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Have we learnt nothing? The most depressing – and I mean depressing – news last week was that useless, unproductive houses in upmarket Dublin are now making well over the guide prices at auctions, at a time when useful, productive SMEs are going to the wall for want of credit and working capital. After everything we have been through, this is pathetic. It means that the same banking and property cabal that got us into this mess is flexing its dangerous muscles again. More

A friend of mine, a small business owner, is typical of many thousands of cash-strapped entrepreneurs in Ireland at the moment. More

The top 1 per cent of Americans now own a staggering 40 per cent of the country’s $54 trillion of wealth. This is an extraordinary figure. When taken together with the fact that wages as a proportion of national income have been falling in the US since the 1980s, we see a vision of a society where the average person’s income is faltering, yet the wealth of the super-rich has never been more extreme. As a result of the fall in the share of output represented by wages, the share represented by profits has gone up sharply, and corporate America is now sitting on more cash than ever before. More

It is hay fever season again. I know it is because my eyes are streaming. I look at my son and see that I have passed on the nasty hay-fever gene to him too as he struggles with puffy eyes, itchy throat and constant sneezing and wheezing. For the next while, we’ll be watching the pollen count like hawks, but the hay-fever season will pass. It always does. More

Do you remember the ad in which a bloke on the top floor of a Dublin bus stands up and admits to all the passengers: “I don’t know what a tracker mortgage is”? He stands up, unsure of himself, and makes his public confession, half-petrified. You can see the relief on his face as he admits that he hasn’t a “rasher’s”. More

Last night we saw not just a football match between two great teams, but two very different cultural, social and economic models battling for supremacy. On one hand we had the frugal but brilliant Germans of Borussia Dortmund, on the other was the free-spending (and also brilliant) Real Madrid. This was a battle between the local, academy-based Dortmund, and the international, chequebook-driven, Real. More

For the economist, one of the most dangerous urges is to fall in love with our forecast. That is to say, to become so wedded to our own world view that we are blind to the changes evident all around us and the effect we could have on our own preconceived notions about how the world works. More

The forces of austerity are in retreat all around Europe and the world. Let’s make no mistake about what this means. The word ‘austerity’ has come to mean many things, but austerity is shorthand for the European policy of lumbering citizens with the debts of the financial markets and contending that the resulting increase in the national debts is the cause of the problem, rather than the consequence. More

Enda Kenny would cut a dash in a pair of bottle-green, high-waist parallels and a snugly-fitted Bay City Rollers bomber jacket. Or maybe a Robin Gibb, Bee Gees one-piece with the flares up, in which you could hide a six-pack? More

Did you know that divorce is contagious? A recent US study found that divorce can spread through social networks, like a virus, passing among friends, siblings, even people you work with. More