THE NUMBERS:
75– the number of staff Nama expects it will need to take on, according to its business plan. 2,000– the number of CVs received to date by the National Asset Management Agency (Nama).

QUOTES OF THE WEEK:

“If there is one single thing that I would like to reverse or that I shouldn’t have went along with . . . in my heart I should not have gone along with the suggestion to split the Central Bank and the regulator. I think that was a mistake I went with, so I’m ultimately responsible for that.”

Bertie Ahern confesses in an interview with 4fm

"I think you can certainly say that Nama is a plan, which is better than no plan."

Faint praise from ESRI economist Alan Barrett

GOOD WEEK:

Elinor Ostrom

The Nobel Prize for economics has been won by a woman for the first time in its 41-year history. Prof Ostrom shared the prize with fellow American Oliver Williamson for their separate work on economic governance, with the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences saying her work had demonstrated how common property such as forests, fisheries and oil fields could be successfully managed by the groups using it. Last year’s winner of this prize, which was not one of the original Nobel awards, was Paul Krugman (who isn’t exactly the Irish economy’s biggest fan).

Jeffrey Skilling

Remember the good old days when Enron was the most flagrant abuser of corporate governance principles? The US supreme court has agreed to hear an appeal from its former chief executive, Jeffrey Skilling, who was given a 24-year prison sentence in 2006 for his role in the energy company’s spectacular implosion.

The appeals court agreed that pretrial publicity including a newspaper headline, "Your Tar and Feathers Ready? Mine Are", and a song called Drop the S off Skillingmight have hurt Skilling's chances of a fair trial.

BAD WEEK:

Maternity leave

Nichola Pease, a London banker and mother of three, did her bit to torpedo the feminist cause this week by telling a House of Commons “sexism in the City” inquiry that maternity leave is just too damn long.

Ms Pease, who is one half of a high-powered City couple sneeringly known as the “Posh and Becks of finance”, said women were seeing their careers stall after taking one year’s maternity leave and that “sex discrimination cases that run into the tens of millions are ridiculous”. Hmm . . . why can’t a woman be more like a man?