Seeing the wood from the trees © fintag

News comments:
The Irish Problem is all about tax. Ireland has through its low corporate tax and other whizz bang keep your taxes low for the likes of Google (bloomberg) has encouraged a lot of businesses.

Many companies (allegedly HP, Dell, Microsoft, HSBC et al) are enjoying the "Double Irish" tax avoidance scheme and the Germans and French don't like this one little bit. So why not scare markets with bail out rhetoric so that the Irish will be forced to abandon their cheap tax ideology and these companies will leave and set up in Paris and Frankfurt?

So George Osborne are you reading this (telegraph)? It is yours to lose. Get those corporation taxes down, make some room for a "Double English" (Editor: steady) and hey presto the UK is back in business.

Today's shorts:
US housing (bloomberg)

Today's longs:
Target holidays to Ireland (reuters)

Gossip:
FSA to change the recorded South African voice on the call center phone menu.