First we wish a safe holiday and happy, healthy and prosperous New Year to all. The IRA will be quiet until just before New Years, when we will review last year’s predictions publish our prognostications about 2011. Also, this week in The IRA Advisory Service, we discuss how the proposal by the FDIC to impose punitive insurance premiums on large banks that use all types of brokered deposits could have a decidedly adverse impact on the entire U.S. banking industry. To our friends at the FDIC we recall the old saying: Be careful what you wish for. You may get it. We start this comment with an excerpt from Ian Jack’s review of Fintan O’Toole’s new book, Ship of Fools: How Stupidity and Corruption Sank the Celtic Tiger. Both are must reading for students of the crisis around the world. And conveniently enough, you have but to change the words of either of these works to include American politicians and states to show that the stories on both sides of the pond were remarkably similar.