VIEW FROM THE GROUND FLOOR: Between job losses, Argentina and mobile phone replacements, there are more than enough problems that need solving.

DESPITE my eschewing the idea of New Year's resolutions, it seems that my former colleagues in the IFSC have decided to work off the December excesses by pounding the treadmills in the SanoVitae gym. According to my Olympian friend, Sonya, there has been a marked upswing in the amount of number crunchers doing some rather different sort of crunching, as dealers try to rediscover their ab muscles.

Actually, many dealers insist that they get their best ideas while in the gym. Although, to be honest, in my case all that happened was that I went into a kind of catatonic state and my mind would go completely blank. The only thing I ever thought about was the absolute physical impossibility of a concave stomach for someone who ordered spicy chicken wings from Spar at lunchtime.

However, the Greeks were very much into the healthy body-healthy mind philosophy and, if January's workout ratio is anything to go by, the minds of the IFSC personnel are grappling with still greater money-making ideas for 2002 even as you read - which is a good thing, since the jobs market in financial services continues to be somewhat precarious.

Merrill Lynch announced it was shutting one of its US brokerage service centres with the loss of 1,200 jobs, and Providian Finance, a US credit card issuer, is cutting 800 positions. Both Merrill and Providian have appointed new chief executives lately, and I suppose the brief was to cut costs. Clearly both men decided to go the direct route.

Meanwhile, Deutsche Bank continues its major restructuring by losing 2,100 jobs.

A dealer always likes to think that s/he is bringing in enough income to avoid the axe when it falls, which is why thinking up new ways of making money (whether on the treadmill or when gazing at the screen in front of you) is always important. Of course, the high-income generating plans usually carry the most risk - just like with personal investors, risk and reward in the financial services industry are closely linked.

The banks that lent to Argentina are counting the cost while the peso is finally devalued by 29 per cent, ending a 10-year peg to the US dollar.

The Argentinian government is trying to put in place all sorts of schemes to protect the public from the hit this will mean. One such scheme is that bank loans of less than $100,000 will be converted to pesos at a rate of one-to-one, while dollar deposits will continue to be denominated in dollars.

This means that there will be a costly mismatch between the banks' assets and liabilities, which has led to pressure on the share prices of banks with a large Argentinian presence and a re-evaluation of their ratings by the agencies that had not factored that particular scenario into their equations.

Not that things are great for the Argentinians themselves. Many of them have personal and business loans that are denominated in dollars. A dollar loan remains a dollar loan but the borrowers are being paid in devalued pesos. This means it takes a lot more pesos to service and repay the loan and is why people are rioting on the streets.

It's akin to the Irish Government saying that the Irish pound and the euro were being exchanged on a one-for-one basis for your salary or pension (thus giving you one euro for every pound), but using the official exchange rate to price the goods you were buying in the shops. This would mean a dramatic fall in income versus the expenditure you'd have to make for goods, so you can see why the Argentinians are upset.

Many have rushed out to buy cars and property on the basis that fixed rather than financial assets might be the only way to preserve the value of their savings in the future, although for most it's a case of locking the stable door . . .

The government has also imposed a tax on oil exports to help fund its programmes. This has not helped Repsol, the Spanish oil company that has extensive interests in Argentina and that now sees its share price under pressure and the spread on its corporate bonds widening.

Talk on the tax rate has fluctuated between 25 per cent and 40 per cent, which is hefty enough, while the government is at the same time also demanding fixed prices for fuel and gas. So Repsol is getting it in the neck from all directions.

Apparently, the government will try to enter negotiations regarding its foreign debt next month. I can't see these negotiations being terribly easy, nor is there any quick solution for either the country or its people.

The problem for politicians is that people have expectations they encourage. When the only way they can deliver those expectations is by bringing the country to the brink of bankruptcy, everyone is on a hiding to nothing.

My own hiding to nothing this week was the purchase of a new mobile phone.

The last one finally succumbed to multiple free-falls onto the driveway or down the stairs or being buried in the sand - I've turned into the kind of sad person who actually brings their phone to the beach, although it's usually switched off!

I can't understand why phone manufacturers don't make sturdy little numbers encased in rubber for those who have a problem keeping them in our hands. I thought that it would be a simple matter to just stick the old SIM card in the new phone and have everything at my fingertips again.

Wrong! Although my new phone is another Nokia, the configuration of the phone book is different. Whereas before one name could have multiple phone numbers, now each phone number needs an individual name.

So I've been spending hours trying to rename and delete and goodness knows what else! And I can't simply hop from "edit" to "see details" to "delete" because these are all, apparently, different menus.

Phone menus are like Microsoft Word - they do loads of things that are of absolutely no use to you whatsoever but fail on the one thing that you'd really like to do.

I'm not holding out much hope for this phone lasting the day before being flung down the stairs. But that would mean buying another one and I don't have the energy for that!