Mack From the Telegraph “As the dust settles, it is clear that most of the damage in this crisis – reputational and financial – has been done by just one institution, Anglo Irish Bank,” Mr Honohan wrote in the FT. The vast bulk of the €33 billion in bank recapitalisation costs will be caused by The Celtic Chernobyl. At Irish Economy Karl Whelan argues the costs proffered in the media to wind down Anglo are unrealistic (€70bn-€100bn), but agrees that the …
In the USA the agency with responsibility for determining when the US has left recession claims that the recent payroll report showing the biggest increase in employment in three years makes it clear the recession is over. From the Bloomberg report – The biggest increase in employment in three years makes it “pretty clear” the deepest U.S. recession since the 1930s has ended, said the head of the group charged with making the call. Payrolls rose by 162,000 workers last …
NAMA architect Peter Bacon described Anglo Irish Bank as a Celtic Chernobyl in an interview on Newstalk radio this morning. The government have already pumped €22 billion into Anglo, Newstalk report Doctor Peter Bacon has told Breakfast here on Newstalk there’s much we still don’t know about Anglo’s liabilities, and the full picture won’t be a pretty one. “There is a large property investment portfolio that is not eligible, as I understand it, to go into NAMA” he said. “That …
NAMA First Loans 47% discount across the board (1st Tranche). €81bn worth of loans (in total). Cost of NAMA haircut = €38bn (estimate). Update Adding the haircut and the recapitalisation costs together doesn’t make sense, so I’ve removed that calculation. Consensus view seems to be €32-33bn recapitalisation costs. Per Philip Lane at Irish Economy. The current projection is that the State injection into the banking system will soon stand at €33 billion or so … €33 billion is about 22 …
While it has already been superseded in importance by other news, for which we even have the Sky-like marketing moniker SuperTuesday, RTE report on last night’s agreement between the Government and Public Sector Unions. It outlines how at least some of the pay cuts can be scraped back (the so called ‘route to the loot’) – Under the proposals, brokered by the LRC, unions will cooperate with extensive cost-saving measures across the public service. In spring 2011, there will be …
Business Insider have put together an interesting tweetdeck entitled More Than You Ever Wanted To Know About The Economics Of The Online News Business — A TWEETIFESTO Some interesting facts are that CPM rates (cost-per-1000-page impressions for advertising on a website) are $3-6 for a general news website and $10-20 for a business or premium website. NewsCorp are to charge for online access to their news websites. That will eventually include both The Times which had almost 20 million unique …
There is an upcoming event in Dublin that may interest readers here. The POD is hosting Mindfield a festival of the spoken word – from the blurb Grown from the hugely popular spoken word arena at the Electric Picnic festival and the regular Leviathan: Political Cabaret events, MindField celebrates the spoken word with an exciting and diverse international programme of conversation, poetry and theatre. As well as interactive debate and discussion on everything from sport to economics; politics to architecture; …
It’s a great new service from Google, which allows you to (very easily) visualise a ton of historic demographic and economic public data in many different forms. For example – Play a video showing the unemployment rate in the APIIGS group (including UK) from 1984 until today Visualise life expectancy at birth in the UK and Ireland Fertility rates in the UK and Ireland Foreign born population in Ireland, USA, UK and France Infant Mortality in Ireland, UK and USA …
Two articles worth reading – in Monday’s Irish Times the Tasc / progressive-economy folks had an article published that attacked the government’s approach and outlined their favoured alternative (largely tax rises & increased government spending). Yesterday evening Constantin Gurdgiev responded with a masterful demolition of their arguments. All the wrong options have been pursued 28 Alices in Wonderland of Tasc economics [Update : Nat O’Connor’s response to Dr. Constantin Gurdgiev] Quote from Constantin Gurdiev’s article.. “Equally damaging have been the …
A couple of interesting articles featuring George Soros in Friday’s Irish Times. They serialise an extract from The Soros Lectures where George argues that the current global financial system is broken – and can not be fixed, at least in it’s current form, he discusses the risk of a double dip recession (likely in 2011), the Euro and European integration – of particular significance as his hedge fund played a major role in the collapse of the original ERM. He …
Interesting article by ex-IMF supremo Simon Johnson and Peter Boone on how to correct a severe systemic fault in our economic system they believe could cause complete financial meltdown / economic collapse. The doomsday cycle has several simple stages. At the start, creditors and depositors provide banks with cheap funding in the expectation that if things go very wrong, our central banks and fiscal authorities will bail them out. Banks such as Lehman Brothers – and many others in this …
€200k and national solvency up for grabs – Your Country, Your Call website.With Mary McAleese fronting this campaign, it has the feel of a call to arms or, at least, ploughs. Maybe it will be more successful than the ideas campaign? Or perhaps Pinsters and the politics.ie set are right to sceptical? MackNo bio, some books worth reading – The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves – Matt Ridley . Crisis Economics: A Crash Course in the Future of Finance -Nouriel …
RTE report that Fine Gael new-comer and rising star George Lee has resigned from the party and is to leave the Dáil. Lee, a former economics jourmalist with RTE caused a stir when he joined Fine Gael last year, romping home in the Dublin south by-election. Per the RTE report – In the statement released just before lunchtime, George Lee says it has been a very difficult decision, but it is one that he has taken after a great deal …
The Euro has fallen against Sterling to approx. 87p on the news that Consumer Price Inflation rose sharply to 2.9% in the UK in December. Bloomberg report that “The CPI number is a shocker,” said Peter Schaffrik, a co-head of interest rate strategy in London at Commerzbank AG. “It means the Bank of England will have to rein in its monetary stimulus, perhaps sooner rather than later. We are avoiding gilts, especially at the front end. It’s difficult for the …
After coming under a sophisticated attack by Chinese hackers who managed to steal Google Intellectual Property late last year, Google has announced that it will stop filtering web results in China. They will enter into negogiations with the Chinese government to see whether or not they can legally continue to offer a service in the country. It appears the primary target of the hacking attempt was Chinese dissidents using Google services. Will this move pressure the Chinese government to reign …
Morgan Kelly’s most recent horror novel research paper available online – The Irish Credit Bubble. A taster – By pushing itself close to, and quite possibly beyond, the limits of its fiscal capacity, the Irish state has succeeded in rescuing Irish banks from their losses on developer loans. Despite this, these banks remain as zombies entirely reliant on continued Irish government guarantees and ECB forbearance, and committed solely to reducing their own debts. While bank capital levels are, probably, adequate …
Depending on whether or not you regard GDP or GNP as the best measure of the actual size of the Irish economy, Ireland may have (or did not) exit recession in Q3 2009. Ireland is an unusual case in that substantial amounts of economic activity recorded in the GDP figures result from transfer pricing, where organisations transfer economic activity generated in one location to another within the same company. The Central Statisitics Office report that The seasonally adjusted estimates show …
David McWilliams sees an opportunity to expand the IFSC Last Wednesday, the British chancellor, yielding to popular pressure for revenge, announced he would tax the bonuses of high-flying investment bankers. He announced a 50 per cent tax on any bonus over £25,000.This, for most mere mortals, would seem nothing to grumble about until you see what the reality is for those bankers. When you consider that for the 5,000-odd Goldman Sachs employees in London, the average pay – of which …
Tension rising in the Dail, Paul Gogarty of the Green’s party deals with Emmet Stagg. Listen here And here he is in his full glory: MackNo bio, some books worth reading – The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves – Matt Ridley . Crisis Economics: A Crash Course in the Future of Finance -Nouriel Roubini, Stephen Mihm
Bar Stool Economics Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to €100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this: The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing. The fifth would pay €1. The sixth would pay €3. The seventh would pay €7. The eighth would pay €12. The ninth would pay €18. The tenth man (the richest) would pay …
