Profile for Jason Walsh
Latest posts from Jason Walsh (see all)
Jason Walsh has posted 35 times (0 in the last month).
What a southern default would mean
Following the thread the other day, just a link to something I wrote elsewhere, but here’s the gist: There are two broad schools of thought on a default. One says it will result in savings being decimated, cash machines freezing-up and capital flight. The other says it will be less painful and quicker than the [...] more »
Who’s against the “bailout”? Almost everyone
The IMF’s mission chief in Ireland, Ajai Chopra, said of the Irish bailout: “This is a very good deal for Ireland in current circumstances.” Not quite everyone agrees. In fact, basically no-one without a vested interest agrees. more »
What does economic collapse look like?
As much as I am familiar with economics, I remain puzzled by one thing: if Ireland really is heading for absolute collapse – IMF intervention, seven lean years and everything else that the most pessimistic prognosticators claim – what would that mean in practical terms? more »
Japan’s export-led funk
Japan and Ireland’s economies are so different in character that I have never once read a comparison of the two, other than a nod to the concept of zombie banks. That said, a recent article in Foreign Policy that looks at Japan’s perpetual slump caught my attention. Ireland’s path out of recession, we are told, [...] more »
Taxing times in Ireland
With the Southern economy continuing to slide almost everyone agrees taxes must rise - but who is to pay them, exactly? more »
Cross posting: No platform for liberals
This is behind the paywall on forth but I’ve reproduced it here in full, in case anyone’s interested: No platform for liberals Precious pieties never solved anything, says JASON WALSH THE GREAT and the good, or at least the nice and the acceptable, of Northern society have come together once more to demand more niceness [...] more »
On (some) newspapers
The future of newspapers comes up from time-to-time here on Slugger. Here’s my take on a tangential issue: relgious papers. Humanity’s press Atheist and correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor, JASON WALSH considers religious newspapers a real blessing We all know churches have deep pockets but why have humanists failed to produce a paper of [...] more »
Exchanging ideology for identity
Over at… no, wait! (Oh, the in-jokes)… Three responses to the Belfast Salon debate held as part of Exchange Mechanism at the Belfast Exposed gallery are now online at forth Freeloaders rejoice, it’s not behind the paywall. Yet. more »
Exchange mechanism
As previously mentioned on Slugger, last night was the Belfast Salon’s attempt to make sense of Northern politics – and, indeed, the wider question of what politics mean. Speakers were Owen Polley, Malachi O’Doherty, Liam O’Dowd and myself. As a panellist I’m not in much of a position to judge how things went but the [...] more »
Debate: A House Divided?
Northern Ireland – democratic future or peace at any price? Tuesday 16 February, 7-9 pm (doors open 6’45) Belfast Exposed gallery, 23 Donegall Street, Belfast BT1 Amidst rumour, scandal and in fighting, as the NI Assembly lurches from one crisis to the next, the Belfast Salon considers alternatives to the existing political stalemate. Is perpetual [...] more »
Latest comments from Jason Walsh (see all)
Jason Walsh has commented 127 times (0 in the last month).
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Books
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Debating the Churches’ Role in the Peace in Northern Ireland
This morning’s Sunday Sequence featured a substantial debate (about 35 minutes into the recorded programme) on a new book,Religion, Civil Society and Peace in Northern Ireland (Oxford University Press 2011), written by sociologists John Brewer, Gareth Higgins and Francis Teeney. The debate was framed in an opening vignette by presenter William Crawley in uncompromising terms, [...] read our review » -
Stay out of Libya: counterinsurgency doesn’t work
A moment of some significance in journalism perhaps, as the New York Times reviews the current talked about book, The Wrong War: Grit, Strategy, and the Way Out of Afghanistan by Bing West. The author is no bleeding heart but a former assistant Defense Secretary from the Reagan era who stomped his way round the Afghan [...] read our review »
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Spare us a phoney row about racism, we’ve got enough on
A silly media row about racism just had to figure in the riots’ post mortem. Was the Tudor history expert David Starkey racist on Newsnight when he said: The whites have become black. A particular sort of violent, destructive, nihilistic, gangster culture has become the fashion. And black and white, boy and girl, operate in [...] read our review »
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Comment on You’ve heard of a pub with no beer, but a Church with no God?…
on 6 August 2011 at 12:33 pm
Amsterdam is just the dateline location, not part of his job title.
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Comment on What a southern default would mean
on 2 December 2010 at 9:39 pm
ulsterfan,
Iceland. This year.
Paul,
“How far would a purposeful conversation about this at the time of the negotiations have resulted in a better offer to Ireland?”
I don’t know. I have a feeling would have made no difference, due to the nature of Irish “governance”. But that’s no reason to not have it.
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Comment on What a southern default would mean
on 2 December 2010 at 9:39 pm
sammy,
“What is puzzling is the disconnect between the political parties and ‘anyone with an actual political outlook’.”
But FF and FG are unpolitical political machines. No ideology, no ideas.
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Comment on What a southern default would mean
on 2 December 2010 at 7:46 pm
Glencoppagagh, while I accept there is a cod-nationalist argument floating around out there, surely the main point is this: this is not national debt, it’s private debt. If the banks lent recklessly, let them deal with the consequences. Such free-wheeling capitalists surely wont want state aid, anyway…
“If Ireland remains in the Eurozone, any default on government bonds would surely be reflected in a higher cost of borrowing in the future when Ireland regained access to capital markets.”
Every analyst I’ve spoken to has said future costs will be higher, no matter what happens.
What strikes me about all this, as I wrote the other day, is that anyone with an actual political outlook is against the bailout and for defaulting. I’ve spoken to self-identified social democrats, (right-) libertarians, conservatives, socialists, Marxists and a libertarian Marxist. None of them support the bailout.
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Comment on What a southern default would mean
on 2 December 2010 at 7:22 pm
Itwas SammyMcNally whatdoneit, SF is against. Labour was against the guarantee in the first place. However, as it’s likely to go into gov’t with Fine Gael it may have to change its tune. Fine Gael is against it insofar as it says Fianna Fáil has wrecked the country etc., but rather more quiet on the specifics of what it will do. I expect more information will emerge from FG soon (and all parties) as the budget is due next week.
If one was inclined to be cynical then one might say it’s easy to let it pass into policy and then say “we had no choice, it was that last shower that did it and the EU won’t let us change policy.”
andnowwhat, I sincerely hope Ireland doesn’t return to the old days. Picturesque it may have been, but it was lacking basic communications infrastructure. At least we now have motorways, though we could do with more and some high-speed rail, too.
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Comment on What does economic collapse look like?
on 9 October 2010 at 8:49 pm
So, if the answer is: “it’s going to crash”, then: when and what does it mean in practice?
Also, surely house prices, both rents and mortgages, must come down by at least another 50 per cent in order to be in line with reality?
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Comment on Taxing times in Ireland
on 1 October 2010 at 5:39 pm
“Refusal to contemplate any rise in corporation tax in current circumstances does not inspire confidence that Ireland has much else to offer direct investors.”
I do agree, by the way.
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Comment on Taxing times in Ireland
on 1 October 2010 at 5:35 pm
Glencoppagagh, I have no opinion on whether or not taxes should be raised or how. What I am saying is that there are a lot of dubious (and flat) charges.
Fitzgerald is bending the truth. Yes, taxes are lower for the rich bu they’re higher for ordinary people. I’m not saying this is defensible or desireable, just that claiming Ireland has universally low income taxation is not accurate.
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Comment on Platform for Change launch- what next?
on 1 March 2010 at 2:08 am
Brian,
Only just seen this now.
Short answer: cart, horse etc.
Civil society can’t be expected to pick up the slack when it barely exists in any meaningful sense.
I don’t like the ‘right-thinking-people’ tone the PfC give off. People voted for the DUP and Sinn Féin so that’s what we have to deal with.
I’m rather baffled by the response to my post. Why would anyone expect a person who’s never been soft on the liberal-left to suddenly endorse it?
Also, I’ve said before the GFA was defective by design (and the SAA made it worse) so why would anyone expect me to want to find solutions within a framework that I think is fundamentally incapable of working?
Finally, leave off on the personal remarks, would you? The last thing I am is cynical and I didn’t make any argument from personal experience in the first place. What does it matter what I have or haven’t seen?
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Comment on Cross posting: No platform for liberals
on 1 March 2010 at 2:01 am
“And I think that brings us to the nub, you think it’s enough to criticise – “I promise you I will still be making critical arguments in a year’s time” – and I think if you try to move beyond that you find answers to some of your own criticism.”
It’s a process. The onus is not on me to have solutions – for a start, I’m just a journalist, not a policy wonk; secondly, I have no mandate and only speak for myself. Through criticism we may yet find an answer.
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