Michael Hennigan: The Finfacts economics site was launched in 1997. Average monthly page views of this blog are at 80,000.
In 2022, 52% of the US population lived in families that were unable to “pay for all the goods and services necessary to fully participate in today’s economy and society without cutting back, as well as save money for emergencies and the future,” a study found.
Exhausted, Muhammad and his 12-year-old sister, Hala, sit outside their tent in Rafah. - UNICEF
“In the past 21 months, while Israel’s genocide has devastated Palestinian lives and landscapes, the Tel Aviv stock exchange soared by 213 per cent (USD), amassing $225.7 billion in market gains—including $67.8 billion in the past month alone. For some, genocide is profitable.”
Only 1.5% of Gaza cropland left for starving Palestinians due to Israel’s war, UN says.
Bowen BBC: Israeli settlers intensify campaign to drive out West Bank Palestinians
Pope Leo XIV leads the Angelus prayer in Castel Gandolfo, Italy, July 20, 2025. REUTERS/Yara Nardi
“I appeal to the international community to observe humanitarian law and respect the obligation to protect civilians as well as the prohibition of collective punishment, the indiscriminate use of force, and the forced displacement of populations,” the pope added.
The shelling of the Holy Family Catholic Church in Gaza also damaged the church compound, where hundreds of Palestinians have been sheltering from the Israel-Hamas war, now in its 21st month. Israel expressed regret over what it described as an accident and said it was investigating.
An Israeli organisation has said, "The Israeli regime enacts in all the territory it controls, Israeli sovereign territory, East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip, an apartheid regime."
"Apartheid was a system of racial segregation and discrimination enforced in South Africa from 1948 to 1994. It was a legal system that enforced racial segregation and political and economic discrimination against the non-white majority population.
The system classified people into racial groups (white, black, colored, and Asian) and restricted their rights and opportunities based on their racial classification."
In a Six-Day War in 1967, Israel captured the Golan Heights, the Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula, the West Bank, and gained sole control of Jerusalem.
In 1984, the Ford Motor Company's car assembly plant in Cork, Ireland, closed due to the lifting of import restrictions and increased international competition. This decision resulted in the loss of 800 jobs and the end of Ford's production in Ireland, which had begun in 1917.
Apple established its first international operations in Ireland in 1980, and a manufacturing plant in Cork, in the second city in the Republic of Ireland.
Apple in Ireland began in 1980 with a single manufacturing facility and 60 employees. Now the Irish payroll is about 6,000.
This move marked the company's first international manufacturing facility and played a significant role in Apple's global expansion.
Apple, first began operations at Hollyhill on the north side of the city in October 1980, just four years after the company was founded in California.
From 1956 to 1980, Ireland offered a zero tax rate to attract foreign companies, and eligible companies arriving in 1980 received tax holidays until 1990.
Eligible companies arriving in 1980 were given "tax holidays" until 1990. "Any multinational attracted into Ireland that was focusing on the export market paid 0 per cent corporation tax," said Barry O'Leary, a former chief executive of IDA Ireland (Industrial Development Authority).
Dublin at night
The Irish economy expanded by a stunning 26.3% in 2015, compared to an expected rate of 7.8%.
Foreign companies that switched their base to Ireland were included in the value of its corporate sector, pushing up the value of the state’s balance sheet.
There are about 970 US companies in Ireland, employing around 210,000 people.
Total employment was 2.78 million in December 2024.
These companies also contribute significantly to the Irish economy, spending over €41bn annually.
This month Apple announced that it planned to manufacture all the iPhones for the US market in India.
According to the International Data Corporation, the US accounted for about 28% of Apple’s 232.1mn global iPhone shipments in 2024.
In 2023 (published in mid-2024) the Irish Enterprise agency reported that €34.60 billion (Euros), in indigenous exports. There were no net data.
Why Trump Could Lose His Trade War With China
Opinion1| Why Trump Could Lose His Trade War With China.
The Times Opinion columnist discusses what he thinks Trump — and American policymakers — misunderstand about China in the escalating trade war. "Credit Credit..."
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/15/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-thomas-friedman.html
The New York Times in a pice by Ezra Klein in a discussion Tom Friedman: "Thinks. We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong".
The Times Opinion columnist discusses what he thinks Trump — and American policymakers — misunderstand about China in the escalating trade war.
Europe highlights gender rules and entry risks and Finland's advisory, updated Tuesday, advises applicants to put their gender at birth. "If the applicant's recorded gender differs from their birth sex, US authorities may deny entry."
Traditionally, the U.S. has enjoyed a health premium. In the colonial era, American men were on average two to three inches taller than Europeans, according to military records, a fact that fascinates historical demographers because height is correlated with longevity, cognitive development and work capacity.
Today, a premium is turning into a deficit. American men are shorter on average than Northern European men, and the gap is getting bigger. Six in 10 Americans suffer from at least one chronic condition and 4 in 10 suffer from two."
"America is a sick society,” says William Galston in the Wall Street Journal. "Literally.”
Healthcare spending per capita is substantially higher in the US compared to Europe, yet the US lags behind on metrics like life expectancy and infant mortality.
Survival in the wealthiest U.S. quartile appeared to be similar to that in the poorest quartile in northern and western Europe.Health expenditures per person in the U.S. were $12,555 in 2022, which was over $4,000 more than any other high-income nation. The average amount spent on health per person in comparable countries ($6,651) is about half of what the U.S. spends per person."
Personal Saving Rate - in 2024, the US was at 4.6%; 15.3% in the 20-country Euro Area, and 44.3% in China.
Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau slammed the US president for launching a trade war against "their closest partner and ally, their closest friend," favoring “talking about working positively with Russia, appeasing Vladimir Putin, aligning with a murderous dictator.”
Trudeau says Trump’s "dumb" tariff trade war is designed to collapse the Canadian economy.
Trudeau also rejected Trump’s repeated taunts that Canada should cede its sovereignty and join the US: “That is never going to happen. We will never be the 51st state.”
The Financial Times says "Trump’s crypto project made at least $350mn from the launch of his memecoin, a windfall that is likely to fuel concerns over conflicts of interest arising from the token.
Digital wallets owned by the entities running the scheme earned the money from sales of $TRUMP in the three weeks after it was launched in January, according to a Financial Times analysis of blockchain data."
New York CNN — "President Donald Trump established a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and a stockpile of other digital assets through an executive order on Thursday, shortly before hosting a crypto summit at the White House."
The Treasury Department will set up an office to administer the reserve, which will be capitalized with Bitcoin (BTC) confiscated by the government as part of criminal or civil asset forfeiture proceedings, according to the order. “Bitcoin is the original cryptocurrency,” the order said. “Because there is a fixed supply of BTC, there is a strategic advantage to being among the first nations to create a strategic bitcoin reserve.”
1% of Americans get almost 33% of the wealth while 53 million (44% of all workers) have a median annual wage of only $24,000 The U.S. resembles an emerging market.
Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister (1937-1940), holds up a copy of the Munich Agreement in September 1938, which he signed with Adolf Hitler.
The Munich Agreement was agreed in Munich on 30 September 1938, by Nazi Germany, the United Kingdom, the French Republic, and Fascist Italy.
At Munich, Chamberlain got an international agreement that Hitler should have the Sudetenland (Sudetenland was a region in Czechoslovakia that was predominantly German-inhabited. It was located in northern and western Bohemia and northern Moravia. In exchange for Germany making no further demands for land in Europe.)
Chamberlain said on his return home from the pact with Hitler, it was: "Peace with honour, Peace for our time."
Hitler said he had "No more territorial demands to make in Europe."
The world’s richest man and government official Elon Musk has accused federal workers of unfairly getting rich off the taxpayers, citing, without evidence, “quite a few” with a net worth of tens of millions of dollars.
Upgraded to $38bn according to The Washington Post on 28 February, 2025.
“We find it sort of rather odd that there are quite a few people in the bureaucracy who have ostensibly a salary of a few hundred thousand dollars but somehow manage to accrue tens of millions of dollars in net worth while they are in that position,” Musk said.
“I think the reality is they’re getting wealthy at taxpayer expense,” he added.
The Fortune magazine said "Neither Musk nor President Trump offered any evidence of corruption or improper enrichment that might explain federal employees allegedly getting rich off their government roles, and DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) did not respond to Fortune’s request for examples.
The International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA) based in Stockholm, has a database of the Voting Age Population (VAP), as well as the number of Registered Voters (REG) as indicators of political participation.
The VAP figure includes an estimated number of all those citizens over the legal voting age, while the registration rate comprises the actual number of people on the voters’ roll.
The VAP Turnout for Ireland on 29 November 2024 was 54.86% and 85.17% in 1977.
Country data are found here.
Ireland's VAP Turnout rate was only 56.65% in the general election of 2020; 58.04% in 2016 and 63.78% in 2011.
In Age of Conflict only 7.8% of World Population in Full Democracies
