Tuesday, Feb 7th 2012
It’s Official - Austerity isn’t Working
Michael Burke has some interesting things to say about the 2012 Estimates published over the weekend. Ultimately, the real indicator is not the Estimates, but the General Government Balance which shows that the deficit will be higher next year. Considering that the effect of last year’s austerity budget can be [...]
The vote yesterday to extend the bank guarantee for another year, combined with the reassuring statement from Michael Noonan that its impossible to forecast when the bank guarantee scheme will end, confirms Jim Stewart’s prognosis that the main problem in the EU at the moment is:
“…the prevailing consensus (held for example by the President of the [...]
Update: The Irish Times has apologised….to the Communications Clinic.
And the courage of Broadsheet.ie
The Irish Times publishes an article by Kate Fitzgerald, published anonymously, which they obviously are perfectly happy with. The editor is experienced enough to know which articles or statements need to be vetted by their legal team in order to avoid putting [...]
Block the revolving door: why we need to stop EU officials becoming lobbyists | Alter-eu.org
John Bruton, former Irish Prime Minister and EU ambassador to Washington DC until November 2009 went through the revolving door to become the president of the Dublin-based International Financial Services Centre in September 2010 and later the same year became [...]
29/11/11 - A turning point in British history | Paul Mason
Paul Mason on good form talking about the “Autumn Statement”.
And don’t kid yourself that Britain is somehow immune, either, from the “government by technocrat” virus sweeping Europe. We saw last night the Lib Dems forced to effectively write their manifesto on the set of Newsnight; [...]
Worth highlighting…
Two UCD students Aoife O’Neill and Michael Smalle recently completed an extended interview with Padraig Yeates, author of Lockout: Dublin 1913, which has now gone viral (in the nicest possible way).
The full audio version is on: http://soundcloud.com/the-1913-lockout
The edited Video Chapters are on: http://www.youtube.com/user/lockoutwiki
Marx & Philosophy Review of Books | Review of Anderson’s The New Old World
In 2000 when he was relaunching the New Left Review Perry Anderson claimed “For the first time since the Reformation there are no longer any significant oppositions - that is, systematic rival outlooks - within the thought-world of the West: and scarcely [...]
This NYT piece confirms what Michael Burke and Michael Roberts have already shown. Corporate profits are up as wages are driven down, taxes are lower than expected and the economy (along with public service provision)
The government’s first estimate of corporate profits in the third quarter was released two days before Thanksgiving, at the same time [...]
No, no, no. Ireland is, alas, not an austerity role model | Real World Economics Review
Larry Elliot is wrong in his chirpy assessment of the Irish economy today, lazily suggesting that Ireland has become a poster child for implementing austerity programs. There is no doubt that the Irish government’s appetite for it is undiminished. He suggests [...]
This is an article by Patrick Nulty, the recently elected Labour TD which was published yesterday in the Mail on Sunday.
Even though we are stuck with the EU-IMF bail-out, the Minister for Finance has made it clear that the Government is free to choose between different tax, spending and investment policies. We may have [...]
