Much of the damage to the economy, and the consequential dramatic rise in unemployment was avoidable. If fiscal policy had been used to reduce demand rather than to exacerbate the inflationary pressures it could have defused the property bubble well before it became dangerous. This would have required budgetary policy to have targeted in increasing [...]

Update: Peadar Kirby has an excellent post up on Progressive Economy which discusses another, barely acknowledged, crisis: the crisis of knowledge in our institutions of state, most sharply in the Dept of Finance and the ERSI, the media and our universities:
A debate spluttered into life over the last week or so that added yet another [...]

Book Review: Ireland’s Economic Crash, by Kieran Allen, The Liffey Press
Kieran Allen’s excellent analysis of Ireland’s recession, the first that this writer has encountered from an Irish Marxist, is predicated on a single simple truth: Since 1970, in the worldwide capitalist system, profits have been falling. For example, ‘the profit rate in 1997 was only [...]

This is just a quick response to the latest truism that wage inflation undermined the Irish economy.
Basically, what we see in Ireland over thirty years is that the average industrial wage and inflation oscillate around each other quite closely. As inflation drops/rises, wages follow, and vice-versa.

There’s a comment often bandied about when it comes to housing in Ireland: ‘our parents got through it, so can we.’
Well, our parents didn’t get through this, because our parents never faced what Ireland is facing now - at least in terms of housing debt.
The sheer level of theft which has taken place - and [...]

The figures below are based on the Quarterly Household Survey reports of employment by SOC classification. They relate to the changes in employment from the fourth quarter 2008 to the fourth quarter 2009.
The Quarterly Household Survey is a sample survey, details of which are outlined here.

In the June budget the Minister for Finance, Mr. Richie Ryan, announced that the two major Associated Banks [Bank of Ireland and Allied Irish Bank] had agreed to make £40 million available to house purchasers over the next two years. The two major banks were each to make £10 million available for house purchase loans [...]

Davy Stockbrokers nailed it: we’re not wealthy now, we never were. Though we had years of high income, private investment in the productive economy was ‘pitiful’, opting instead for property and construction. While productive public sector investment was higher, it was squeezed by fiscal policies which cut taxation - especially for those on high incomes [...]

This is an edited version of an article written for the latest edition of the Scottish Left Review
The situation that the Irish Left finds itself during the largest recession in the history of the Irish state, and the greatest crisis in global capitalism since the Great Depression, is not that different in terms of [...]

We are not Spain, we are not Italy, we are not Portugal. Repeat. We are not Spain, we are not Italy, we are not Portugal.
In one sense, that’s correct. In terms of the ‘market’ view of the Irish economy, we’re worse. But don’t expect commentators who have been demanding public spending cuts to point this [...]