Archive for July, 2008

What do Robbie Keane and the knowledge economy have in common? While much is made of how Ireland has benefited from globalisation and how we should build a knowledge economy, we could do worse than look at the unique talent of Robbie and see how his career sheds light on the trends likely to dominate professional life in the future.

Brian Cowen is proposing to embrace people of Irish descent in a move that could redefine our nation.

In New York last week, Brian Cowen made a significant speech. Although not much detail was reported, its content will have more impact on Ireland than anything he or Nicolas Sarkozy might have said at their much-hyped meeting.

This is the opportunity to push through reforms and market the entire programme as a necessary exercise in ‘tough love’

In light of the impending recession, extravagant spending must be curtailed and replaced with a financial prudence that we, as a nation, conveniently forgot about many years ago.

Is it time to think the unthinkable? With banks shares in free-fall, lending collapsing and bad debts rising by the hour, what can we do? Now that the slowdown has spread well beyond houses and construction — evidenced by falling retail sales, rapidly rising unemployment and faltering tax revenues — is there an option out there, which, although dramatic, might be plausible in the context of the recession the country is facing?

The crisis in Ireland is monetary, and the bank has to assess what needs to be done and tell the truth.

This weekend, Rupert Murdoch was door-stepped by a bunch of journalists. Speaking off the cuff into a sea of microphone heads, the veteran media mogul summed up, with clarity and directness, what he saw as the problem facing the world economy.

From Shanghai to Sydney, the image of freelancers emailing happily from wi-fi hot-spots, sipping a latte — all under the vaguely one-world, benign Starbuck’s Medusa logo — is one of the enduring images of globalization.

The other week, RTE reran the 1976 classic movie The Outlaw Josey Wales, starring Clint Eastwood as the eponymous hero. During a particularly brilliant exchange, the bounty hunter Fletcher, hot on the heels of the outlaw Wales, comes out with an inspired put-down to the cowardly senator who is trying to pull the wool over his eyes. Squinting into the sun, chewing tobacco, Fletcher disdainfully hisses: ‘‘Don’t piss down my back and tell me it’s raining’’.

This chart records the traumatic property experience of Japan. A monumental boom in the late 1980s and early 1990s reversed dramatically and house prices fell by 76.4pc from the peak.