Ireland’s dependence on China for goods like PPE is another sign of how vulnerable we are when international markets fail. TIM JACKSON says indigenous industries should be rebuilt where possible. #gript
I’m writing this on the evening of day six of our four week “lockdown” (as if we were in prison) in New Zealand. So far we have survived pretty well, something I put down to having jobs which have so far not been too disrupted by the shutting down of the entire country, and good […]
Top work from Niamh Horan at the Sunday Independent yesterday, reporting that one of the biggest potential problems with the Covid-19 outbreak is being addressed: Irish billionaires who were in Ireland the day the lockdown came into place will get a free pass to stay here for as long as it lasts. The Sunday Independent […]
The unemployment figures for March are out, and they’re not pretty. Basically, unemployment has more than doubled: “The unadjusted Live Register total for March 2020 is 205,209. When seasonal effects are taken into account, the seasonally adjusted Live Register total for March 2020 was 207,200 which was an increase of 24,400 from February 2020. Outside […]
Although the corona virus will run for months yet, its social, economic and political ramifications over the longer term are already apparent. Wall St’s winners will be those fit bucks who gobble up their debt-hobbled opponents in the recession that awaits us all. Major oil companies will merge to cut costs, most European and American […]
Covid-19 looks likely to rank among the most startling black swan events of history. A black swan in economic parlance disturbs the existing paradigms, sails into sudden view out of seeming nowhere and shatters settled doctrines about white feathers, orange beaks and blacked up eyes. Who could have predicted? We were looking in the wrong […]
It’s very easy to write about how the Irish Government is bungling the Coronavirus crisis (for it is, now, a crisis) by not moving quickly enough to restrict public gatherings and enforce strict containment measures, and to list the many ways in which it is failing to do so. Primarily, it’s easy to write because […]
Before you get all outraged about the new report from the Central Statistics Office declaring Ireland the second most expensive country in Europe, take a minute and reflect that it’s probably not that surprising: Irish consumers pay the second highest prices in Europe, according to new figures from the Central Statistics Office. The country also […]
To cut a long story short, the banks are charging people hundreds of thousands of euros more than they should be. Shawn Pogatchnik has the scoop: “Banks are hitting many mortgage holders with double the interest rate they need to be profitable, the Central Bank has warned in a stinging rebuke to lenders’ claims of […]
Watching the British Labour Party general election campaign has been, on the whole, a depressing affair. The Party has taken a momentous decision, on Brexit, to enter a General Election with a promise to have no fixed policy at all, and to make up its mind later. It decided at its annual conference six weeks […]
The Bundesbank says Germany is headed to recession. Not good news, especially with the possibility of a hard Brexit on the horizon: The German economy could slip into a technical recession in the third quarter after failing to recover over the summer, the Bundesbank said on Monday. In a monthly report, the Bundesbank said falling […]