Articles: Euro %

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

Frequently, and with some validity, business people lambast economists for knowing nothing about the real world. They claim that economists dwell in ivory towers and just don’t get it. Some economists may well live in ivory towers but those of us who work for ourselves and employ people and try to make a living in the private sector are not as removed as the business people might think. In fact, we are business people. Yet the point is valid, as theoretical models of the economy do sometimes seem removed from reality. More

Financially, Spain is like Ireland but it is much, much bigger. There is little doubt that Spain will need a massive bailout. The question is, who has the money to bail out Europe’s fourth-largest economy, and when Spain topples what happens to Italy and what happens to the euro? More

When all the people you read every week for information are talking about the same report, you know that you should read it. From Paul Krugman on the left to John Mauldin on the right, some of my favourite reads of the week are citing a McKinsey Consulting report on global debt. More

The last flight from Frankfurt to Dublin last Thursday was jammed. I didn’t expect it. In fact I thought a 10.45pm flight from Germany would have been half empty. But, of course, the flight was jammed with returning young Irish people. More

On Monday at a breakfast meeting, I spoke to a group of students who were just finishing the masters in marketing from the Michael Smurfit School of Business at UCD. More

The deal signed last Friday is the beginning of the end of Europe as we know it. The shift is on from a family of nations, with checks and balances, to a German Europe where diktat triumphs over dialogue, and the interest of the strongest wipes the floor with the concerns of the weakest. Luckily for us, the deal looks unlikely to work because they haven’t been able to come up with enough money to prevent another bond crisis early next year, as more than €1 trillion of bonds in the eurozone come up for refinancing. More

When you walk up one of Ireland’s deserted main streets, it is difficult to reconcile the talk of Ireland doing well and being the model for other European countries to follow with the reality of living here. The reality here is that retail sales have collapsed and are not recovering. Anyone dependent on the domestic economy is just about surviving. No credit is being made available to anyone and unemployment is devastatingly high, while emigration continues apace.
That is what is going on in the “Real Ireland”.  More

You know the feeling when you get a text and have to look at it twice to make sure that what you are reading is what you just thought you read. More

By playing hardball with the French and Germans this weekend, Greece has bravely sparked a liberation which could topple the eurozone as we know it – and not a minute too soon More