To be honest, I'm glad the parties are over. There is only so many times you can listen to a Christmas selection of jingles and jangles without feeling that Scrooge had a point.

This week was quiet, only one lunch and one dinner unfortunately both on the same day! Why is it that Christmas is a non-stop food-fest, while for the rest of the year if I depended on my social diary to feed me I would starve.

The two sides of working in financial services got an airing in the media this week one story was the phenomenal bonuses being paid out to traders in the City, while another forecast massive job losses thanks to the spate of mergers currently under way particularly UBS and SBC.

The media loves stories about highflying, fast-spending, ruthless City traders flashing gold cards around the place, ordering bottles of Champagne and buying expensive cars. The Harbourmaster might be bracing itself for the invasion, but bonuses in Dublin don't tend to reflect the mania that hits the City around now. But then, there have not been the wholesale lay-offs in Dublin that there have been in the City.

And the media loves the lay-off stories too. We shared some of those stories over dinner last week the dealing-room where a porter went around placing black plastic sacks at selected desks by way of informing the poor unfortunates who was in and who was out; the manager that took one of the staff to lunch and told him that only one of them was coming back; and (my personal black-humour favourite) the chief dealer who made everyone stand up beside the desk. As an individual's phone line rang, that person was allowed to sit down and answer it. The last 10 standing were given their P45s. With stories like this, it is hardly surprising that people demand hefty bonuses when times are good.

The open-ended bonus scheme has been credited with causing unnecessary risk-taking in financial institutions, and it's not entirely an unjustified complaint. If the worst thing that can happen to you is that you get fired (and possibly hired by someone else) and the best thing that can happen is that you get a bonus with a lot of figures before the decimal point, the trade seems to be something of a one-way bet.

The important thing for those who end up being shown the door, I suppose, is that they managed to maintain a certain level of restraint in the Champagne and Porsche buying areas so that they have something to live on while reconstructing their CVs.

The reality of potential job losses was on Bloomberg screens for everyone on Monday morning. The founder, Mr Mike Bloomberg, sent a message to all users telling us that, if we lost our jobs in the current round of merger mania, Bloomberg would provide each user with two months free access to the system at home. That way those concerned could keep up to speed with what was going on in the markets and access the Bloomberg "Jobs" page. Chilling, but great PR.

Not that anyone can keep up to speed with markets at the moment. US Treasuries climbed back up the cliff last week, over the top and up to the summit of the mountain, in an orgy of TBond buying. Asia went berserk when the Korean Development Bank cancelled a bond issue (which they had no hope of selling) and the Irish bond market saw spreads against Germany narrow to their tightest all year as participants focused on monetary union again.

But it's not all conspicuous consumption and runaway markets. At the lighting of the Christmas tree last week, the IFSC Inner City Trust was presented with a cheque for £25,000 by Hardwicke Construction, which along with British Land Development, is the developers of the centre. For those unaware of the trust, it was set up in order to contribute to the community in which the centre is located. There is a sharp contrast between the bright, modern buildings of the IFSC and some of the more deprived areas in the community where it has sprung up.

The trust tries to help the more disadvantaged in the community through providing financial assistance, volunteer work and in providing equipment for local schools and community centres.

It is funded by contributions from IFSC companies. Obviously, the trust is always looking for more contributions so, if there's a company in the centre that has blasted through the target for 1997 and doesn't want to blow all the excesses in runaway bonuses, your money is always welcome. Not only money the trust would like to add something more to the area, so if there are individuals who would like to give some of their time as a volunteer, please get in touch. The best person to talk to is Peter Coogan, and he can be reached by phone at 628 8571.

And finally consumer prices. Many people have been expecting a big jump in consumer prices since last January. But November's figures showed an increase of 0.4 per cent, which was higher than most of the forecasts. Whenever CPI shows an unexpected increase, everyone pours over the figures to see if there is an exceptional item that could explain it.

According to the CSO's report the main factors contributing to the increases were: alcoholic drink (hardly surprising); food, due to seasonal price increases (as usual); and services and related expenditure due to a rise in adult education course fees and a seasonal increase in admission charges for cabarets.

So there you have it. Stop drinking and going to cabarets. You're driving the country to ruin. Go home and call the IFSC trust. Happy Christmas!

Sheila O'Flanagan is a fixed-income specialist at NCB stockborkers.