This "Celtic Tiger" business is becoming tedious. It is self-deceiving. There is nothing wrong with encouraging national confidence and growth, and taking pride in our new-found competitiveness. But the idea that we are or ever will be a major force in the world economy is just a joke.

As a nation we are beginning to develop quite unrealisable notions about our place in the world, and this Celtic Tiger image of a proud and powerful jungle creature rampaging unhindered through the civilised economic world, snarling boastfully about enormous growth and unparalleled success as if we were the new US, is embarrassingly far from the truth.

In reality we remain a minnow in a tiny backwater, a tiger cub afraid of its shadow, a very small and undernourished mixed metaphor, entirely disregarded and overlooked by greater Europe, the more successful Eastern economies and the truly large and wondrous miracle of corporate US.

Never mind the economics, we cannot even keep up with the language.

For example, in Ireland we still have a class of people known as "middle management". We took this self-explanatory term from the US about 30 years ago. But about five years ago, corporate US came up with the gorgeous term "marzipan layer". This is the region inhabited by the middle managers in the bigger American companies. They lie just below top management, the icing on the cake. And, of course, above the fruitcakes and nuts (so to speak) who, as humble workers, keep the machine moving (or the batter churning).

But if you think the icing on the cake of Irish companies can be very sweet, particularly in the recent boom years, it has nothing remotely resembling the saccharine levels of the marzipan layer across the Atlantic.

Right now, for example, the US investment bank Goldman Sachs is considering whether or not to float itself off as a listed public company. And if the flotation goes through, the marzipan layer of some 200 middle managers (also apparently known as "managing directors lite", as in Guinness Light/lite) stands to be compensated with cash of up to $5 million (£3 million) each.

I don't know when or where we got the "compensation" word, never mind the compensation culture, but compensation has a different level of meaning in the US. Yet why compensation at Goldman Sachs at all, you ask? Are they not well looked after already, senior managers in one of the most revered and wealthy American financial institutions?

They are. But if flotation takes place, these managers will miss out on the chance of attaining the lucrative status of partner, the Holy Grail among managers worldwide.

The "chickenfeed" word now comes into play. The bank currently has 189 partners (among them our own Peter Sutherland), and the potential $5 million payments to the marzipan layer pale into insignificance when it becomes clear that, on flotation, even the most junior partner would receive a minimum of $60 million.

We need yet another word when comparing the partner payments to the sum of money likely to be dumped in the lap of the bank's chairman and chief executive, Jon Corzine. Because his personal proceeds from the float could come to $800 million, that word is "peanuts".

While the bank is unique among major American institutions in its partnership structure, it still has to compete in the marketplace with giants like Merrill Lynch, Salomon Brothers and Morgan Stanley. All of these have done mega-deals in recent years, so while "keeping up with the Joneses" might not seem an apposite phrase for a bank so secure in its world standing, the phrase is unavoidable.

Odd as it may sound in the banking world, the word "ethics" also raises its party-pooping head.

Goldman Sachs is at pains to deny any plans to go public. The investment bank is almost messianic in propounding its ethos, to the extent that some partners were reported to have been in tears at one a.g.m. when describing the bank's happy structure.

If the partners now vote for flotation, the structures disappear, the notion of long-term stewardship becomes obsolete, there are no more partners and the highly respected traditional culture of Goldman Sachs fades into oblivion.

At this point, where future employees and potential partners are concerned, the phrase "sold down the river" comes into play. But the sales income, for those receiving it, will be unbelievable, and quite probably irresistible. So: boats at the ready.

For us lot over here, the old-fashioned Irish term "at the races" now proves its usefulness; as in "we are not at the races at all".