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• Ireland has one of the most attractive tax rates for fracking companies in the world

  Very important point made by Natural Gas Europe here (posted on Shell to Sea) about the licencing agreement around Shale Gas (Fracking) and needs to be understood in the context of the news today that Tamboran Resources initial exploration in  north Leitrim has found that they could ultimately reach 2.2 trillion cubic feet of gas, worth $55 billion at today’s prices. Meanwhile Pat Rabbitte has asked the EPA do an environmental study, but this is very, very unlikely to veer from the assessment of the European Commission consultancy study on licensing hydraulic fracturing which found that there is no need for specific new legislation governing the mining activity.

  Besides the environmental impact, the financial cost of both that gas line and the potential shale gas excavation has caused consternation. Currently, Ireland has one of the most attractive tax rates for companies in the world. Companies in Ireland are, in most cases, required to pay only 25 per cent corporation tax, a much lower rate than most other countries with possible shale gas reserves; Ireland also does not require companies to pay any royalties to the government on saleable gas. Tamboran, Lough Allen Natural Gas and Enegi may be required to pay between five and fifteen per cent over this rate, but, even at a higher rate, the gain for the government will be lower than for most other countries in comparable situations. Pundits and protestors alike say that the government is effectively giving away a valuable resource, owned by the Irish people, to outside companies, for very little in return.

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• Conflict of interest is so deeply embedded in Ireland, no one seems to notice

  The cops were very swift to close down the demonstration in the NAMA building that  Unlock NAMA occupied on Saturday the 28th. They haven’t been as swift though to investigate Anglo Irish Bank. A big blow to that investigation is due, apparently, to the fact that the cop leading it went to work for Bank of Ireland. It is not unusual for people from the fraud squad to move into the private banking sector, we are told, just as we were told that it isn’t unusual for people to move from the regulators office or the Central Bank (when they were separate bodies) to the boards of private banks. Unlock NAMA revealed that the building they occupied was in a very bad state of repair. Add to that the difficulty in establishing that it was a NAMA building at all, considering that it was added to the foreclosure list incorrectly. This should open up discussion on what is happening to all the other NAMA buildings, at the very least. At the most there should be uproar about the massive stock of properties that NAMA controls the loans of which is being allowed to rot and devalue. These properties are being held on to simply to try and artificially hold the price on property and provide the means for future speculation.

  Senior garda fraud specialist retires to work for Bank of Ireland

  The senior garda detective who was in charge of the Anglo-Irish investigation for 18 months took early retirement at the end of last year and is now working with Bank of Ireland, it has emerged.

  Former detective superintendent Pat Collins, 52, was regarded as the Garda’s top expert in corporate fraud investigation. He spent much of his career in the Fraud Squad and before taking charge of the Anglo investigation he spent time on secondment with the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement working with its director, Paul Appleby.

  Former colleagues say his departure — on full pension after having served 30 years in the force — will be a major blow to the investigation.

  Coveney adviser’s patriotism stressed to secure special pay

  Elsewhere, Minister for Agriculture Simon Coveney is in the news for asking for a €130,000 salary for his special advisor Fergal Leamy, a former chief executive of Greencore USA. The cap as we are well aware after all the breeches of it is €92,672. Leamy didn’t last long, despite Coveney pleading that he was desperate to do the state some service he left after four months. He got an offer from an equity firm in the London that he couldn’t refuse. However, the story also reveals that Simon  Coveney’s brother, Patrick Coveney is chief executive of Greencore. Of course Greencore has a long and controversial history, which Shane Ross referred to as a template for the worst excesses of corporate Ireland, a close rival to DCC.

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• Can We Still Write Big Question Sorts of Books? | David Graeber

  David Graeber and the model of his ‘popular’ yet scholarly book Debt: The First 5000 Years

  So: what was to be the model for a big questions sort of book, and how to write a book that would still be scholarly, but not academic?

  This is what I came up with:

  Of all the models I considered, the most amenable turned out to be the approach adopted by Marcel Mauss. This might seem odd. especially because Mauss never actually wrote a book; he’s mainly famous for a series of essays. Yet many of these essays-not just the Gift, but his essay on the person, techniques of the body (where he coins the term “habitus”), sacrifice and magic-really have had a profound effect both on all subsequent scholarship, and, to differing degrees, political and social debates ever since. Mauss had an uncanny ability to ask the right questions-often, questions he was the first to pose, and which have become mainstays of theoretical debate ever since. His was also an appealing model because Mauss was both a serious, committed activist (he was especially active in the French cooperative movement), and a scholar of remarkable erudition. His problem-and this, I suspect, is why he never did write a proper book, despite numerous attempts-was that he was also almost unimaginably disorganized, and therefore, terrible at exposition. I suspect if alive today he would have been quickly diagnosed with severe ADD.

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• Irish ‘SOPA law’ another under the radar attack on digital rights by a craven government pandering far too easily to corporate interests

  Very strong and accurate piece from Karlin Lillington in the Irish Times today, making no bones about the motivations behind the changes in copyright law that Sean Sherlock and the Irish government are trying to sneak in. It’s odd at a time when the SOPA law in the US, which is similarly motivated to the Irish law, has just been dropped.

  FOR THREE governments in a row, “short-sighted” and “sneaky” seem to have become the relevant terms in operation when bringing in controversial, high-impact legislation on digital issues.

  In the past, from the government’s perspective, this approach has worked well in shoving in poorly drafted, unscrutinised law on the controversial area of data retention, giving the Republic one of the most severe, internationally criticised, anti-business retention regimes in the world.

  This time around, the Government is trying again to use secondary legislation - a statutory instrument requiring no discussion and no debate in the Oireachtas - to (supposedly) protect intellectual property for a narrow band of hard-lobbying entertainment industries.

  For despite what the ‘hard-lobbying entertainment industries’ might say internet piracy is not killing off its profits. That assumes for a start that the amount produced is static, which given the amount of ‘content’ flooding towards us each day is absurd.

  But more importantly, there is evidence (from numerous mainstream studies and reports) that industry claims about piracy decimating revenue, jobs and creativity are vastly overstated. A careful analysis of such claims by Julian Sanchez on Ars Technica ( iti.ms/wT8l02), picked up and further discussed by Forbes ( iti.ms/xQJXhg), indicates piracy has actually had only a minor impact on these industries.

  The record industry in the US, for example, has about double the new releases it had a decade ago, when piracy was barely on its radar. The film industry also has more releases now than in pre-piracy days and its most pirated movies are also those that made staggering box office profits. Sanchez cites evidence that the music industry is making back profits lost to piracy through “complementary purchases” such as concert tickets. And a recent report issued by a US anti-piracy lobby group rather farcically indicates its clients are doing quite well, thank you.

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• Davos dilemma | Michael Roberts

  The majority of those at Davos think that Capitalism isn’t working, but don’t feel there is a need to change anything because its working rather well for them. It’s up to those not in the 1% then to change it.

  The strategists of capital are attending their annual jamboree in the snow playground of the super-rich in Davos, Switzerland for the World Economic Forum. Many of the top 0.1% of income earners are there. And this year the main theme is whether capitalism works and is fair.

  Capitalism is in crisis - and this time the word ‘crisis’ is not hyperbole. Even the 2600 attendees at Davos recognise that. According to a survey by the financial broadcaster, Bloomberg, almost 70% of those asked believed that the capitalist system is in trouble, with 32% saying it needs “radical reworking”. Less than 20% reckoned ‘free enterprise’ is working. Most Davos 0.1 percenters are really worried that this failure of capitalism to work could lead to ’social instability’ in one form or another.

  And more than half who were asked at Davos thought that inequality of income and wealth under capitalism was damaging economic growth. But only one in five wanted any urgent action on the issue! It seems that greed triumphs over economic logic - or should we say, class interest rules

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• The Promissory Notes | Tom McDonnell

  Economist Tom McDonnell of TASC provides a brief primer on IBRC promissory notes, which is available on Slideshare. Click here to view it in it’s own web page.

  Tom mcdonnellpromnotes240112

  View more presentations from TASCslides

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• Michael Taft talks to Doug Henwood of Left Business Observer about the Irish Economy| 7th of January

  Michael Taft talks to Doug Henwood of Behind the News in a detailed 30 minute discussion about the Irish economy which was posted on the 7th of Jan. The second half of the show is given over to a discussion with Jodi Dean about Occupy Wall Street and ‘demands’. It’s also worth reading Jodi Dean’s article on Occupy Wall Street and the Left which was published today on Critical Legal Thinking.

  MP3 Link.

  [display_podcast]

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• What are bankers doing inside EU summits? | Corporate Europe Observatory

  Important information here on the extent of bank lobbies influence in the resolution of the Greek debt crisis, particularly when it comes to plans which require ‘private sector involvement’.

  At the Euro Summits in July and October 20111, crucial decisions “to save the Euro” and “to save Greece” were made. It was agreed to restructure Greek debts and banks were asked to accept a ‘haircut’ to their profits to avoid a Greek default and the risk that some banks might default as a result. In Summer 2011, the press was full of stories about the informal negotiations between EU leaders and the banks about the level of private sector involvement in restructuring Greece’s debts.

  The Institute of International Finance (IIF), a lobby group established in 1983 by the biggest banks and financial institutions in the world to deal with the question of sovereign debt2, became the EU’s interlocutor on the Greek debt issue. Its proposals -described as ”offers”- received red carpet treatment.

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• Is Ireland really the role model for austerity? | Stephen Kinsella | Cambridge Journal of Economics

  Abstract
  This paper describes the causes and consequences of Ireland’s economic crisis in the context of the policy solution implemented to contain that crisis: protracted fiscal austerity. I describe the causes of the recent crisis in Ireland and look at the logic of austerity with a simple model. I compare the current crisis to the crisis of the 1980s, when fiscal austerity was touted as the trigger for the Celtic Tiger. I discuss the measures implemented to date in the current crisis, tracing their effects on sectors of Ireland’s macroeconomy. I show that Ireland is not the role model for austerity policies.

  =======
  The full content of the January 2012 issue of the Cambridge Journal of Economics is available free online here. It is a special issue on the theme “Austerity: Making the same mistakes again - Or is this time different?”

  Contents
  Making the same mistakes again - Or is this time different?
  Lawrence King, Michael Kitson, Sue Konzelmann, and Frank Wilkinson

  Financial crisis and global imbalances: its labour market origins and the aftermath
  Pasquale Tridico

  Dangerous interconnectedness: economists’ conflicts of interest, ideology and financial crisis
  Jessica Carrick-Hagenbarth and Gerald A. Epstein

  Commentary: Contradictions of austerity
  Alex Callinicos

  The great austerity war: what caused the US deficit crisis and who should pay to fix it?
  James Crotty

  The end of the UK’s liberal collectivist social model? The implications of the coalition government’s policy during the austerity crisis
  Damian Grimshaw and Jill Rubery

  Iceland’s rise, fall, stabilisation and beyond
  Robert H. Wade and Silla Sigurgeirsdottir

  Commentary: Dire consequences: the conservative recapture of America’s political narrative?
  David Coates

  A note on America’s 1920–21 depression as an argument for austerity
  Daniel Kuehn

  US government deficits and debt amid the great recession: what the evidence shows
  Robert Pollin

  Fiscal deficits, economic growth and government debt in the USA
  Lance Taylor, Christian R. Proaño, Laura de Carvalho, and Nelson Barbosa

  The tragedy of UK fiscal policy in the aftermath of the financial crisis
  Malcolm Sawyer

  Is Ireland really the role model for austerity?
  Stephen Kinsella

  The macroeconomic stabilisation effects of Social Security and 401(k) plans
  Teresa Ghilarducci, Joelle Saad-Lessler, and Eloy Fisher

  The basic paradigms of EU economic policy-making need to be changed
  Kazimierz Laski and Leon Podkaminer

  Building faith in a common currency: can the eurozone get beyond the Common Market logic?
  Pascal Petit

  The four fallacies of contemporary austerity policies: the lost Keynesian legacy
  Robert Boyer

  Russia: austerity and deficit reduction in historical and comparative perspective
  Vladimir Popov

  Commentary: Austerity and fraud under different structures of technology and resource abundance
  Jing Chen and James Galbraith

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• The Newsfakers | Patrick Cockburn

  I enjoyed this nuanced article by Patrick Cockburn about journalism, accuracy, modern media, blogging, black propaganda and the use of social media by authoritarian regimes and advanced capitalist ‘democratic’ ones too. It also reminded me of this excellent review of Net Delusion by Oliver Farry that we published a while back.

  “So technical advances have made it more difficult for governments to hide repression. But these developments have also made the work of the propagandist easier. Of course, people who run newspapers and radio and television stations are not fools. They know the dubious nature of much of the information they are conveying. The political elite in Washington and Europe was divided for and against the US invasion of Iraq, making it easier for individual journalists to dissent. But today there is an overwhelming consensus in the foreign media that the rebels are right and existing governments wrong. For institutions such as the BBC, highly unbalanced coverage becomes acceptable.

  Sadly, al-Jazeera, which has done so much to shatter state control of information in the Middle East since it was set up in 1996, has become the uncritical propaganda arm of the Libyan and Syrian rebels.”

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