Bob Dylan could have been writing about these times when he composed the lyrics ‘the times they are a changing’. This was never so apparent than on a recent trip to the US to meet  with social and economic justice organisations.
Most striking was the shift in the parameters of the public debate about wealth, income [...]

The magnitude of the blow suffered by the UK economy since the beginning of the financial crisis is very considerably minimized by not presenting it in terms of a common international yardstick. Gauged by decline in GDP, using a common international purchasing measure, dollars, no other economy in the world has shrunk even remotely as [...]

[This is the proposal for the pilot course as it stands today - hoping to refine and refocus it over the coming weeks, but this is the base of it here.

If the pilot course is successful, and there is sufficient interest within the organised trade union movement to continue with the course, then I'd see [...]

The hugely impartial Frances Ruane of the ESRI was a former non-executive director of Depfa Bank, which was based in the IFSC and which collapsed in 2008, costing the German taxpayer, via its forced ownership of Hypo Real Estate, well over 100 billion euro. The ‘hands-off’ regulation of the IFSC was key to Depfa’s business [...]

Michael Roberts, the self-described Marxist economist, has a great post on the Capitalism in Crisis series which was run in the Financial Times recently. Capitalism doesn’t seem to be working as it should, the FT thinks now, given all the protests and the tendency of the ‘Great Global Financial Crisis” (three years and counting so [...]

There’s nothing wrong with saying, hey I got it wrong.  We all get something wrong from time to time; never more so when the subject matter is economic and fiscal forecasting.  When people and institutions don’t admit they got it wrong, especially when they got it demonstrably wrong, when the policies they are advocating are [...]

There’s been a lot of discussion about whether 2012 will see property prices hit the ‘floor’.  The Government and NAMA are doing their bit to help to stimulate house purchases through budgetary measures and negative equity insurance schemes.  Unfortunately, there has been little debate about the optimal level of house property prices.  Few have been [...]

A lot of people are going to find it difficult in 2012, what with the economy returning to recession and all.  But for one group, it will be business as usual: Anglo-Irish creditors.  And that business will mean that they will be repaid in full.
Indeed, it’s already started.  On Tuesday, a payment of €2.1 million [...]

As previously mentioned, Look Left 9 or Vol.2 No.7 is now available in Easons and other outlets both north and south. There is plenty in there for everyone, but I thought as Look Left have published it on their site that I should link to Conor McCabes’ piece Gombeens, Spivs and Bankers. It provides a [...]

Stephen Collins bothers me. Every time I read his Irish Times column I get an uncomfortable feeling. Something just doesn’t seem right.
At first I thought it was because my views were diametrically opposed to his. Maybe it was the ideological gulf between us that bothered me.
But then I realised that I read a great many [...]