complain that tax legislation is too complicated to understand, let alone implement.

The CAG published their yearly report detailing shortcomings in how public money has been spent. This quote comes from a report on RTE:

It noted the Revenue Commissioners made an undisclosed voluntary settlement with the Inspector of Taxes in November 2007. The settlement related to a liability of almost €1.7m in unpaid Benefit in Kind (BIK) by Revenue’s own staff.

The CAG observed the Revenue, in its capacity as employer, did not adequately consider the potential impact of the BIK legislation on its own operations.

Smile! It’s euroCHAPS

I’m not a currency speculator, but I do have a need to bulk-buy currency.

I’m in a slightly uncommon situation in that I get paid in GBP (£/Sterling) but I live in the eurozone. So…each month I have to transfer my wages (+ some other expenses) from the UK to Ireland. Hitherto, I have been using a specialist foreign exchange company. I won’t say specifically who they are, but they’re along the lines of http://www.moneycorp.com/, http://www.interchangefx.co.uk/. They give a much better exchange rate than you would get from the High St (Thomas Cook, The Post Office, etc.) and charge £10-20 for performing the transaction.

Recently, with currency rates bouncing around like jumping beans, I thought I’d double-check what rate my bank could offer. I will name them, as they’re the heroes of the story: Smile http://www.smile.co.uk/. They offer a service called “euroCHAPS”. My “foreign exchange specialist” offered me a (EUR/£) rate of 1.2220 (plus £20 fee). Smile offered 1.2370 (plus £25 fee).

I think the interbank rate was about 1.2450 at the time.

These numbers might not seem too different but trust me: half a cent this way of that way can cost me £50 or more per month.

I lose money every month, but…less with Smile.

(I’m hoping that this service is different to the one described in this article – otherwise…someone clearly hasn’t told Smile!)

use screen; ^A-n use screen; ^A-c use screen;

Offical GNU screen site

My advice: use screen. It makes your ssh (or telnet) sessions immune to network problems. If your connection drops, you can simply log back in again, and carry on whatever you were doing.

I find it incredibly useful. In fact, indispensible. I’ve edited my .bash_profile file to include the folllowing line:

screen -U -D -RR

The options mean:

-U: My terminal understands unicode.

-D -RR: If there’s at least one current detached screen, attach one of them (the first one?) to this session. Otherwise, if there’s at least one attached screen, then detach one of them (the first one?), and attach it to this session. Otherwise, create a new screen.

What it means, in (slightly plainer) English is: Attach me to an existing screen (if one exists). Otherwise, create a new screen.

10 day rule

France loves its rogue trader

French President, Nicolas Sarkozy: “Our financial system is walking on its head,” he said. “And it is losing sight of its goal, which is to lend money for economic activities that will ultimately generate profit . . . not to go and speculate on different activities which make massive fluctuations.”

The stock exchanges’ function in the world is (acclaimedly) to accurately place a value on stocks, shares, and other financial products. However, stock exchanges are all too often used by speculators to make short-term gains based on nothing other than differing levels of information-transfer (e.g. news reaching different shareholders at different speeds [dubiously legal]) or insider knowledge (definitely illegal).

Banks/institutions buy financial instruments that are a ridiculous number of steps away from the actual wealth generation, the actual companies, the actual workers who are “adding value”. People/institutions buy and sell these products, often with zero knowledge of the underlying products. A great example is the structured products that banks have been selling each other over the last few years, based on mortgages – aka CDO’s (Collateralized debt obligations). Recent news suggests that their “chickens might be coming home to roost”.

Anyway…my suggestion: What about making it illegal to sell a stock/bond/share/derivative/etc. within 10 days of purchasing it. Surely it would be better in the long run if shareholders/investors acted more like custodians – if shareholders bought shares because they believed they had actual value, rather than because they knew they could “make a quick buck”. It’ll never happen because…stock brokers make their money on short term differences on share prices. No government wants to upset their financial institutions as they’re a huge source of taxation.

Imagine what good could have been done with the billions that Jérôme Kerviel lost on Société Générale’s behalf. It’s sitting in someone’s pocket right now. A currency speculator, or a spread-better, or a stock-broker.

Not someone who has added any value to anything.