Debt

The only question that matters in this election is whether we should continue paying out money to people who invested in our banks and got their bet wrong. The more money we pay these bank ‘investors’ – who have no right to be paid, because the banks they invested in are insolvent – the less…

IT is quite surreal to see the opening days of the campaign have been dominated by arguments about whether party leaders will appear on TV programmes. This doesn’t seem to be the sort of thing that will determine the future of the country. Arguably, the next seven weeks will shape what kind of country we…

Foreign banks and creditors should lose everything they gambled on the likes of Anglo, but instead, they have been saved by the taxpayer Make no mistake about it, this ‘bailout’ will sink Ireland. We are witnessing a monumental struggle between the innocent average Irish person and the guilty creditors of the bust Irish banks. Interestingly,…

Less than 20 years ago, the Irish currency was devalued amid apocalyptic warnings. Here we are again, heeding the same warnings, while the Irish people face years of austerity Many years ago, while working in the Central Bank during the 1993 currency crisis, I witnessed a particular drama playing out. Back then, the Irish authorities…

In the back of The Tavern on Castle Street in Carlow last Saturday night the lads, under the watchful eye of proprietor Sean Furey, were downing large bottles of MacArdles. Apart from a recent local incident involving the slaps given out to a young fella from Eire Og, top of the lads’ worry list was…

Let’s say you own a company. It’s a retail company which you set up in 1999. It traded well in the boom, but to grow quickly, you took on debts commensurate with your turnover. Every time that you wanted to increase turnover, you had to rent a new outlet and invest. This took money –…

EVERY month in the United States, something called the ‘non-farm payroll’ numbers is watched closely by the financial markets to get an idea about where the US economy might be headed. The Non-Farm Payroll (NFP) measures the national monthly payroll of all industries except farming. Last Friday, it was revealed that 95,000 fewer Americans were…

The last time I checked there was a harp on the front of my passport, not a picture of Michael Fingleton The other day I met a German radio presenter from ARD, the German public radio station. I’ve known her for quite a while — since a brief spell working on the German economy in…

Iceland’s main interest rate was lowered on Friday to 6.25 per cent, while its ten-year debt is also trading around this level. Ireland’s cost of long-term, borrowing rose on Friday to 6.5 per cent. So Irish interest rates are now higher than Icelandic interest rates. Icelandic interest rates are now lower than Irish rates: just…

Let’s cut to the chase. Ireland is on a slippery slope. The awfulness of this vista is now slowly beginning to dawn on people. At first we denied it, then we began to feel that something was wrong, but the penny has finally dropped in recent days. Irish bond yields are moving toward 7 per…