With the Dail debate playing in the background, some notes on what Brian Lenihan insists is not a bail-out.Professor Morgan Kelly relates an incident at a conference he attended:
‘Bankers are well known for getting carried away during bubbles which is why governments appoint central banks to keep an eye on them. You probably think that [...]

Sometimes something happens that takes one breath away. It makes it hard to speak, never mind coherently. The Government’s bank guarantee proposal is one such. It constitutes a fundamental capitulation, not to the logic of the ‘free market’ nor to the necessity of state ownership, but to a uniquely Fianna Fail policy of propping up some [...]

I was pulling my hair out when a friend rang me pulling her hair out.  A lot of hair being grabbed.  Let’s start with my hair.  Noel Whelan has given us the benefit of his deep and comprehensive research into the crisis in Exchequer financing:  he has read the reply to a Parliamentary Question.  And what he read shocked him:  [...]

Ah, the low-paid - if words were money they’d be living on easy street.  Everybody wants to help the low-paid.  Certainly, Fianna Fail was determined to.  Shortly before becoming Taoiseach, Brian Cowen had this to say:
‘In terms of those families whose income earners would be classified as low paid or who are dependent on social [...]

Good riddance.  Or as WorldbyStorm writes over at Cedar Lounge Revolution, ‘The PDs get a a four week reprieve.  Then they die.‘  Can’t come soon enough.  The only downside is that we’ll have to endure a plethora of obituaries telling us how the PDs made a difference, how they shaped whole governments regardless of their size, [...]

As of this writing, the full text of the draft pay deal is still not readily available but the broad outlines are clear.  The pay element contains real wage cuts, the provision for the low-paid is minimal, there is no acceptance of the right to collective bargaining and as for mandatory pensions (one of ICTU’s [...]

I admire people who have absolutely no shame about going public with their proposals, no matter how weird, strange and utterly nonsensical those proposals might be. Such people don’t care whether they appear foolish; they are in too much of a hurry to get their little pearls into print. They must feel enormous [...]

With the pay talks nearly at an end, IBEC, in the form of its representative here on earth - our friend Turlough - is warning of the gravest repercussions if Irish employees are granted the right to collective bargaining.  Now, this is a right by law that employees in almost every industrialised country [...]

Good lord - is Master Batt O’Keefe in danger of turning into a modern-day Huey Long, a radical redistributionist who wants to confiscate wealth from the rich and give it to everyone else?  He seems to have recently discovered the fact that there are lots of millionaires running about the place and he is using that [...]

You’d think from listening to the employers of the land that every business in every sector is in danger of bankruptcy, liquidation or receivership.  They are all teetering on some ill-defined brink whose location is undisclosed - but it is real nonetheless, or so we are told to believe.  This poor-mouthing can be so passionate, almost persuasive, that [...]