NAMA Wine Lake. Brianlucey.net. User Profile: Dr. Constantin Gurdgiev. Brady Bonds For the Eurozone by Simon Johnson and Peter Boone. Exit from comment view mode. Click to hide this space WASHINGTON, DC – Today’s conventional view of the eurozone is that the crisis is over – the intense, often existential concern earlier this year about the common currency’s future has been assuaged, and everything now is back under control. This is completely at odds with the facts. European bond markets are again delivering a chilling message to global policymakers. This comes despite the combined bailout package that the European Union, International Monetary Fund, and European Central Bank created for Greece in May, and despite the ECB’s continuing program of buying peripheral EU countries’ bonds. Indeed, official rhetoric has turned once again to trying to persuade markets to ignore reality.
This is disconcertingly reminiscent of the spring – when Jean-Claude Trichet, the ECB president, lashed out at a skeptical bond market and declared a Greek default unfathomable. Europe could take this route. 19/02/2011: Paying down our debt out of Exports. Let's do a quick exercise. Suppose we take our current account - defined as the sum of the balance of trade (exports minus imports of goods and services), net factor income (such as interest and dividends) and net transfer payments (such as foreign aid and remitted profits). Suppose every year we use the current account balance solely for the purpose of repaying our Government debt. How long will it take us to do so. Let us start with some notes on methodology. Our current account is in deficit - since 2000, there was only one year - 2003 - when we had a surplus in the current account (charts below), which really means our external trade was not enough to generate a surplus to the economy.
In other words, here is what we are paying down in this exercise: Now, suppose we take current account balances for 2009-2015 (projected by IMF) as the starting point. Next, assume: Note: incidentally - the charts tell couple of interesting side-points based on our historical debt path: About | Ronan Lyons. Welcome to my website – I hope you find it useful. I am an Assistant Professor of Economics at Trinity College, Dublin, where my areas of research include urban economics, housing markets and global economic history. Prior to starting at Trinity, I was at Balliol College, Oxford, where my doctoral thesis covered the economics of Ireland’s recent property market bubble and crash.
The unifying aim of much of my research – from European property markets to long-run series on stock market prices and wages – is to understand how economic systems work and thereby contribute to our understanding of what makes a city, region or country thrive. I’m also interested in how decisions are made and some of my economic research involves behavioural aspects, such as the impact of information. On this site, which I set up in early 2008, I try to examine themes related to my research, by looking at the Irish economy, the world economy and property markets. The Irish Bank Sandwich: Time for the EU to face up to reality | Ronan Lyons.
It is hugely ironic that President Sarkozy called last week for Ireland’s corporate tax rate to be increased, as some sort of quid pro quo of the EU-IMF loan to Ireland. It is ironic, because it completely misses the point of who’s doing who a favour. Let’s leave aside, for the moment, the fact that the rate is a huge revenue raiser, that such things are a sovereign right and that Ireland is not being picked on for its low rate but for the fact that its rate is clear.
(Other countries in the EU have effective rates than go lower than Ireland’s, depending on the FDI deal being dangled.) One could certainly understand Mr. Sarkozy’s pronouncements if France and the other EU member states were gifting Ireland a large amount of money – some give and take would be expected. The “I Didn’t Do It” School of Thought The Great Financial Crisis has given birth to two excuses: “I didn’t know what I was borrowing” and “I didn’t know what I was lending”. However, it’s not as simple as that. Property Market | Economic Analysis | World Economy | Ronan Lyons. Is Africa the new Asia? | Ronan Lyons. Often, poverty, dependency and underdevelopment are the main prisms through which sub-Saharan Africa is seen by the world’s richest citizens, who variously call themselves “the West” (despite the location of Japan, Australia and New Zealand) and “the North” (despite the fact that there are more citizens in developing countries north of the equator than south).
Hence, the announcement yesterday that Southern Sudan would secede from Sudan after a referendum on the issue is refreshing, not only because it brings to an end one of the world’s longest running civil wars because also it makes people think – however briefly – of new starts and optimism, when they think of Africa. The switch away from a narrative of dependence also allows us to look at sub-Saharan Africa’s economic prospects. Most of us in the West/North have been quite wrapped up in our own bubble (and its bursting) the last twenty years or so. In sub-Saharan Africa, however, the picture is very different. Home thoughts to abroad: Three things the Irish election has made clear | Ronan Lyons. “I could be a millionaire if I had the money I could own a mansion, no I don’t think I’d like that…” So sang Clifford T Ward in his famous song, “Home Thoughts from Abroad”. While money and property didn’t have an allure for him, the two topics “I could be a millionaire if I had the money.
So sang Clifford T Ward in his beautiful song, “Home Thoughts from Abroad“. Last Friday, while enduring the worst economic contraction of any developed economy since economists and statisticians started measuring these things, the Irish people went to the polls. Even to an outside audience, this is a remarkable turn-around in fortunes. Which party got most first-preference votes in each constituency in the 2007 and 2011 elections? But for all the interesting theses generated for future PhD students in political science, do we know anything now that we didn’t know before the Irish election? (1) Ireland voters have emphatically ruled out sovereign default… Ireland and Greece are very different animals. David McWilliams.