‘We didn’t all party’ The banking inquiry is told today
The €440bn 2008 blanket bank guarantee was the culmination of several years of mistakes being made, but not just by the government, the Oireachtas Banking Inquiry has been told.
At its first public hearing this morning, Finnish academic Peter Nyberg said Ireland was gripped by “real estate mania” in the last decade, but this was not a phenomenon limited to Ireland.
Asked did he share the view that we as a country “all partied,” he said a lot of people in many different ways enjoyed benefits from the bubble.
“That doesn’t mean that they partied, but it does mean that in the boom and the bubble their lives felt much better than they would have been,” he said.
Ireland’s banking crisis was systemic but was not unique, the Oireachtas Banking Inquiry’s first witness has said.
Irish banks were “pretty good” at misjudging the risk of their lending policies, Mr Nyberg said.
“Judging from the consequences which were larger in Ireland than anywhere else, the Irish institutions were pretty good at misjudging risk,” he said.
In relation to the decision by the Fianna Fáil-led government to issue the €440bn blanket bank guarantee, Mr Nyberg said it was the culmination of years of mistakes.
“It was the culmination of a lot of mistakes that were made several years before and not only by the government,” he said.
He told the inquiry that the guarantee is “not surrounded by a lot of documentation.
He added there were efforts in the last minute, in the Department of Finance, to get legislation sorted to deal with banks in an orderly way, but said ultimately that was not possible given the scale of what happened in September 2008.
He said a lot of people had “increased joy” as long as the bubble had lasted.
Under questions from Chairman Ciaran Lynch, Mr Nyberg said that even several months after the guarantee, PWC even concluded the banks were solvent at the time of guarantee.
He said the Government assumed the banks were solvent and that their cash flow problems were temporary.
He said given the pressure on Taoiseach Brian Cowen, Finance Minister Brian Lenihan at the time, he said it was understandable why they saw “no workable alternative to the guarantee”.
“This does not imply that it was objectively the best decision possible under any set of circumstances, however a decision had to be made with only the knowledge and preparations available at the time, and had to be be made fast,” he said.
THE ECONOMY
Mr Nyberg, said by the time 2009 came around, the economy turned out much worse than expected.
In relation to the banks’ external auditors, Mr Nyberg said they did warn their clients of problems to come, and they did discharge the checking of historic accounts.
“The question is was it enough? That is for the inquiry to decide,” he said.
During his opening address, Mr Nyberg said the Irish crisis was not unique and was similar to other crises elsewhere.
He said his 2011 report into the crash was about the why of the crisis and not the who. He said his report was not required to name names, and he decided not to do so.
Are technology-free bedrooms the key to a successful relationship?
Researchers believe finding a balance between your gadgets and other half is the secret to happiness.
“Engaging in technology separate to a partner while in the presence of them encourages a disconnection rather than a connection,” according to Prof Christina Leggett.
Sound the alarm: the good old-fashioned relationship is under attack from technology. That seems to be the message from a growing body of psychology research examining how technology is affecting our love lives and friendships.
For many couples, technology is a double-edged sword. The “his” and “hers” towels have been replaced by smartphones that allow people to stay tethered all day, whether it’s to share shopping lists or heart-shaped emoji.
But those same couples get into tiffs when one person pulls out a mobile phone at dinner or clicks on the iPad before bed, forgoing pillow talk for Twitter.
A study published last month in The International Journal of Neuropsychotherapy, for example, found that when one person in a relationship is using some form of technology more than the other, it makes the second person feel ignored and insecure. Or as your therapist may say, it brings up a whole lot of abandonment issues.
“Engaging in technology separate to a partner while in the presence of them encourages a disconnection rather than a connection,” said Christina Leggett, a senior researcher at the School of Psychology at the University of Queensland in Australia, who wrote the study with Pieter J Rossouw, a professor there.
“Disconnection in relationships tends to lead to feelings of dissatisfaction and comprises an individual’s sense of safety, attachment and control.”
Recent research
In a study published this year, Pew Research found that 25 per cent of mobile phone users in a relationship believed that their partner was distracted by that person’s mobile phone when they were together.
Eight per cent said they had argued about how much time one party spends online. In 2013, a study by Brigham Young University researchers concluded that texting too much within a relationship could leave partners very dissatisfied with their overall communication.
(Saying “sorry” over text in an argument only made things worse, the same study found.) And in 2012, researchers at the Baylor University Hankamer School of Business found that paying too much attention to a mobile phone could ruin relationships with loved ones and friends.
“Phubbing your significant other by giving precedence to your phone activities over paying attention to your significant other is a path to strained relationships,” James Roberts, a professor at Baylor who wrote the 2012 study, wrote in an email, using the shorthand term for “phone snubbing”.
“When one or both people in a couple overuse (variously defined) their cellphone, or other technology, it is likely to undermine their relationship.”
One way to find a balance, according to researchers I spoke with, is to organise device-free outings with your significant other.
That could include weekend hikes in areas without cell service or leaving phones at home during brunch. (Sorry: that means you won’t be able to Instagram your eggs Benedict.)
At home, where it’s more difficult to escape the clutches of tech, researchers suggested setting up gadget-free zones, where laptops, iPads and other devices are banned.
Party time is here:- How to avoid that hangover?
Party season is upon us, which means late nights, drinking, dancing til dawn and most likely dealing with a stinking hangover the next day. Symptoms include feeling thirsty, extra sensitive to light, nauseous, unable to concentrate, dizzy, achy, sleepy, depressed and no doubt irritable.
Our body clearly doesn’t like having alcohol pumped into it, and this is partly due to the fact that ethanol, the psychoactive substance in it, affects almost every transmit signal system in the brain. Ethanol also affects the excitatory glutamate and the major inhibitory neurotransmitter, GABA. This breaks down simply as: feeling drunk is partly a product of glutamate’s activities being suppressed and GABA’s activity increasing.
But the symptoms don’t just come from your brain. Your liver also takes a massive hit when you consume alcohol as it has to process acetaldehyde, a toxin that’s created when we digest alcohol. Using two enzymes and the antioxidant glutathione, the liver is able to break down acetaldehyde pretty efficiently. But it’s not all good news, as the body only has a limited amount of glutathione and so while the liver works to produce more, the toxins linger in the liver and begin to cause damage.
Now we’re not trying to be a Christmas party Scrooge, just giving you a heads up. Here are our top tips to have a good time without suffering too much the next day.
Try having a green day: This involves making sure everything you put in your mouth is green, such as kale, greens, spinach, broccoli, avocados, green apples, green juices, etc. Eating green offers a hefty source of antioxidants, boosts your immune system and is low in calories to counterbalance any excess from your evening out.
Dance the night away: Don’t sit on the sidelines; get out on the dance floor and bust a move. You’ll burn calories (up to 250 in 30 minutes), flush the booze and food through your system and release some serious feel-good endorphins.
Fill up on fibre: Make sure you’re getting enough healthy fibre to help cleanse your bowels and aid digestion before a period of festive eating and drinking.
Almost 500,000 calls to Samaritans in busiest year
Charity says callers starting to see contact as first port of call rather than last resort.
The number of calls to Samaritans has increased by 52% since the charity introduced a free phone line in March.
Mental health charity Samaritans recorded its busiest ever year in 2014 after it introduced a free phone service.
The organisation answered more than 470,000 phone calls, 12,000 emails and 8,000 text messages over the past 12 months, according to its Impact Report for Ireland.
Executive director of Samaritans Ireland Catherine Brogan said there is no longer a barrier to contacting the charity. “Since we removed the significant cost of a phone call . . . there is no longer a barrier for anyone who is struggling to cope to contact us any time of the day or night.”
The organisation previously operated a low-cost number but a deal negotiated with the telecommunications industry, the Government and the National Office for Suicide Prevention now enables people to get in touch for free. The charity experienced a 52% increase in calls since the switch in March.
Samaritans received an average of 1,310 contacts a day in the 12 months from October 2013 to September 2014, an increase of 266 calls a day on average compared to the previous year.
M/s Brogan said callers are also starting to contact the charity sooner. “People are beginning to see us as their first port of call,” she said. “People don’t have to be suicidal to contact us.”
About 70% of the calls come from mobile phones and the issues raised have remained consistent over the years: financial issues, family problems, loneliness and anxiety.
One volunteer said they receive a lot of calls from elderly people in particular around Christmas time. “They could be waiting for their children to get in touch with them but they don’t – so they feel lonely,” she said.
Minister of State with responsibility for mental health Kathleen Lynch said the benefits of switching to a free phone number were clear. “I hope that the telecoms industry now recognise the benefit of that partnership,” she said.
The increase in calls to the charity also highlights “the great need that is out there” for mental health support, she said. Samaritans can be contacted over the phone on 116 123 or at http://www.samaritans.ie
The ten “Cutest” adorable animal story discoveries of 2014
If the journal Nature’s top 10 “cutest” animal stories of the year is any indication, cuteness is in the eye of the beholder. A Spider? Swarming robots? Urinating dogs?
Perhaps stringing together ten stories about furry animals not engaged in excretion would be cloying. Still, a couple of the cuddly critters performed some extraordinary feats. An experiment in marmosets, for example, demonstrated that these little monkeys can learn new skills by watching how-to videos starring other marmosets.
Another story involved a fake baby penguin on a mechanical rover. Scientists designed the cute contraption to monitor tagged penguins without stressing them out. They found penguins were less frightened of a mechanical rover than they were of approaching humans. The penguins were even calmer and even downright friendly to a rover disguised it as one of those pudgy, downy penguin chicks. Something like this could be a good strategy for the designers of Amazon’s delivery drones.
Stretching the definitions of cute and animal was a Harvard-designed swarm of coin-sized robots called Kilobots. Like insects, each had relatively low-level capabilities, but as a collective group, they could follow simple rules to form elaborate patterns including the letter K and a star. In a news story in Nature, the researchers say they imagine the technology could be a step toward real-life Transformers. It’s not clear if this is really cute, but if the Harvard researchers could program the kilobots to form a perfect replicate of Mark Wahlberg, they’d have a good case.
New theories that could increase the number of hospitable planets
New theories could increase number of hospitable planets
The number of planets that could be hospitable to life just received a boost after scientists have come to the conclusion life could exist on a planet with a tilted-axis after all.
Astrophysicists have for years gone by the theory that any planet whose obliquity – the angle of its axis relative to its orbit around a star – was on a particularly high scale, such as one whose axis is tilted on its side, was unsuitable to harbour life.
In comparison, Earth has a low obliquity as our planet’s axis is almost perpendicular to the sun which gave rise to science’s current understanding, according to Phys.org.
However, a new paper published by researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) now suggests that planets with even the highest obliquity could harbour life as we would understand it, as long as the planet is entirely covered by an ocean.
In their research model, co-authors of the paper, David Ferreira and Sara Seager, created a digital planet similar in size to Earth, entirely covered in water and with an axis at a 90 degrees which would take into account the planet’s atmosphere, ocean, and sea ice, as well as the effects of winds and heat.
Planets with oceans as low as 50m hospitable
Tested across planets with ocean depth of between 10m and 3,000m, the results show that from a depth of 50m, planets could absorb enough solar energy during its yearly cycle to support a relatively mild climate.
The new findings still managed to prove the previous theory correct, at least with regard to planets whose ocean is at a depth of just 10m as the six months that each pole would spend in its star’s shadow would send it into a deep freeze and become an ice planet.
However, Darren Williams, a professor of physics and astronomy at Pennsylvania State University in the US says the researchers’ findings only affect a minute percentage of possible planets, “There are one or two terrestrial-sized exoplanets out of a thousand that appear to have densities comparable to water, so the probability of an all-water planet is at least 0.1%.
“The upshot of all this is that exoplanets at high obliquity are not necessarily devoid of life, and are therefore just as interesting and important to the astrobiology community.”
