Posted in Bastards, Banks on Jun 24th, 2010 No Comments »
I heard this morning on Morning Ireland that Frances Ruane of the ERSI said that one reason for its failure to highlight the serious problems in the Irish banking sector was due to them “lacking expertise in macro-economics”. It was also dependent upon, she went on, “material produced by the Central Bank and the Financial […]
Posted in Irish Society, Irish property bubble, Banks, Irish Economy, Irish housing, dublin, Irish social history on Jun 15th, 2010 2 Comments »
That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain.
The happy highways where I went
and cannot come again.
I was brought up in the Seventies. Strong colours and oversized jumpers. These are my memories. The boundaries of my world were the Harmonstown road to the Santry river, the shops on Edenmore park, the old […]
Posted in Bastards, Banks on May 29th, 2010 No Comments »
On May 10th, just after the EU announced its 750 bn Eurozone bailout Wolfgang Münchau from the FT said this:
“We know now that Greece, Portugal and Spain will always be able to refinance their government debt, but the long-term solvency position of the Spanish state remains unchanged. The private sector is massively indebted. The […]
Posted in Bastards, Banks on Mar 31st, 2010 No Comments »
Political speeches in the Dail rarely rock my world. Perhaps the calluses of cynicism have grown over my ears. But similar to the motivation of people who only read poetry as a way of finding consolation after a traumatic event, so one has a tendency to read what politicians say during a momentous, historically significant […]
Posted in Geography, Bastards, Banks, Internet on Mar 26th, 2010 1 Comment »
One of the consequences of being lazy and/or distracted by the mendacities of modern living is that you miss stuff on the internet that would normally interest you greatly. This may appear contrary to what many think the internet does: that is, it engenders laziness and through its cumulative mendacity distracts you from doing something […]
Posted in Economy, Banks, Irish Economy on Jan 7th, 2010 4 Comments »
The video below is of a twenty-three minute talk by Nomi Prins, where she reiterates the structural flaws which led to the current international banking crisis, as well as outlining possible future directions.
Prins is a fellow at DEMOS, which is,
a non-partisan public policy research and advocacy organization founded in 2000. Headquartered in New […]
Posted in Idle Thoughts, Bastards, Banks on Nov 6th, 2009 2 Comments »
Here’s Brian Lenihan discussing a point made by Michael D. Higgins about ‘political economy’ verses ‘economics’ during the NAMA bill debate last week
The orthodox economists have been much preoccupied with elegant elaborations of minor problems, which distract the attention of their pupils from the uncongenial realities of the modern world, and the development of abstract […]
Posted in Bastards, Banks on Sep 21st, 2009 1 Comment »
While clearing out the papers at home over the weekend I found myself looking at the Irish Times’ letters page from the previous Saturday and noticed a couple of familiar enough names under the topic heading Controversy over nama that I hadn’t noticed before. One was by Graham Stull, who comments regularly on Irish Economy, […]
Posted in capitalism, Banks on Sep 16th, 2009 2 Comments »
From the Postscript to the Second Edition of The Long Twentieth Century (March 21, 2009) by Giovanni Arrighi
“According to Braudel, ‘financial expansions,’ are symptoms of maturity of a particular phase of capitalist development. In discussing the withdrawal of the Dutch from commerce around 1740 to become ‘the bankers of Europe’, Braudel suggests that this […]
Posted in Twatter, NAMA, Banks on Aug 28th, 2009 No Comments »
I didn’t get back to my post on all things zombie related. But it seems that there are others who are working the theme for me.
Here’s a series of characteristically dramatic tweets from David McWilliams on NAMA and the banking crisis, which he put out this morning.