Ireland – have your cake and eat it

We are f*cking geniuses.  I read a book in a day written by a City analyst by the name of Geraint Anderson in the Square Mile, and it’s brilliant.  Probably the best book I’ve ever read.  The book is called ”Cityboy“. Of course, he has Irish descent in him as you can tell by the language he uses and some of the phrases. It’s very funny, very real, and extremely human, and tells a lot of which I already knew/suspected, but it’s great to get it confirmed.

Anyway, the reason I think we are geniuses is because I was thinking with my stupid brain that it would be a good idea to open a bank where you could deposit money with no interest paid on it, and you would actually be charged a nominal fee for storing your cash.  This bank would not lend your money to anyone but would simply store it for you safely and you could withdraw it at the drop of a hat.  Then you know that the bank won’t go bust and that your money is dead safe.  The negative side would be that you won’t earn the 4% or 5% or whatever it is today in interest, and you will have to pay a small fee for leaving it there.

Along comes the mighty Brian Cowen and guarantees that the Irish government will stand behind all money deposited in Irish banks.  One of the lads told me last night that 50 odd million had been withdrawn from Irish banks in the last few days. Now there will be millions, if not billions, pumped into the Irish banks because of Cowen’s guarantee.  There are calls all over the English newspapers today for a*shole Gordon Brown to follow suit – but he won’t.  I presume Cowen checked the risk to the tax payer on this one and did his homework, and realised the Irish banks were healthy enough to be able to take this risk, and the only reason that Brown won’t follow is that he knows some of the English banks are f*cked big time.  I was also told today by a colleague in France that the Irish bank shares jumped 55%.  If this goes wrong in Ireland there will be a lot more than just the banks f*cked, but I presume that Cowen has some type of agreement with what the banks can and can’t do with the influx of money they are going to see.

We had funds coming from China in my own business and they were being sent through a USA corresponding bank, and we were advised to get that changed in case the USA bank went bust.  This means that the Irish banks trust the Chinese banks more than the New Yorkers.  What a great day for the balance of humanity!

My own instinct is that you should never give your money to someone else to invest, given the fact that they can gamble your money. If it comes good, they will make money as well as you yourself, and if it goes bad you (and only you) will lose.  Stick your money into a business that might create jobs for people, or if you’re not into that, stick it into property.  And even if it falls it will always come good again, but some of these companies fall and stay dead forever.  I’m
certainly not clever enough for the stock market (except I was in that wonderful world of being a stockbroker where I couldn’t lose), and I know that nobody is. I wouldn’t want to be in that world because I wouldn’t be able to sleep if I thought I was making decisions with someone else´s money, who broke their back to get it in the first place.  I’m only clever enough to stay away from it.

Spend more time drinking, having sex and singing.  And f*ck ´em all!