If one were to look at the headline rate - GDP - you’d say, well, it’s not great in Ireland but we’re doing better than the Eurozone.  After all, the EU Commission is now projecting the Eurozone to grow by an anaemic 1.8 percent over the next two years while they estimate Irish GDP growth [...]

If I hear one more time that we have exited the recession I’m going to put my head through the computer screen.  We’ve come to expect this line from Cabinet Ministers.  But when commentators and media interviewers keep repeating this, per Ministerial press statements, well . . . it’s getting a bit much. And when [...]

There may be all sorts of reasons to cut public services, but reducing the fiscal deficit is not one of them. I repeat: we can cut the number of public sector employees - but it will have only a trivial effect on the fiscal deficit. It will, however, do [...]

It’s bad enough the debate has not asked the fundamental question of why, after a series of austerity budgets, the deficit did not fall, borrowing costs shot through the roof and growth rates were slashed. It’s as if none of this happened and the only way we can climb out of the fiscal crisis is [...]

Welcome to the New Year, same as the old year - if commentary is anything to go by. And to get the year going Colm McCarthy has produced this gem:
‘The best stimulus package is resolute commitment to the budgetary targets set out in the four-year plan.’
To buy into this nonsense one has to plunge head [...]

The anger I’m referring to is not about the meltdown in my broadband, my modem, my phone line - which has kept me off-line for the last two weeks.
After the anger, the rage, the disappointment - we are still left with the question: what do we do. Just because the [...]

The ESRI’s Autumn commentary (full commentary available on November 21st) was just one big writedown for 2011. From the three months previous, they revised downwards the following:
GDP: from 2.7 to 2.2 percent
GNP: from 2.2 to 2.0 percent
Employment: from -2,000 jobs to -10,000 jobs
Consumer spending: from 1.5 to 1 percent
Investment:  from 2.2 to -3.2 percent (turning [...]

The seasonally adjusted unemployment figures show a fall of 6,500 signing on the live register. This is totally due to emigration.  In fact, it is highly likely that the figures would have risen and not fallen, were it not for the scale of emigration right now, which is the now at its highest annual level [...]

Dan O’Brien argues that abandoning the four year plan to reduce the deficit to 3% of GDP by 2014 would be insanity (Irish Times Oct 21 2010). He is wrong.
The cosy policy consensus that Dan shares with Fianna Fail, Fine Gael and Labour, if implemented, will damage our economy and society. Ironically it will also [...]

The IMF released their latest ‘World Economic Outlook’ (WEO) last week. The WEO is a twice yearly publication in which IMF economists try to predict near and medium term economic developments - the WEO also, quite notably, failed to see exploding house-prices in certain advanced economies as the hazardous bubble which, of [...]