Wednesday, Feb 8th 2012
The Dublin Consensus
Sli Eile of Progressive Economy responds to Sarah Carey’s article today in the Irish Times and talks about the dominance of the Dublin Consensus (following the notion of the Washington Consensus). Carey says the debate is over - ICTU should choose ‘patriotism and pragmatism’, sell ’spending cuts and tax increases’ to their members [...]
What would be your reaction if it could be shown that a set of policies would result in deepening the recession, increasing unemployment, reducing domestic demand (meaning more business closures) while having only a minimal effect on the fiscal deficit? What would you say to the political party or the Minister who offered you such [...]
Great. Coming home from a few days break and there’s the IMF, holding open the cell door. The projections are worrying enough, though hardly new. Still, to be reminded one more time that the economy is crashing through the double-digit barrier - it doesn’t really perk up your day. The real worry is the prescription, the [...]
Thornton Hall to go ahead despite overwhelming evidence that ‘super-prisons’ do not work
300 prisoners is the maximum manageable size of a prison, according to incontrovertible international evidence presented at the ‘Re-imagining the Role of Prisons in Irish Society’ Open Forum last week, yet the government - whose officials were in attendance at the IPRT event [...]
HOW AND WHY FIANNA FAIL AND ITS ALLIES HAVE BROUGHT THE IRISH ECONOMY TO ITS KNEES
Introduction
The day after Ireland was officially declared to be in recession (Thursday 25th September, 2008) Taoiseach Brian Cowen was quick to reiterate his oft-repeated claim that global factors were behind Ireland’s current economic woes. “What is clearly recorded are global [...]
Today, UNITE the union launched their ‘Growing the economy: A Programme for Economic Stimulus‘. It constitutes a fundamental challenge to the economic orthodoxy that dominates the current debate by outlining an alternative investment approach to the economic and fiscal crisis.
It’s premise is simple enough: Fianna Fail’s deflationary budgetary policies are not working. In fact, they [...]
Thoroughly Modern Marx
“The economic crisis has spawned a resurgence of interest in Karl Marx”, says Leo Panitch in his recent Foreign Policy article. “Worldwide sales of Das Kapital have shot up (one lone German publisher sold thousands of copies in 2008, compared with 100 the year before), a measure of a crisis so broad in [...]
Yesterday evening, TASC presented their annual lecture in the Royal Irish Academy with two highly noteworthy speakers, economist James K. Galbraith, Professor in Government/Business Relations at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs in the University of Texas, Austin and Professor Maria Rodrigues of the Institute of European Studies, Brussels Free University - [...]
Over at Cedar Lounge Revolution, WBS is doing a good job tracking the ongoing campaign against Ireland’s borrowing capacity and, in particular, the performance of the National Treasury Management Agency. On a recent post, I agreed but received this challenge from barratree:
Michael, - I’ve yet to see you addressing the point that most people are [...]
Boy, was Senator Fergal Quinn taken in. Or was he? In his recent column, ‘Getting people work a priority’ he attempts to make two real-life comparisons - one based on a letter he received and one from what he read in the paper. Senator Quinn forgot the first universal rule of life: don’t believe everything [...]
