FEDERAL RESERVE chairman Ben Bernanke was damned either way after his half-percent interest rate cut managed to please some but annoy others. Some charged he was extending the "Greenspan put", encouraging moral hazard and the impression that it matters not what Wall Street, the City or the IFSC cook up. Others charged that his move further eroded the dollar, which broke through the psychologically important $1.40 barrier against the euro. There were even rumblings that Saudi Arabia and other oil-rich states might break their currency link with the dollar, a move that will either help European shares or cause a worldwide currency implosion.

IRISH BANKS strained to make the point that although they tap the wholesale money markets, it's not in the same way as doomed Northern Rock had done. Irish banks had a volatile run of it across the week but made it out alive.

INDEPENDENT NEWS & MEDIA, which owns 29.9% of this newspaper, posted a 4.5% increase in operating profits last week. But pretax profits fell to 94.1m when accounting for one off restructuring costs. The interim dividend was increased more than 10%.

MICROSOFT lost a big case attempting to appeal a 2004 judgement by the European Commission that Microsoft had abused its dominant position on 95% of the world's PCs. The Court of First Instance upheld the decision to fine Microsoft 497m.

IRISH FERRIES continued to drift towards its EGM, where the competing bids of One51 and Eamon Rothwell's management team. But property magnate Liam Carroll continued to build a stake . . . enough to mean there'd be no chance of a deal without him.

APPLE LAUNCHED its iPhone into the European market with an appearance by Steve Jobs in London's Regent Street. But punters did not show the same frenzied interest they'd shown at the mobile phone-cum-iPod's maiden launch earlier in the year.

It might have something to do with its restriction to one operator, its locked-down nature and the fact that it'll run you �900. Oh. And you can't buy it in Ireland. Probably for a year.

REDUNDANCIES AT INTEL in Leixlip were confirmed during the week. The amount was comparatively small . . . just 200 jobs out of the roughly 5,200 for the company and its contractors - and the positions were expected to be eliminated from Intel's troubled flash memory division.

The Irish Times and Irish Independent clearly saw it differently. The IT led with the story and it dominated the business pages. The Indo left it at a sober page 4 account.