Irish economy - are there clouds ahead?

Another small example of the trend that will see this economy in a bad state in years ahead.

http://www.finfacts.com/irelandbusin...10007571.shtml Today 04:46 PM
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Preaching to the choir Bearish man , just preaching to the choir - I feel like John the baptist in the wilderness when I try and point out a few salient points like you have outlined above to my professional friends , comfortable in their closed shop , property fuelled careers and expense accounts.

A goverment composed of "professional public representatives" (There's a contradiction in terms if there ever was one) , teachers and other public employees - who can go back to their safe careers when or if they get turfed off the Leinster House Gravy train, Farmers, law people ,publicans etc etc will sort out the mess currently in creation???? -

what the hell do you think? - My respect for them would go up more if they were actually aware of the problem (vis a vis Hungary) but I really really doubt that.

Anyway thats my tuppence - got to go talk to pissed off techies in California now about a banjaxed machine system - you know - 8 hrs behind us - export industry - customer service - no overtime but its my responsiblility - Yeah ye're right - its time to join the civil service and start getting guaranteed pay rises for pretending to do something useful !!!

later folks

A Well browned off Edo
 
On a slightly different point I thought the taxi drivers had a very valid point a few weeks back when they had the big row with the taxi regulator. The taxi industry has been shaken up with deregulation however the government has stalled on derugalation of the legal profession of the pharmacies of the medical professions etc and even of publicans. They made the point that it is unfair that they should be singled out while other occupations are let carry on as before. I think you have a valid point when you refer to the fact that the government is over represented by TDs from the above professions which explains their reluctance to shake them up.
 
joe sod said:
... the government has stalled on derugalation of the legal profession of the pharmacies of the medical professions etc and even of publicans.
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I like to think of them as the protected classes. Ostensibly in the private sector but operating in a cosy atmosphere free from the rigours of anything as dirty as competition.
 
room305 said:
I like to think of them as the protected classes. Ostensibly in the private sector but operating in a cosy atmosphere free from the rigours of anything as dirty as competition.
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I tend to see them as part of the greater semi-state sector.

Have some sympathy for the taxi drivers.....now its a wild west sector in terms of regulation
 
Maine said:
Have some sympathy for the taxi drivers.....now its a wild west sector in terms of regulation
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I have no sympathy for the taxi drivers. Several taxi drivers have told me that most of the protesting is being carried out by the 'old-school' drivers who have been using the taxi as a license to print money. Their arguments are not just about regulation, they don't like competition, they don't like the removal of outlandish charges from their fare structure such as the airport charge. But that's a whole separate thread.

Taxi drivers are a mirror for Ireland right now. Grabbing all we can, then moaning & striking whenever anyone presents a challenge.
 
kramer2006 said:
Taxi drivers are a mirror for Ireland right now. Grabbing all we can, then moaning & striking whenever anyone presents a challenge.
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Ah here most taxi drivers are just hard working people trying to make a living.*

*I am not related to nor do i know any taxi drivers.

Senators,Hospital consultants and legal people would come far higher on my list of people robbing the country blind.There's a cosy little cartel at the top of the feed chain in this country,sucking the life blood out of the ordinary decent citizen.Only the politicans are so corrupt,inept or tied to the vested interests that they do nothing about it.
 

Agreed. How many taxi men are making E500k a year.

Do not know or related etc to any taxi drivers.
 
Those doom mongers in Irish central bank warning us again. They should live a little and stop worrying , maybe buy a 4x4 on finance and get a mega mortgage

http://www.finfacts.com/irelandbusinessnews/publish/article_10007607.shtml

Related to the sharp rise in house prices, has been an increase in the overall level of indebtedness. This high, and still increasing, level of indebtedness constitutes a risk to the macroeconomic environment as well as to individual borrowers and lenders.
Ireland’s export performance remains consistently below the growth of demand in our export markets, indicating a worrying deterioration in competitiveness relative to our trading partners. In the short-term, wage and price pressures need to be kept in check, while it will be important to improve productivity performance across both the traded and non-traded sectors of the economy over the longer term
 

Every time the government comes under pressure about rip off ireland or protectionism it is the bottom tier that move against. First they deregulated the taxi industry, then after the hullabula after Eddie Hobbs rip off republic series they lifted the grocery order. Lifting the grocery order has probably made life more difficult for the modest family owned grocers. however eddie hobbs also attacked the cartels in the pharmacy, legal and publican trades yet the government refuses to move in on these.
 
Do not forget, to get back to the point of the thread, that we as a country of a million or two taxpayers owe a foreign debt of ...what is it...38 billion ??? All this despite the massive EC grants / structural funds etc we got over the years. The previous bout of structural funds paid for canals, harbours, railways ..all leading edge infrastructure of the time ...but sin sceal eile !
 

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,176-2404010,00.html

This article is basically about how the UK were lucky to avoid euro.

Author ( main economics writer, usually reasonably balanced) thinks that euro will not be around in its current format in 10 years.

One of the problem IMO with the euro is that many do not see themselves as Europeans say in comparion to Americans - western europeans all like to stay in their patch of europe rather than moving around hence the lack of French people coming to Ireland etc to avoid 10% unemployment at home. If that was part of the US then far more people would have moved. That makes one interest rate difficult to work.
 

I don't think that's the problem .From living in France part of the problem that france has 9% unemployment is that the dole is WAY too good here. I know a pharmacist who has spent 18 months out of work living on the dole. It's based on a % of your salary when you were made redundant (and reduces slowly after that).

Plus the language is an issue. Moving to an counrty in which you can't speak the language is a big deal. It's not like moving from Alabama to California...


Yes but his whole argument is based on specualtion.. he even admits it :

What would have happened had we joined? Three years is too short a timescale to say, but we can estimate what might have happened had Britain gone in at the euro’s inception in 1999

He also mentions that some countries have done well and some not done so well. But then proceeds to only discuss Italy ...

Maybe it was better for stg to stay out but the Euro has only been around for a very short period of time so far (relatively speaking) so the benefits + downsides really can't be seen yet.
 

My question was based on this - was one interest rate appropriate given the cultural differences etc lack of labour mobility, languages etc. Besides Italy euro has not been good news for Spain or Ireland. Look at balance of payments for real economy of both. Its been good for the German economy in terms of no pay increases for 5 years which now makes them uber competitive.

Yes it is all guessing by him.

Agreed - it is a short period to compare. However Ireland has been left with two massive long term problems, huge private sector debt and its economy in possibly the least competitive state ever - ref ERSI etc
 
Agreed - it is a short period to compare. However Ireland has been left with two massive long term problems, huge private sector debt and its economy in possibly the least competitive state ever - ref ERSI etc
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Interesting and provocative article as per usual by David McWilliams in yesterdays SB post.

[broken link removed]

A good bit of what he says has already been brought up by posters here already - but the chinese angle is a new one for me - but it makes sense - far more sense that the debt addled road we are racing down at the moment anyway
 
http://www.rte.ie/business/2006/1016/fdi.html

This makes McWilliams and Barringtons articles in SBP yday right on the money.

Even allowing for tax transfers and combined with recent ERSI reports it is bad news. IMO it may also show that Irish companies are investing abroad as fast as they can.

The more I think about the Euro the bigger the disaster I think it has been for this country. Alot think the Celtic tiger was real until 2001 ie pre euro but since then has been based on a massive credit boom in ireland after the ECB over cut interest rates . This has in turn driven construction, benchmarking, inflation and a large loss in competitiveness. The central bank has admitted for years that the interest rates were wrong for us.
 

I suspect you're bang on here. Hindsight in many years to come will probably show this as being one of the chief initiators of the problems in the Irish economy. Sadly though the many other tools available to the government to dampen property speculation/rampant construction dependency and shift our celtic tiger momentum to something longer lasting were shunned in order to aid the relevant lobbies. So sad... there's a book in there somewhere.
 
Maine said:
http://www.rte.ie/business/2006/1016/fdi.htmlThe central bank has admitted for years that the interest rates were wrong for us.
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They're hardly blameless themselves. Since they knew interest rates were far too low for such a rapidly growing economy, they should have enforced stricter lending practises to dampen inflation and credit expansion.

The government should have backed this up with taxes designed to soak up all that extra speculative cash, as suggested by the ECB.
 

Agreed.

However local govts ( CBank is just a wing) almost always take the easy option. The problem for us was that the Euro facilitated this on a massive scale. We should have stayed out and come in when we got closer to German cycle. We were a vw polo going along very nicely at 100km when suddenly we were fitted with a V6 4 litre engine with no change to the suspension or brakes. Expecting the govt driver at the wheel to go slower was always a risk.
 
Maine said:
We were a vw polo going along very nicely at 100km when suddenly we were fitted with a V6 4 litre engine with no change to the suspension or brakes. Expecting the govt driver at the wheel to go slower was always a risk.
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Nice analogy.
 
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