Michael Hennigan: The Finfacts economics site was launched in 1997. Average monthly page views of this blog are at 80,000.
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 being solely responsible for 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.
“May you live in interesting times," is claimed* by non-Chinese to be a Chinese blessing or curse and we are today living through not only interesting times in economics and finance but unique ones in the history of commerce.
Naïve commentary on exporting and opening new overseas markets is not uncommon. International expansion often ends in failure — research published in 2017 by Banco de España (Bank of Spain) on service firm exporters in Belgium, France, Germany and Spain found that French export starters had the lowest survival rate with 31% of firms staying in the market after the first year. Spain was at 36% and 57% of new exporters had survived in Germany.
The ruins of a large 5-storey factory building in open countryside in the townland of Knocknagarrane 4 kilometres south-west of the West Cork town of Bandon (visible from the road linking the villages of Old Chapel and Timoleague), is a symbol of the heroic failure to bring the British Industrial Revolution to the area. However, the entrepreneuring family that built the factory would still have a local economic impact for 100 years more.
Brexiters dismiss warnings that a 'No Deal' departure from the European Union on October 31, 2019, will trigger chaos at ports with risks of food and medicine shortages coupled with massive disruptions to international supply chains.
Fintan O’Toole, the chief political and arts commentator of the Irish Times newspaper, has made a stunning leap from November 2010 when he called the economic bailout of Ireland by the European Union-International Monetary Fund, “the longest ransom note in history,” to a torrent of scathing commentaries since mid-2016 on the Brexit decision by Britain to leave the EU.
Brexiters with an ambition to make Britain an exporting superpower may be surprised that the UK’s official second biggest global trade surplus in 2018 was with Ireland. The United States was in first place but it’s possible that Ireland should have the top rank as the US claims 2018 goods and services surpluses with the UK!
The German word ‘schuld' can mean either 'debt' or 'guilt' and Germans have a history of aversion to debt and fiat money (government-issued currency that is not backed by a metal such as gold or silver). The genesis of this obsession pre-dates the hyperinflation in the aftermath of the First World War.
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| This map has the 2020 data |
Among the 31 advanced (defined by the International Monetary Fund: IMF1) / rich countries of the 38 member Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Ireland had the 19th ranking for Household net adjusted disposable income per capita. The poor occupational pension coverage in the Irish private-sector workforce is also relevant to the standard of living.
2021 Post: Irish standard of living at 13th in EU27 and 19th among rich OECD countries
While Ireland had a GDP (gross domestic product) per capita at 87% above the EU28 average in 2018, a proxy for material standard of living per capita was again below the EU28 average and that of Italy despite the latter's long period of economic stagnation.
“Ireland is ranked among the most entrepreneurial countries in the world with increasing opportunities for budding MBA entrepreneurs,” according to a 2018 article sponsored by the UCD Michael Smurfit Business School. A year before Enterprise Ireland, the public enterprise agency, stated, “In Ireland, there was (sic) an estimated 35,000 new business owners in 2016. 1 in every 23 people in Ireland (aged 18 to 64 years) is a new business owner. This is similar to the US (1 in every 25 people), and high compared to many other European countries, where the average is 1 in every 29 people.”
Boris Johnson, a possible prime minister of the United Kingdom, wrote in a column in the Daily Telegraph in May 2016:
Germany had merchandise goods trade with 237 countries and territories in 2018 encompassing every region of the world — with partners that were large, small and tiny. There were trade surpluses with 167 and deficits with 70 partners.
For decades Ireland felt assured that it would maintain the tax advantage that was first provided in 1956 to lure mainly American foreign direct investment (FDI) to Ireland. On Friday (May 31) in Paris 129 member countries of the OECD/G20 Inclusive Framework on Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) adopted a Programme of Work laying out a process for reaching a new global agreement for taxing multinational enterprises.
IMD, the Swiss business school, released its World Competitiveness Rankings for 2019 this week with Singapore at the top of ratings of 63 countries. Ireland returned to a 7th ranking it had achieved in 2016 based on data for 2015 — the year of Leprechaun Economics when moves by Apple and other multinationals to reallocate via accounting entries (not relocate) assets such as intellectual property (IP) to Ireland, had resulted in GDP (gross domestic product) rocketing over 26%.
The Irish Government had hoped that global corporate tax reform was on a “slow boat to China” but the winds of change are accelerating and on Thursday this week, Pascal Donohoe, finance minister, told a conference in Dublin that he wished for “modest” reform.
Martin Wolf, chief economics commentator of the Financial Times, this week quoted lines from a poem by Robert Frost (1874-1963), an American poet, “Some say the world will end in fire/ Some say in ice.” Wolf said these lines "capture the world’s possible economic prospects. Some warn that the world of high debt and low-interest rates will end in the fire of inflation. Others prophesy that it will end in the ice of deflation." The more present economic danger this week is addressed in a special report in The Economist and David Rennie, the Beijing bureau chief and author of the Chaguan column on China, writes, "If a vengeful America wants to hurt China, there are few incentives for Chinese officials to propose imaginative concessions or urge reforms that might repair ties with America. In geopolitics as in marriage, contempt is an emotion that leads to bad outcomes."
This week the Irish Times announced the publication of its ‘Irish Times Top 1000 2019, the definitive guide to Ireland’s leading companies’ with a headline ‘Apple is still on top but Google is surging ahead in business league table.’
