The Irish government, under new Taoiseach Brian Cowen, has decided to pretty much nationalise the company's banking system, giving a taxpayer guarantee to every part of every deposit left at an Irish bank.

The scale of the deal is utterly mind-boggling, totalling about €97,560 (£77,150) per head of the population. A bold move from the man known locally as “Biffo” Cowen. The nickname stands for Big, Ignorant Fellow From Offaly. Critics are prone to replace “fellow” with another F-word, City Spy hears.

* This is Abraham Lincoln speaking on 11 January 1837 about an earlier banking crisis: “It is an old maxim and a very sound one, that he that dances should always pay the fiddler.

“Now, sir, in the present case, if any gentlemen, whose money is a burden to them, choose to lead off a dance, I am decidedly opposed to the people's money being used to pay the fiddler... all this to settle a question in which the people have no interest, and about which they care nothing.

“These capitalists generally act harmoniously, and in concert, to fleece the people, and now that they have got into a quarrel with themselves, we are called upon to appropriate the people's money to settle the quarrel.”

No hostage situation here

Drew Kanaly, chairman and chief executive of Kanaly Trust Company, says of the vote against the Wall Street bailout: “If you watched the news stream over the weekend, it seemed like it was a done deal. But the money is being held hostage to the political process.” Held hostage?

Listen Kanaly, and listen carefully: the money isn't yours. You could hardly get a clearer example of the contempt America's top businessmen have for the average taxpayer.

* Here is Joseph J Cassano, a former AIG executive, from August 2007, discussing credit derivatives: “It is hard for us, without being flippant, to even see a scenario within any kind of realm of reason that would see us losing one dollar in any of those transactions.”

* A delightful double-page basement advertisement in Saturday's FT Weekend newspaper by Fortis appeared just 48 hours before the bank lurched into public ownership by the three Benelux governments. The strapline was: “Here today gone tomorrow but Fortis is always around for thinking ahead.” Hmmm. The ad appeared beneath an article analysing the stock market's performance, or lack of it, after Chamberlain's appeasement deal with Hitler at Munich in 1938...

* From the “you couldn't make it up” category. Dexia, the bank that received a €6.4 billion (£5.05 billion) bailout from the Belgian, French and Luxembourg governments, has as its slogan on its website: “Short term has no future.”

* Among the carnage in the biggest sell-off in the S&P 500 since 1987, there was a shining sign of how Middle America is taking some comfort. Just one stock made a gain in the day's trading: The Campbell Soup Company.

Honeyed words from the biz stars

More drama on Wall Street — this time a supposed catfight between the two Money Honeys who are the stars of business TV channel CNBC, Maria Bartiromo, 41, and her colleague Erin Burnett, 32 — dubbed “Mario 2.0” by the US press.

Vanity Fair has devoted a long feature and photo-spread to the pair. Both women insist there's no bad blood between them, of course. But the publicity might not be entirely unhelpful — Bartiromo's rumoured $1 million-a-year contract is up for renegotiation and there's talk of a bidding war from rival networks. Both certainly want to put on a united front.

Bartiromo says: “I think it's a disservice to us as women and as businesspeople, by the way, to compare what you're seeing from a handful of situations to women who are really trying to make it in business...It's more than prancing around the Stock Exchange with little dresses on. We're covering business and it doesn't matter what you look like if you don't know your stuff. If you don't have the goods, you will not last.”
But would they last if they weren't prancing around in “little dresses”? The final word goes to Burnett. “I think that when people see strong, successful women, they love to imagine that there is a rivalry... Maybe, I don't know,” she says, rolling her eyes, “it's a male-fantasy thing.”

JJB boss fails to sell his line to the scribblers

News emanating from the analysts' meeting with troubled JJB tells of a “heated affair”, with the sportswear retailer's combative chief executive Chris Ronnie telling the scribblers there was no point attempting to formulate forecasts for the second half of the financial year. Little wonder there are even more “sell” notes coming out of the City on JJB shares than there are “sale” signs in JJB windows.

* No sooner does Channel 4 make 150 redundant than there's more evidence of its woes. It's paying food brands to advertise on the channel. Marketing magazine says the ad-sales team have set aside £1 million to help new-to-TV or lapsed advertisers show their wares on C4. It will also allow them to use its food programmes, which include Gordon Ramsay's The F Word, in their promotional work.

* Guys, please calm down. IG Index is sending out invites for this Friday lunchtime “to experience one of the most eagerly anticipated dates in the current global trading calendar with the announcement of September's US non-farm payrolls data”.

* So farewell, then, energywatch, the consumer watchdog that was frequently off the leash, whose bite was as bad as its bark and that regularly attacked and/or lampooned the industry's major players — and, indeed, at times the regulator Ofgem. Last night it was wound up and today is replaced by a body called Consumer First and a panel of 100 households that have been recruited by Ofgem to keep an eye on things in the energy world...

Send us your city spy stories cityspy@standard.co.uk