Irish economy - are there clouds ahead?

Would anyone here consider emmigrating to US/Oz/NZ should lifestyle tighten up here due to economic slowdown ???
 
murray said:
Would anyone here consider emmigrating to US/Oz/NZ should lifestyle tighten up here due to economic slowdown ???
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Did the US thing already in 1998, and Oz/NZ are too far away. I might spend the next year learning German though...
 
Sidewinder said:
Did the US thing already in 1998, and Oz/NZ are too far away. I might spend the next year learning German though...
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Oz & NZ still only a day away by plane if you have to hot foot it back to the aul' sod! Fair comment though , doesnt get much further !

But if you find yourself just teading water here , and you could be treading water in Oz (beaches,lifestyle,great outdoors,sun,cheaper cost of living , cheaper property(on the whole), etc etc etc...)

Tempting huh ?!?!?!
Deopends on family situation as well I s'pose....
 
The Eurozone M3 measure of money supply growth is currently running at 8.5% (the ECB target is 4.5%) . In the UK M3 is growing at 14%. In the US M3 is estimated to be growing at 10% (the Fed stopped reporting the figure last year as they deemed in no longer relevant ) And in Ireland M3 is growing at an ahem healthy 33% . (Latest Monthly Statistics Irish Central Bank October 2006). One definition (possibly the only definition) of inflation is 'an increase in the supply of money'. Which would suggest that we are experiencing hyper inflation in Ireland.



http://www.centralbank.ie/frame_main.asp?pg=sta_srr.asp&nv=sta_nav.asp
 

yep.
 
Duplex said:
Which would suggest that we are experiencing hyper inflation in Ireland.
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Double-digit inflation in services and housing has become the norm over the past few years. This appears to be slightly offset by deflation (in real terms at least) of food, clothing and electronics.

If Ireland is experiencing severe inflation (certainly feels like it) then it leads to the interesting conclusion that the government record on spending isn't as bad as the opposition makes out. As the return on money spent by the government (inflationary in itself) must be measured against the depreciating worth of the money invested. I doubt the government will use it as a point in their defence though as it would be one step towards admitting that post-2001 Ireland has been experiencing an unsustainable economic boom brought on by credit expansion and little else.
 
Re: Irish economy - are there clouds ahead? A simple reason for why we are in trouble

I went shopping yesterday, fairly typical shop, fresh fruit, veg, meat, breads, dairy, household, booze.

As I unpacked I started checking the origin of items, no surprise with the booze, wine from France, Spain, Oz, NZ (stocking up – not just for one week) beer from Northern Europe).
Then the household – pretty much all UK, toilet paper from Ireland.
Dairy - good score for the basics, milk, cheese, butter, not so good on high value sort of stuff (Danone/Yakult etc.).
Breads – 100% Irish, phew.
Meat – good on pork and beef, some NZ though.
Fruit and veg - well this should be good… no 0%, not one item!!

Oranges from Spain, Banana’s from Costa Rica - fair enough; potatoes from Israel – disappointing, corn from Germany – surprising, but the one that got me was apples and pears from China!!! FFS it is autumn here, what are we doing importing apples and pears from China in autumn!!

So in summary by value 15% Irish, 85% imported.

Obviously this is all offset by our massive consumer electronics and car manufacturing export industry, (I presume we have these, Japan, Germany, Korea, USA do so we must if we are the second richest country in the world)
 
No offence, but if you were so concerned with the origin of these items why didn't you look BEFORE you put them in the trolley? As often as not there is an Irish equivalent. Those items are on the shelf because there's a demand for them, maybe the Chinese apples are redder than ours or something. Maybe they're cheaper but at the end of the day YOU put in them in your trolley, I don't think you can then turn around and start moaning about their origin.
 

You miss my point which is that the goods on offer in our supermarkets are such that for the vast majority of people who shop on quality and price they will end up buying imported goods.
I agree that had I set out to buy Irish I could tilt the balance (although there are many things we simply do not produce) but as you also implied I would need to sacrfifice on either quality or price to do so.

The worry is that a chinese farmer can produce an apple of higher quality and ship it half way around the world with all the intervening middle-men for resale at a lower cost than an Irish farmer.
 
This from the the Guardian this morning

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1958632,00.html

dum de dum dum dum..........................sure we're grand - nothing to worry about here - we'll be able to afford even more shiny dollar denominated apples from China now and our German produced Euros will go even further in Macys Christmas Sales !!!!

Now - if I could only work out how to get those damn Yanks and Far Easterners to pay in Euros rather than Dollars..............................
 
StoppedClock said:
The worry is that a chinese farmer can produce an apple of higher quality and ship it half way around the world with all the intervening middle-men for resale at a lower cost than an Irish farmer.
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What will be interesting to see in the next 5-20 years, is just how long a situation like this can last. The reason this price is so low is the extraordinarily low cost of transporting these goods.

If we see any global squeeze on energy supplies over this period, we had better be prepared to source our food from alot closer (preferably home grown).
 

Soylent Green anyone?
 
edo said:
At the rate things are going our biggest export soon be jobs themselves
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Job losses should be high on the government agenda but the current attitude seems to be "ah well, loads more elsewhere". We're storing up some huge problems for when the US economy slows and it is a case of battening down the hatches everywhere.

It is ideas like [broken link removed] that make me extremely worried. 2000 jobs? There are already two huge tax incentivised blocks of apartments on the river that are nearly empty and we have more free office space than we know what to do with.

I'm pretty sure Carlow is not the only town in Ireland that is looking at becoming a 1980's style unemployment blackspot once the construction industry starts laying off people.
 

DEJA - VU?

http://www.unison.ie/irish_independent/stories.php3?ca=9&si=1736326&issue_id=14968

Good day to bury bad news - although nothing has been confirmed - its a good way to soften up your workforce and prepare them for the worst.

there is a definite trend developing here - yet the unemployment rate for " the native Irish" in this economy is 2.8% - where the hell are they all working? . I know that there have been a couple of hundred new R/D jobs created around the country this year - nothing spectacular I know but its a start. Are we really that dependent on the property monster and associated spending?

Looking at another thread on AAM this morning - I notice that a poster has quoted FF as saying that less than 20% of earners are paying the top rate of tax - that would imply that 80% of paye workers are earning less than 32 grand a year - now (brain starting to overheat a little here) 32 grand is not a lot of money in todays Ireland - yet our current economic good health (or not ) is driven by consumer spending - are we really borrowing this much to keep the ship afloat? - In a way we have replaced public borrowing with private borrowing which the Gov taxes to keep spending without recourse to public borrowing - which looks great on Budget Day - but is pushing the cost of doing busines thru the roof here . I fear the impact of a sustained weakened dollar here.

All business that simply require a phone and a PC screen are going - a) because it is manifestly clear that overheads here are becoming too expensive and B) because we have let our electronic comms network go to the dogs here over the last 5 years .

A Good question right now to ask will be - what kind of industry and employment will be available for the Baby boomers in 10-15years time? - surely they can't all the Estate Agents and Developers?
 
An envelope manufacturer in Kilkenny is to cease production and has sold its premises to a property development company. I suppose it’s refreshing to read stories about property development and envelopes that don’t involve corruption.


 
Duplex said:
An envelope manufacturer in Kilkenny is to cease production and has sold its premises to a property development company.
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This is going to be a big problem for Ireland. If you are sitting in global HQ looking for a few factories to close so you can move manufacturing to Far East then Ireland will score highly. Because you can sell the site for a huge price and pay off the workers and you are gone with low exit costs.

Then the IDA will in a year or two later will give you grants and the low tax rate for all the profits you want in exchange for a few "R&D" jobs .....which probably is easier to get the tax authoritiesback home off your back anyway.

I think the "we are creating 5000 jobs by opening a new shopping centre" headlines are simply brilliant.

Finally on someone asking to explain about how good things are - we are borrowing 280million a day goes a long way to explaining it. Xerox and Vodafone out and shopping centres in.
 
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