Thursday, May 24th 2012
Ken Livingstone’s Socialist Economic Bulletin has a piece by Michael Burke on the Irish Economy (Ireland – the Nature of the Crisis). It is written for a non-Irish audience, but it provides a thorough left-wing analysis of what has happened in the Irish economy, the government’s response, and suggestions about how they can be resolved. [...]
Yesterday I spoke to Dr. Nat O’Connor, Policy Analyst with TASC and a regular contributor to Progressive Economy on the phone about the TASC autumn conference in DCU this Saturday. Nat explains how the perspective of TASC and those of the speakers differs from the more mainstream economists and commentators whose solutions on how to [...]
TASC, the think tank that I’m sure many readers are familiar with from our regular links to posts on Progressive Economy, are organising an economics conference this weekend which is open to the public.
The overall theme is Towards a Progressive Economics, which reflects the attempts by the speakers to provide an alternative economic perspective to [...]
David Begg’s suggestion that the target date for returning the Irish budget to Maastricht compliance (that is, bring the annual deficit to below -3% of GDP) be postponed for four or five years certainly did get a response. Even Chairman Colm McCarthy felt moved to pen his thoughts on the suggestion (he wasn’t terribly enthused). [...]
In a previous post on Progressive-Economy.ie, where I disputed the economic benefits of cutting wages, Professor Alan Mathews and Pavement Trauma questioned aspects of my analysis, raising important issues which deserve a considered response. For this goes beyond ‘what wage levels are best’; it is about defining what the critical issues behind our competitiveness and [...]
Ronan Lyons | NAMA Assumptions on Prices Not Good Enough
Ronan Lyons, economist with the property website Daft, provides a very thorough analysis of the Dept of Finances assumptions about the fall in the price of property to 47% from the peak, and the suggestion that property yields are high relative to European and historical averages.
According [...]
Speaking in relation to loyalist paramilitary decommissioning, First Minister, Peter Robinson, stated recently that devolution should benefit working class loyalist communities as much as it does the ‘business community’.
According to Mr Robinson “Devolution isn’t there to help the business community alone. It’s there to help every section of our society.” (Newsletter, 19th June) How does [...]
Donagh writes:
As Nat O’Connor on Progressive Economy pointed out, the NAMA Bill does not define what ‘systemically important’ means, when it states: “The Minister shall not designate an applicant credit institution as a participating institution unless he or she is satisfied that— (a) the applicant credit institution is systemically important to the financial system in [...]
Walter Benn Michaels: diversity is insufficient
Walter Benn Michaels talks to George Miller for Le Monde Diplomatique podcast about the economic background in the US, and France, and how it affects the question of diversity.
Listen to this first, then read Louis Proyect critique of Benn Michaels’ argument.
Origins of Casino Capitalism[1]
When capitalism first began to emerge as the dominant economic system around the turn of the 19th century in Western Europe and North America, the role of the financial sector in the system was simple and straightforward. When individuals or groups wished to set up a new company, they sold shares in [...]
