Tremors from Australia’s crash will reach our shores
January 11, 2012
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…
A bad deal for Ireland and a bad deal for Europe
December 12, 2011
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…
What happens if Germany says enough?
August 8, 2011
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. On Friday morning, I got a message from a friend who was caught in a huge midsummer traffic jam at the Swiss border coming…
An unbalanced economic world
August 1, 2011
One of the most fascinating pieces of news this week came from China. On Friday, Chinese state media warned that the United States was threatening the world with a recession that could be ‘‘much nastier’’ then the 2008 downturn. It described Washington’s standoff over the ‘‘debt ceiling’’ as ‘‘dangerously irresponsible’’. Referring prosaically to the donkey…
Three years on, we are no closer to solving debt crisis
July 13, 2011
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. Unfortunately, it is very easy to use…
ECB a slave to passing fads
June 13, 2011
The other day, I watched a Few teenage kids knocking around my neck of the woods. One lad in particular caught my attention. He walked like a young fella with haemorrhoids, legs far apart as if in total discomfort. I watched him as he hung around with his mates, trousers sagging down so far that…
We can be the new Argentina
June 6, 2011
If you are ever feeling a little rough and could do with banishing the lingering echoes of the night before, a shave by a barber is your only man. Last week, deep in the Caballito district of Buenos Aires, I put my life in the hands of an octogenarian barber in a fantastically antiquated snip-joint…
There is life after default, take a look at Argentina
June 1, 2011
I remember it so distinctly. Mum allowed me to stay up to watch it even though it was a school night and it meant going to bed after midnight. The reception was appalling on our tiny “PYE” television in the corner of the kitchen. But Scotland were playing Holland in the 1978 World Cup and…
Memo to ECB: print money
May 30, 2011
Is the European Central Bank (ECB) Europe’s AIG? In other words, will the ECB be left holding the can, having lent all this money to the peripheral countries in order to save rich banks in Germany and France, in the same way as insurance giant AIG was destroyed by the sub-prime market? If you remember…
DSK’s downfall is Ireland’s loss
May 23, 2011
Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s economic philosophy suited Ireland’s situation, so his departure is not good news for us Last Monday, having trashed the pitch that the England football team train on ahead of internationals with a display of over-the-hill five-a-side, I headed back into Google’s Zeitgeist conference in the salubrious surrounding of The Grove in Hertfordshire. Zeitgeist…
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