Friday morning and I’m looking forward to the weekend and hopefully catching a few rays.  A friend, however, sends me a copy of the Goodbody report - the most pessimistic forecast yet.  It’s already raining.Goodbody predicts the economy will decline by 2.2 per cent this year but the good news is that next year, [...]

Lunchtime
No matter what point in the economic cycle a country is in, the science of history gets a battering. But in recession times, history is just simply invented.
Take Professor Mary Harney, TD, on Question & Answers the other night. She treated us to a yellow-note lecture on . . well . [...]

Lunchtime:
Thank god someone is talking common sense. Tom O’Connor, economist at the Cork Institute of Technology, was on Morning Ireland arguing that rather than cutting expenditure, we should be looking to increase taxation on the wealthier sections of society His premise is that our tax take is low and what we need [...]

With Exchequer finance spiraling out of control, what should the Left argue? Shore up capital spending? Cut current expenditure (i.e. public services, wages, social programmes)? Increase taxes? What should the Left’s prescriptions be? How can we show the public that we have a handle on these matters? What is the best way forward?
Difficult one. A [...]