Archive for December, 2008

The risk now is reputational risk. Credible institutions will simply not want to be associated with an outfit like Anglo Irish Bank.

Brian Lenihan is the Marie Antoinette of Irish politics. He has just done a deal with the management of the Irish banks which even the bewigged last queen of France (bred into the regime, like Lenihan) would not have tried to get away with.

The government is finally getting it. The €500 million innovation fund announced last Thursday is an enormously influential and intelligent move. In years to come, it may even be seen as Whitakeresque in its prescience. For the first time in a long while, we have a vision of this country that complements what is good in the economy and, more importantly, sees beyond the current malaise. In the weekend where the depth of the problems in our banking system were laid bare, it is encouraging to see that Taoiseach Brian Cowen has the capacity to think about the future.

David was on last Tuesdays (16/12/2008) Prime Time programme on RTE1 alongside Brendan Keenan of Independent Newspapers and Mark Fielding of ISME.
The clip can be viewed here
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The site will be opening a forum to discuss your ideas on what can be done to get Ireland out of…

The bank bailout just announced is simply not enough to right the wrongs in our financial system. And yet it is all we have.

David discusses the Irish economy with Ray Kinsella, professor at UCD Graduate Business school on the RTE Radio 1 program, Morning Ireland on December 15th 2008.
The program is available listen to from the RTE website here (opens in a new window and requires Real Player).
Additional interviews on the story are available on the right…

Has anyone broken the news to finance minister Brian Lenihan that he owns the banks? So far, this fact appears to be unclear to the minister and his civil servants.

It was a mirage fabricated by other people’s money. There was no miracle; it was an overdraft

Admittedly, looking out towards the horizon of the Indian Ocean from the volcanic heights of the French island of La Reunion is not the worst place to be writing about any economic crisis

She must have got it from her mother, who in turn got it from her mother, otherwise, she’d never have delivered the immortal lines with such certainty. When my mother pronounced, as she did on numerous occasions, the favourite put-down of the Irish Mammy, “she’s far too good for him, you know”, it seemed she was saying something so self-evidently obvious that it couldn’t be challenged.