Dan O’Brien has produced an inhuman amount of copy on the CSO figures released yesterday for today’s Times;frontpage, opinion page and business page analysis. To summarise “it looks aiight for now, if we don’t fuck up… but keep that 1866 Pino Grande Blanc in the cellar for two years yet, bruvh”… okay, Dan O’Brien would never say ‘bruvh’, but you know what I mean.
The Emerald Isle has high unemployment and one of Europe’s deepest budget deficits, and is taking some of Europe’s harshest austerity medicine. Economists, however, are starting to feel less dismal about Ireland’s prospects because of the unique nature of its export economy.
Exports account for more than 50% of Ireland’s gross domestic product, ahead of even Germany. And while many euro-zone countries’ exports go to their European neighbors, Ireland sends much of its chemicals, business services, technology and food to the U.S. and U.K. That maximizes the benefit of the falling euro, which has lost approximately 15% against the U.S. dollar and 8% against the British pound since the beginning of the year.
As Ronan notes, it contrasts with the NYT feature, also yesterday.
New York Times feature on the Irish economy and the impact of our economic policies…
Nearly two years ago, an economic collapse forced Ireland to cut public spending and raise taxes, the type of austerity measures that financial markets are now pressing on most advanced industrial nations…
[…] Rather than being rewarded for its actions, though, Ireland is being penalized. Its downturn has certainly been sharper than if the government had spent more to keep people working. Lacking stimulus money, the Irish economy shrank 7.1 percent last year and remains in recession.
It’ll probably be quiet around these parts until Saturday or so, we’re tying a things up on a story.
Although it seems everytime I say that Gav gets a big database doc FOI in the post and publishes it all an hour later. Anyway…
I suspect that many people will have been surprised to hear the media report, time and again recently, that Central Bank governor Patrick Honohan, an international expert in banking matters, gave an almost complete endorsement to the bank guarantee, with his only quibble being the inclusion of subordinated debt.
In fact, this reporting has not been at all accurate. While the report does conclude that some kind of guarantee was required, it raises serious questions about the essential nature of the type of guarantee that was introduced.
WORLD
Cracking documentary by Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Four Corners program (like Prime Time Investigates) in association with The Age newspaper into corruption in currency production. Finding have global repercussions. Podcast with reporters here too. There the on-camera journalist, Nick McKenzie, notes…
Corruption never happens without people knowing it’s happening, be it in a police force, a government department or Securrency, the company involved in this scandal. It needs more than one person to operate… it’s not going to be open, people aren’t going to be saying around the office “oh we bribed Mr X last night, but at the same time, people will notice things.
And some of the decent ones, he goes on to say, will feel compelled to speak.
The researcher, Richard Baker, also says something well worth quoting…
And the other [misnomer] about digging – and I think it’s complete falsity that’s given to journalism students – is you have to build up a big black contacts book that has [in it numbers for] all the top officials in secret services. That’s rubbish. The way you dig is you use some common sense and you hit the phones and you figure out that there’s forty people that worked in this company between these years… let’s call every one of them. It’s as simple as that. The best stories aren’t got from existing stories, they’re got from a sniff and you just call people and they tell you things.
Now this seemed to several observers—and I was one—a reveal. Think about what the Politico is saying: an experienced beat reporter is less of a risk for a powerful figure like McChrystal because an experienced beat reporter would probably not want to “burn bridges” with key sources by telling the world what happens when those sources let their guard down.
Let me enumerate why this is worth noting: (continued)
New series for The Nether Regions, ‘Crap jobs for the work experience kid’. Entry #1 here; being the burglar in the fear-mongering stock shots. Subscribe there; craic.
Vidjoe: Prince Charles is down with the kids at Glastonbury. Kinda, in a ‘casual’ suit. Slugger comment here.
The most striking entry belonged to Ruairi Quinn, and is notably absent from the profile on his website. In the Dáil register, we find the following:…
Go have a goo to get the nah’ledge.
The post also contains a cracking catch about the interests of another member of the political class…
I’ll spare the blushes of the Dublin City councillor who, in declaring shares in Cadbury, listed Nature of Business as “Sweets” (ah, screw him, it was [clicky-click-click the link to find out, TheStory readers].)
Intriguing little piece on the property pages of The Irish Times today via a report by magazine Property Week…
[The magazine’s analyst/journalist said] some of the properties owned by property investors were advertised to give the impression to their bankers that they were “trying to get their finances in order”.
These investments were priced up to 17 per cent above the levels advised by the agents involved, and were “clearly intended to repel buyers and just make it look like action is being taken so that the vendors can protect their financial positions”.
Apparently, there are quite a few properties on the market owned by property investors (e.g. bankers) or developers who are merely going through the motions in order to placate the lenders managing their finances but with no real intention of selling at current market prices. From what we can gather, it may be that in order for them to continue to get favourable treatment from the institutions, they know they must at least be seen to be trying to sell assets and those assets must retain a certain value as collateral in their finances.
Tangentially related; Barry O’Halloran reports today that some developers are after more taxpayers’ money. Which is, in essence, them admitting they’re utterly financially screwed. Which brings me to another report published in the last few days by Property Week underthe headline ‘Property market magic numbers’...
In Dublin;
4500 properties have come onto the market since the new year (180 per week)
2336 properties have gone sale agreed or sold (95 per week), many of which have been on the market since before the start of 2010.
So supply is still outstripping demand by almost 2 to 1.
The resulting downward pressure on prices is about 1% per month
Green deputy Paul Gogarty appears to have determined a new method of voting in the Dáil chamber, superseding even the swanky electronic voting system that was introduced some years ago and still causes some deputies problems.
When the motion of confidence in the government was put to the House last Tuesday evening, Gogarty responded not by the customary ‘‘Tá’’ by which deputies orally indicate their positions before a formal vote. Instead, the TD gave an enthusiastic thumbs-up signal to the Ceann Comhairle.
Mind you, he then appeared to answer ‘‘Níl’’ along with the opposition deputies. Irrepressible is the mot juste.
Finian McGrath: […] For this reason, I have no confidence in this Government. This is the reality for many people on the ground. It is about credibility, competence and confidence. I might add that I do not necessarily have confidence in some of the other parties who cannot make up their minds on particular issues and do not know where they stand on these matters.
I have in the past made some unpopular decisions in regard to banking but I did so in the national interest.
Paul Gogarty: Hear, hear.
FM: Unlike others, I do not play politics with the economic future of this country. The Government must accept responsibility for its part in wrecking this economy […]
PG: The two parties favouring an election would be seriously inconvenienced if one were called. Voters would be given the choice between an incompetent Fianna Fáil Administration and a bland uninspiring Fine Gael alliance with their Labour Party clones, chips off the old block. It would be the Dolly alliance.
This fundamental economic truth seems to evade our politicians. They don’t seem to realise that the more blank cheques they write to shore up the European banking system, the more they are burdening us with future taxes. This tax burden causes the economies to contract more. Writing cheques to bail out Europe’s banks won’t help anyone, apart from the creditors of the banks – who should suffer anyway. This is how capitalism works.
The lender is as culpable in a crisis. Was that not the capitalism you learned too?
Words like nepotism, largesse and cronyism are employed by polite and civilised society to convey its discomfiture with immoral conduct.
But the times in which we live demand that we develop a language and attitude more fitting to both describe and challenge the enemy Ireland faces today.
WASHINGTON — US lawmakers on Wednesday welcomed BP’s agreement to create a $20billion fund to pay claims from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill but vowed to keep holding the energy giant’s feet to the fire.
President Barack Obama’s Democratic allies cheered the news as a solid step towards helping afflicted areas recover from the worst environmental catastrophe in US history but said that more action would be needed.
Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi welcomed the news but warned: “If it takes more than 20 billion dollars, BP will have to cover the full amount for the families, workers, and small business owners of the Gulf Coast.”
The republicans are calling the spill “Obama’s Katrina”.
$20bn is €16bn.
Also today, now in perspective…
Chief Executive Mike Aynsley said Anglo is seeking to establish a “good bank” with roughly €2.5bn of capital, meaning Dublin would be unable to recover the remaining €19.5bn it is likely to inject.
“The lion’s share of this will never be seen again,” Aynsley told a parliamentary hearing.
“That money is gone … It will not be recoverable.”
Anglo Irish Bank, probably more expensive than the BP Oil spill.