Articles: International Economy %

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

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

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

It is often the case that we fail to recognise the significance of events when we witness them and it is only years afterwards that we realise that this or that moment was a major turning point. In September 1988, I sat in a medieval hall in Bruges and listened to Margaret Thatcher giving the now famous Bruges speech. The speech was delivered at the opening of the academic year of the College of Europe. More

The Bell Tower dominates the skyline of the beautiful town of Bruges. It featured in a scene in ‘In Bruges’ when unlikely hero Brendan Gleeson fell to his death. In 1988 I spent a year there, studying at the College of Europe. I have vivid memories of the Bell Tower: being woken up at ungodly hours of the morning by its incessant chimes; feasting on that great Belgian delicacy of mayonnaise and chips flogged from the van under the tower; and Mrs Thatcher’s Bruges speech in the hall underneath the tower. More

This week, the column is going to focus on the one country that has been receiving thousands of young Irish people for the past three or four years, giving them a chance when there were none at home. The question I pose this week is: what will happen to Irish emigration to Australia when the Australian housing market goes bang? 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

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

One of the most fascinating pieces of news this week came from China. More

Exactly three years ago this week, this column argued that this financial crisis might result in Ireland (and others) leaving the euro. The argument was not based on any ideological/political antipathy to the currency but on some basic economic analysis about how debt crises and associated recessions end. More