Mark Conroy, who kindly posted my essay ‘Towards a New Economic Narrative’ on Indymedia, noted my comment that it was growing quickly out-of-date and asked:
‘In what way is it “out of date”, and what would an updated version of it look like?’
Fair question. With new projections from Ulster Bank suggesting we are entering into a [...]

The recapitialisation of Irish banks seems to be designed to restore them to their previous prosperous ways before the decline in International finance which began 2007 and the rapid deflation of the Irish property bubble in 2008. The reassurances we are given by the big 2, AIB and Bank of Ireland and the Minister for [...]

The RTE Prime Time programme last night contained some of the most misleading (to put it mildly) presentation of facts and subsequent analysis to have been aired in a long time. Make no mistake about it: we are being prepared for the economic abattoir. And if you need any proof that the Left is rapidly [...]

The above is a graphical representation of a failed bank.
The liabilities consist of deposits, which are promises the bank has made to pay out cash on demand to depositors. We can treat this as a fixed amount, and hence it is in grey. The assets are loans, some of which are performing and some are [...]

Goodbody Stockbrokers is predicting a decline in GDP this year of 6% unsettling public finances. Irish Nationwide has been downgraded by Moody’s to one notch above junk. Ireland is bankrupt. More specifically, its financial institutions are bankrupt, its government is bankrupt and, unfortunately, many of its businesses and citizens are bankrupt. But this is not [...]

I don’t say this very often but here goes.  Fine Gael has put forward a very positive proposal regarding the banking crisis; and once teased out (and implemented) could see us jump free of this particular crisis and back on the road to economic activity (one crisis down, 99 to go).  Fine Gael?  Well, a good idea [...]

Did anyone catch it?  Stephen Collins did but he didn’t give us the maths.  When Minister Lenihan introduced the Finance Bill he made a small amendment in the new income levy, imposing an extra one percent on incomes above €250,000.  In doing so he put forward two statistics:  first, that this would net the state coffers €60 [...]