Archive for May, 2005

The Central Statistics Office has confirmed what many of us privately suspected – Dublin between the canals will become a largely non-Irish zone within 16 years.

In the past few weeks, the world’s financial markets have acted in a confused, counter-intuitive, bipolar fashion. Are investors risk-seeking or becoming more risk-averse?

The recent rally in equity markets suggests the former; the fall in Treasury bond yields and the widening of credit spreads suggest the latter.

Years ago, I forged a reference from Jurys in Ballsbridge. I was heading to London for the summer after doing my Leaving Cert and intended to get any job, as long as it wasn’t on the sites. I realised early in life that I wasn’t cut out for building. Hotel work would suit me just fine, but I’d no experience.

A deafening sucking sound can be heard all around the globe. It is the sound of the world’s manufacturing jobs being sucked into China. Over the course of the next 20 years, millions of jobs from Dungarvan to Denver will evaporate and re-emerge in either China or India. This will change our world profoundly, and it is far from clear whether we are ready for this change.

The power of the Leaving Cert was quite extraordinary in searing into our petrified memory verses of poetry like WB Yeats’ September 1913. Twenty years on, it is still there in the back of the head somewhere.