Aehso’s Output

I believe the national government is obliged to intervene to stabilize key sectors of the economy. However, I think we’ve gone about this the wrong way.

The Irish economy is only a small part of the larger European economy (we contribute a minuscule 1.2% of EU GDP) which has no restrictions on flow of capital. Our cute hoor politicians have burned a bridges with Europe in passing this legislation. If the EU/ECB do produce rescue packages to preserve the larger EU economy in the near future how high do we think the Irish state will be in the receiving order?

Rushing this legislation may end up destroying trust in the credit rating of the Irish state. May is not a satisfactory qualifier given the amount of money involved and the potential long term damage this would do to future moves to pull this country out of the recession that it is already in. The state would possibly have to borrow for capital expenditure (to kick start the economy) at much higher interest rates while also servicing a much larger existing national debt.

I don’t buy the ‘it’s only a guarantee’ party line. Equivalent guarantees are implicitly provided by the governments of most western economies and in recent weeks we have seen a slew of nationalizations and forced mergers. Making the guarantee explicit via national law draws clear lines in the market that can be manipulated by vested interests (bankers, & investors).

I don’t buy the ‘this won’t cost the taxpayers’ party line. The banks that being protected are constantly revising their bad debt provisions upward and independent analysts believe they are currently understating their positions.

The legislation was drafted with the participation of the chief executives of AIB & BOI. Shouldn’t the Central Bank be advising the government on these matters rather than having PLCs directly bend the ear of the government in private meetings?

At least two of these banks (AIB & BOI) are still planning on paying out dividends to their shareholders this year. AIB raised their interim dividend last summer in a bid to bluff the market. Firstly, does it make any sense to be paying out cash to investors at a time when a liquidity crisis is threatening your ability to survive as a going concern? Secondly, given bluffs like the above, what other ‘risks’ are the senior management of the banks taking in their negotiations with our government?

Incidentally, this legislation effectively allows practically insolvent property developers to continue to negotiate with their existing banks rather than face the music with a bank liquidator. Given the economy is in recession and house/property prices will continue to fall for the foreseeable future, I wonder did the threat of having a sharp implosion of our over-bloated construction sector weigh heavily on the governments thinking?

Is it really worth exposing the Irish state to this risk in order to drag out the inevitable equalization of the Irish construction sector?

aehso banks, economy, ireland, irish

[Also see follow-up Part II post]

I was tweeting about this last night and this morning but I realized that really isn’t the right medium for such a complex topic and I needed to read a little more about what exactly the Irish Government are proposing to pass into law today.

Of course it still all seems to be up in the air but I still wanted to write down some observations:

• I can understand the need to guarantee deposits, but guaranteeing debts? As well as owing record amounts to banks are the Irish population now to act as guarantors to these same institutions for these same loans?
• Where did they get this magical €400 billion figure from? This figure, an order of magnitude greater than our national debt, seems recklessly high for a nation of just over 4 million people in the context of the free movement of capital within the EU, even more so at a time when EU markets are so unstable.
• These are ISEQ listed public limited companies. Some are also listed on foreign stock markets and no doubt they all have foreign investors. So, in the age of multinational businesses and free trade (and free movement of capital) within the EU, how Irish are they, really?
• Will the Irish State have any oversight/control of bank operations during this two year window? Do we continue to entrust this responsibility to the Central Bank or other financial regulatory authorities who have allowed these banks to generate record profits while overextending themselves?
• Statements from banks like the following ring hollow when words like ‘normal’ is used as a qualifier. These are not normal times
  

  We will pay the Irish taxpayer for the privilege of using Ireland’s balance sheet to allow us to borrow internationally and the capital which is in banks, the equity capital, will absorb any losses which arise in our normal course of business lending

  (emphasis mine).

• Did anyone in our government stop to think what position this places other European states, our primary trading partners, in? It would seem not.
• Last but not least – how is it that the Irish government were the first to introduce such a guarantee? I always get worried when Irish politicians think they’ve found a different way to tackle a problem that the whole world is struggling with. The usual ‘Ireland is different’ (as we are used to hearing during our recent property bubble) won’t work here. Also of concern was the the implicit assurances to investors that this legislation will be passed, and in a rushed manner.

Hopefully more information will be revealed about this legislation and the thinking behind it but from where I’m sitting it does doesn’t seem to have been thought through – and the risks to the Irish State are too great for that.

aehso banks, economy, ireland

This story just gets worse – now BOI admit they have lost over 31k records. BOI need to answer a few more hard questions openly and honestly in order to stop me from closing my last remaining account with them:

• Is/was it routine for bank employees to bring laptops containing unencrypted data off bank property? Can you guarantee me that your employees never copied data off your laptops onto another machine at home or emailed it via SMTP servers in unencrypted email messages? I don’t really care what official bank policy (meaningless) is, I just want to know if your employees technically could do this.
• If the above is routine, how do they know that only 31k records were lost? After all, you don’t actually have the laptops so how would you know what is on them? Right now trust is gone out the window and you don’t have to give so much information that you would potentially compromise the security of live systems. Technical details on the auditing capabilities of your laptop/mainframe data synchronization tools would be great – just to give me that warm fuzzy feeling.
• If the above is routine, how many of your employees recently sold, dumped or gave away PCs that they might, at one stage, have been editing bank data on while working at home?
• When was the last group hardware audit completed and are any other laptops unaccounted for? Not necessary stolen, just not where they are supposed to be

Lastly, and this question stands, even if I do close that last account. According to the above referenced news story

In the unlikely event of a fraud arising as a direct result of the theft of these laptops, the customer will be fully compensated.

(also stated here though I can’t find an official statement)

What will BOI do if my credit history is destroyed by someone who steals my identity via the data you so kindly made available to them? What if that person is never caught and therefore I can never prove that their data source was the hard drives in those laptops? What was that? Did you say ‘nothing’ or was that ‘prove it’? I thought so.

Data is such a genie in a bottle isn’t it.

aehso boi, data, identity, ireland, irish, theft

From an interesting article that Eric Janszen wrote for Harpers:

Because all asset hyperinflations revert to the mean, we can expect housing prices to decline roughly 38 percent from their peak as they return to something closer to the historical rate of monetary inflation. If the rate of decline stabilizes at between 6 and 7 percent each year, the correction has about six years to go before things stabilize, leaving the FIRE economy in need of $12 trillion.

[Emphasis mine]. He was talking about the US and I can’t see why Ireland will be any different – obviously the total € amount to pull our FIRE economy will be different but ‘de fundamentals’ are just not sound any more. His suggestion that alternate energy research could be the next big(ger) bubble seems to ring through, necessity is the mother of invention and invention these days is an expensive business.

(Wired also have an interesting interview with Janszen)

aehso dollar, economy, housing, ireland, us

Pat Phelan: Irish taken as fools as O2 Ireland iPhone package comes with attached “Paddy Tax”

Irish company Cubic Telecom today blasted the prices that people will have to pay for the iPhone when it’s introduced in Ireland on March 14th. Cubic Telecom CEO Pat Phelan, speaking on the packages said:
“There is no excuse for paying such high prices and getting so little in return. The minutes, the text bundles and the data package are completely inappropriate for Irish people and the massive difference in what Irish and UK and Northern people get for the same price suggests that they’ll throw any old scraps at the stupid Paddys. ”

Phelan is calling for a boycott of the phone until o2 rethinks their charges. “It’s time for us Irish to tell O2 we’re not going to accept this. We have Apple’s European HQ here in Ireland, the iPhone itself is fantastic but there’s no way we should buy this phone until O2 cops on and looks after their very loyal customers here. We should get the equivalent package they’re getting in the UK and Northern Ireland

Too fucking right. I don’t even want an iPhone – I just want affordable mobile internet access. Irish consumers are and have been gouged by a mobile network oligopoly in this country for years. It is the giant elephant in the room that everyone knows is there but nobody in power has the balls to do anything about. O2’s latest ‘product’ is yet another “up yours” to us stupid Paddies, our inept government and communications regulator. Hey, we’ve put up with with it for so long, why would anything change now?

A boycott of high end packages like the iPhone plans or broadband dongles won’t work. You’d need to get every soul in the country to stop sending SMS messages in order to get attention of these boyos.

aehso iphone, ireland, irish, o2

It would seem I spoke too soon about Iarnród Éireann’s internet seat booking system. In practice you can reserve seats using this system but when you get onto the train there may be no indication to other passengers that the seats are reserved. This happened to us coming back from Galway to Dublin last Sunday and rather than arguing with the hen party that was already encamped in our seats we just moved to the next available seats.

We had the luxury of doing this because we were pretty early. Of course the seats we ended up in were probably reserved too so there were some very puzzled looks when later passengers arrived. The only explanation we could offer was that everyone else seemed to be sitting where they pleased. BTW, this wasn’t a one off – the last time we got a train back from Galway to Dublin the station we had also reserved seats but the staff instructed us to ‘just sit anywhere’.

Meanwhile, most of the station staff were busy loitering on the platform not caring less about the confusion and frustration throughout the train. Well done lads, great job, very helpful.

aehso ireland, irish, rail, system, travel

Welcome to the 21st century Iarnród Éireann (Irish Rail). I have no idea how much tax money they have spent on developing their new seat reservation system but it is a welcome departure from queuing for an hour in Heuston Station in order to get a seat on an intercity train.

in fairness to them it now rivals most online airline check-in systems. Now if they could just find a few more trains or drop their charges a bit they might be able to complete their apparent aspirations to run a budget airline type business model. Oh, and they’ll also have to deal with those pesky unions.

aehso ireland, irish, rail, system, travel

From this article on Sean Gilbride’s performance at the Mahon Tribunal yesterday

A former Fianna Fail councillor, who was on developer Owen O’Callaghan’s payroll during critical Quarryvale rezoning votes, never told other councillors he was being paid the equivalent of his teacher’s salary for almost a year.
…
He said he had always been supportive of Quarryvale. The fact he was being paid by Mr O’Callaghan had nothing to do with it.

I might have to start posting a series of these.

Aside, did you know that the Mahon Tribunal has been running since Nov 4th, 1997?

aehso ireland, irish, mahontribunal, politics

A while back I posted about Vodafone Ireland offering 500Mb for EUR9.99 per month. Some interesting comments on that post prompted me to followup with Vodafone to clarify a few things. Unfortunately I can’t print their response (it was ‘private’). However, I can clarify a few facts:

• The package can only be used to access Vodafone Live! content (i.e. data to/from the live.vodafone.ie gateway.)
• The package does not apply to use of your mobile phone as a modem (i.e. data to/from the isp.vodafone.ie gateway.)

With this package Vodafone charge an effective rate of €0.02 per Mb to download data from their Live service gateway up to 50Mb per day. If you go over 50Mb per day they start charging €5.00 per Mb.

With their “Modest” or “Medium” data service packages (see Vodafone pay monthly charges) they charge between €0.48 per Mb(€12/25) or €0.30 per Mb (€15/50) to transmit data via their ISP gateway (NOT the Live! gateway).

If you have not signed up for their “Modest” or “Medium” package then the data rate charge is €12.80 for the first Mb and €5.12 per subsequent Mb. (2c/KB up to 512 kbs and 0.5c/kb for any usage over 512kbs).

So Vodafone data rates vary from a minimum of €0.02/Mb (Live! data rate) to a maximum of €12.80 per Mb (general data rate) – incredible! If they had phone call charges like these the regulator would be all over them.

So mobile data via Vodafone remains potentially exhorbently expensive and confusing. The confusion is compounded by Vodafone’s use of the label “Mobile Internet” for this service. With this package a user can get access to reformatted versions of certain WWW sites. Calling that Mobile Internet is like calling a bicycle a supercar. The Internet, as in that series of interconnected tubes through which the worlds computers communicate over protocols based on Internet Protocol(IP), is completely out of bounds.

This service should be called the “Vodafone Network”. However there is nobody to regulate this type of thing, is there?

Vodafone do offer a 3G/GPRS broadband modem as an alternative but a) I need a service that allows me to use my existing 3G handset as a modem (so that my N800 can connect via bluetooth) and b) I don’t want to pay €30 per month for a service I’ll only use in bursts when on the road. They also offer a business email push service but this doesn’t cater for my ssh and http protocol access requirements.

So, we remain in the dark ages.

aehso data, internet, ireland, irish, isp, mobile, vodafone

[Update: Some of the presentation files are now available on the RailsConf Europe website]
Slight delay on writing this one up as I was in transit on Thurs and at a wedding on Friday.  Anyway, this summary is going to be a lot shorter as I didn’t get as much out of Wednesday’s sessions.

Rails Hydra: Synthesizing an Application out of Multiple Rails Codebases (Craig R. McClanahan, Nick Sieger, Sun Microsystems)

Good talk on building services using several Rails applications, the Sun guys also got a chance to demo use of NetBeans 6 for Rails development (with some live demo debugging thrown in along with great audience participation!) Most of the demo centered around making it easier to develop DRY ActiveResource implementations. ActiveResource is almost definitely the right underpinnings for any RESTful service implementation but I think it still needs a bit more work around the edges.

Using a HAXOR Approach for Peace and Productivity (Tim Dysinger)

Good talk on how to manage interaction between designers and developers when developing Rails applications that use HTML, Ajax and XML Over REST. Quite high level (and if I’m honest, I was working away in the background so I couldn’t give it my full attention…)

Browser-based Testing of Massive Ajax-using Rails Applications with Selenium (Till Vollmer)
Good overview of using Selenium to test web applications from within the browser, covering use of Selenium IDE (browser based Javascript IDE), Selenium RC and the Selenium on Rails Plugin. Highlighted that Selenium struggles a bit with testing Ajax heavy web pages but it is possible with hand crafted scripts that use waitForVisible and/or waitForElementPresent events…

Functional JavaScript Development with Prototype (Ben Nolan)
Bit of an edge talk for the JavaScript fanatics but Ben presented well and it seemed well received by the audience…

Ruby on Rails leads you to the e-business (Quentin Tousart)
Mildly interesting talk on experiences gained in building two e-commerce websites using Rails.

Obscure Data Formats, Workflow, and Remote Synchronization (Chad Thatcher)
Another interesting case study on building a Rails front-end for a legacy data format (in this case the RISM format used by the British Library to catalog music manuscripts). Interesting use of composed_of in the Rails model objects to compensate for the fact that the underlying data was in hierarchical rather than relational form.

That’s about it, I met up with Sean Hanley from exoftware and David Rice . Mental note to self, get into RubyIreland…

aehso berlin, ireland, rails, railsconf, rest, ruby