Michael Hennigan: The Finfacts economics site was launched in 1997. Average monthly page views of this blog are at 50,000.
2019 —
"Hat tip: Perhaps the most researched commentator on the Irish economy is a guy based in Kuala Lumpur. I've never come across any other Irish economist with a greater command of relevant Irish economic data, gov policies & economic history" — Paddy Cosgrave, Founder and CEO Web Summit.
The state is not easy to discern because of the dearth of data, delusion and distortion.
For the third time in 14 years, an Irish government has published another plan to turn Ireland into a "world-class" knowledge economy, despite falsely claiming that the economy is among the most innovative in the world.
The controversy this month about a proposed official commemoration for members of the British era Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) and Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP) police forces who lost their lives in the Irish War of Independence of 1919-1921, is a foretaste of the upcoming centenary commemorations of the formation of the Irish Free State in 1922 and the shameful Civil War that it triggered.
In January 2004 Mark Burnett, a British-born producer of reality TV programmes in the United States and Britain, launched a new series that tapped into America's celebration of an era that many saw as an Age of Entrepreneurship and Innovation. Burnett teamed up with a New York serial bankrupt who was notorious for defrauding suppliers and who was on the blacklists of Wall Street banks.
The biggest Amerian corporations had an average effective tax rate of 11.3% in 2018 — the taxes companies actually paid in 2019 as a percentage of 2018 profits — according to a study of 379 Fortune 500 companies, from the Institute on Taxation & Economic Policy (ITEP) that was published in Washington DC before Christmas. If all the Fortune 500 firms were included the rate would likely be below 11%.
Niall Ferguson, the American-based British television historian, in The Sunday Times of December 8th feared a hung British parliament "despite the opinion polls," as the Labour Party had a stronger social media presence.
Ireland is a high-cost economy but unlike Denmark, which is a global innovation leader with a high ratio of exporters, a high-level of entrepreneurship and high employer startup activity, indicators suggest Ireland is below average in several areas among the 25 rich countries in the OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) area.
Following 2015, the year of Leprechaun Economics, when Ireland's GDP (gross domestic product) jumped 26%, a Modified Gross National Income was produced by stripping out 3 big multinational tax distortions from the National Accounts. However, there remain distortions from massive tax avoidance, and in particular in international indicators.
In April 1907 James Joyce, the Irish writer, gave a lecture on Ireland in Trieste, the North Adriatic port city. The lecture was titled 'Irlanda, Isola dei Santi e dei Savi' and in English, 'Ireland, Island of Saints and Sages.'
The Irish whiskey industry has made a remarkable comeback at international level since Pernod Ricard of France acquired Irish Distillers in 1988. Jameson Irish Whiskey sales have quintupled since then and today the brand is among the top global whiskey brands but the early 19th century glory days of Ireland as the leading whiskey producer are not back. The United Kingdom is by far the world's biggest whisky (the spelling used by Scotch distillers) exporter.
In 2017 Ireland supposedly exported €17bn worth of Apple iPhones/ materials to China even though there were no shipments! Ireland has no history of direct development of the iPhone, or supplying any related material to China. Last year IMF staff estimated in respect of Ireland, "that the contribution in value-added terms of iPhone exports...account(ed) for one-fourth of the country’s economic expansion in 2017."
Confusion abounds about United States foreign direct investment (FDI) in Ireland and "Irish" FDI in the US — the latter is dominated by American firms. Ireland's inward FDI excites politicians, senior civil servants, public enterprise agencies, professional vested interests coining from it, and gullible journalists, as Ireland appears to be among the leading recipients of US FDI in the world while Ireland is also among the top 10 countries for investment in America!
"Critics say that America is a lie because its reality falls so far short of its ideals. They are wrong. America is not a lie; it is a disappointment. But it can be a disappointment only because it is also a hope," are the concluding lines of the 1981 book, 'American Politics - The Promise of Disharmony' written by Samuel P. Huntington (1927-2008), a Harvard political scientist.
Makgadikgadi in Northern Botswana is one of the largest salt flats in the world and is all that remains of the formerly enormous Lake Makgadikgadi. Two hundred thousand years ago Makgadikgadi was Africa's biggest lake and it was surrounded by wetlands. Scientists from Australia's Garvan Institute of Medical Research and the University of Sydney in October published the results of DNA sequencing cross-referenced with other information, including geological and climate data. The scientists say that the area was completely surrounded by a very uninhabitable region, "which led to our hunter-gatherer ancestors staying put for some 70,000 years." The researchers claim that the area is the cradle of humanity.
Inflation-adjusted average weekly pay this year for production and nonsupervisory staff in the United States is 9% below the 1972 level, using 2019 dollars as per the chart above.
Ireland has no post-Brexit economic plan despite an Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) estimate last March that in an agreed deal scenario up to 45,000 fewer jobs would be created in a decade.
This article focuses on 100-year predictions made in 1930 by John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946), the British Depression-era economist, while challenges such as climate change, housing, automation and ageing are set to dominate the coming 100 years.
RTÉ, the Irish state broadcaster, is “flat broke” according to one of its radio presenters last August; the Irish Times owns the two Irish-owned daily broadsheet newspapers while Mediahuis, the new Belgian owner of the Independent titles after successive control by two business entrepreneurs since 1973, will likely give a welcome greater European orientation to news at a time when the number of the Irish that leaned towards Euroscepticism has plunged, thanks to Brexit.
The majority-owned foreign affiliates of American multinational enterprises sell most of their output outside the United States according to data from the US Bureau of Economic Analysis.
Somebody should dare tell President Trump that the US may have a trade surplus with China!.
In April 2019 the National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA), which is the agency that manages the assets and liabilities of the Government of Ireland, published a paper, 'Characterising the Financial Cycle in Ireland,' by Rossa White, chief economist of the NTMA, and Lisa Sheenan of Queen’s University Belfast, in which they characterise the Irish property bubble period of 2001-2008, "a Ponzi scheme...with ruinous cost."
In August 1883 the eruption of the Krakatoa (Indonesian Krakatau) volcano on Rakata Island between Java and Sumatra, in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), was one of the most powerful in recorded history. Explosions were heard 2,200 miles (3,500 km) away in Australia as ash and rock was blasted to a height of 50 miles (80 km) in the atmosphere.
Leo Tolstoy (Lev Nikoláyevich Graf (Count) Tolstóy, in Russian,) one of the world’s greatest novelists, is the author of the novel 'War and Peace,' which was written in 1865–1869. It is set in the period from 1805 to 1820 and describes the war between Russia and France through 1812. The book also contains an analysis of leadership that has resonance today, and Tolstoy rejects the notion that great men were instrumental in achieving success or failure in history.
Last year a couple sold a parking space in Kowloon (in North Hong Kong on a mainland peninsula across from Hong Kong island's Victoria Harbour) for HK$6m (US$765,000). In 2017 the Straits Times of Singapore reported that a 4,242 sqft (394 sqm2) apartment had sold for HK$560m (US$71m).
This year, Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian capital, ranked 32nd out of 35 global cities with an average property price of RM494,266 (US$119,738), according to Global Living report by US real estate firm CBRE.
Grape cultivation or viticulture is almost as old as civilisation and the Phoenicians of the East Mediterranean carried the grape into France about 600 BCE. This year an archaeologist at the University Of York, UK, disclosed in a paper where he is the lead author, that grapes from the Jura region in Eastern France, near the border with Switzerland, which are used to produce Savagnin blanc (a white wine not to be confused with Sauvignon blanc), are the exact same grape, down to the genetic level, which have been grown there for at least 900 years.
Since the UK Brexit vote in June 2016 support in Ireland for European Union membership as reflected in opinion polls has risen to highs of over 90%. However, there has always been a significant transactional aspect to membership including the cute hoorism that has been a perennial factor in domestic politics.
In 2018 Ireland had the second-highest prices of consumer goods and services in the European Union. Denmark was on top at 38% above the average. It appears Luxembourg was level with Ireland but about 40% of the duchy's workforce live beyond its borders. Germany was just 4% ahead while Britain was at 17%. The Irish difference with Spain was 34%.
Ireland was the only EU member country to have experienced a fall in consumer prices in 2008-2012 and it's level was 18% above the EU average in 2013.
Debt data above are in respect of 2017 and 2007 for the European Union's 27 member countries (ex-UK) taken from the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) Global Debt Database as both public and private debt data are available.
