International Economy

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 If you have ever tried to learn German, you will know that reading it is much more difficult than speaking it. The problem…

IN the late 1980s, while studying at the College of Europe in Bruges, I was struck by just how pragmatic the European project appeared to be. Many of the lecturers and professors were deep EU “insiders” — distinguished academics from all over Europe who had excelled in their own fields. They seemed to be the…

When I was in school, the class was fairly split between swots and messers. But the messers broke into two groups. The first were the hard-core messers — these were the lads who the teachers told us “would come to no good”. If they were caught smoking in the jacks and you had just managed…

Are you too fascinated by the details of Berlusconi’s ‘Bunga Bunga’ parties? With all the serious stuff about the Dail, the election, politics and our predicament, we need a distraction. A quick glance at ‘Grazia’ from time to time is just the tonic. In such magazines and in all the red tops, we get the…

I am whizzing through the Austrian countryside towards Vienna Airport on a packed train to get a flight back to Dublin. The efficiency of this place is extraordinary — as too is the male Austrian weakness for the hats with large luxuriant feathers sticking out of them! Silly as it sounds, it is actually quite…

Deep in the bowels of the earth, in a huge open cast mine in Port Hedland, Western Australia, the distinct sound of a lilting Cork accent crackled through the tannoy. A group of exhausted miners were sitting down after a shift in over 100 degrees desert heat, talking about a Chinese offer for the company,…

Last week, we had the tale of two countries. One country, Iceland, apparently did ‘everything wrong’ by defaulting on its bank debt and increasing government spending as the people of Iceland saved. Iceland told the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to back off until it was ready to do a deal. It also put the bank…

I AM sitting outside a lovely bar called De Prins in Amsterdam, looking out over the canal, past the cyclists, toward Anne Frank’s house beyond. The crowds are lined up again, as they are every day, to bear witness to the most unspeakable crime and the most magnificent courage. We know that the effervescence of…

Last Friday, European bond markets wobbled again as investors – albeit in a thin market – got the fear. The reason apparently was, again, Greece, where reports of soaring unemployment and complete economic stagnation are fuelling worries that the Greeks will have to renegotiate their debts. Bondholders will lose no matter what. But they should…

Our boomtime ideology is alive and kicking – and our refusal to look to developing countries to build our economy again will be the death of us. Can Irish football tell us anything about the state of the country, and just how far we have to travel to compete at the highest level? People might…