Archive for October, 2005

This Tuesday, the Central Bank will publish what is probably its most important report this year. The bank will unveil its financial stability report on Irish banks. It will assess whether the banks have been prudent in their lending over the course of the past year and whether there is any evidence of risk to the system.

Our local Protestant national school has a demand problem. It is too popular. The same issue is facing many Protestant national schools in Dublin and, most likely, all over the country. Not only has the last few years seen an increase in the Protestant population, but there are many Catholic parents enrolling their children in Protestant schools.

Walk into any Spar today and you will see them.

They are buying breakfast rolls, working behind the hot food counter or just picking up 20 Blue after work. They are Ireland’s dynamo – the Spar Generation. These are the people who will keep the entire edifice together.

An old transvestite’s story of Berlin in the 20th century does not generally spark thoughts of economics, finance and risk.

Yet the other night, watching the dazzling one-man performance of I Am My Own Wife at the Gaiety, I was struck by how much today’s financial markets could learn from a bit of early 20th century history.

The idea of “appropriate” owners is a strange one. Can one owner of an asset be more appropriate than another? Surely not. All owners, if they take the commercial risk, weigh up the alternatives and plunge in are “appropriate”. However, the news on Friday that the Minister for Education plans to use the public private partnership (PPP) route to finance schools, does raise a few crucial issues mainly around the “appropriateness” of new owners.