The Small Firms Association (SFA) has looked deep into the problems of the economy and has come up with a solution: cut people’s wages. Not just cut, but do a right machete job on them. And not just any ol’ wages, but the wages of the lowest paid in society.
Wow, that’s a recipe [...]

Sometimes, it’s the little things that get up your wick. The Sunday Business Post produced one of those little calculations to suggest how expensive it is, how draining on our pockets it is, to increase public sector pay:
‘Each 1 per cent rise in the public pay bill costs the government almost €200 million.’
Geez, that [...]

What do you call this? Eamon Gilmore, TD read out in the Dail a statement by Brian Cowen, TD from 2004 when the latter was Minister for Finance. Mr. Cowen was explaining why Ireland was finding it difficult to reach the Overseas Aid Development target of 0.7% of GNP.
‘The problem here is we [...]

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, [...]

ICTU is playing some hardball. Recently, David Begg suggested that inflation could go as high as 6.5 per cent. He’s probably not far off the mark. Today’s CSO’s figures show inflation running at 5 per cent - up a half a per cent since last month Even the European HICP [...]

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 [...]