J
Surely the banks attempt to sell these houses on the market? Or is there a repossesedhousesales.ie website?
I stand by my earlier comments:
- This is more of a "technical" recession than anything else, and is very unevenly distributed among sectors
- Growth will resume at a much more realistic rate in a year or two
- This slowdown will punish those who were foolish, greedy or tempted by speculation and short termism
- Hard workers and those who have invested in their education will continue to succeed
- Unemployment will rise, but it will not be anything like the 80's.
- Slowdown will hit some little and some very hard depending on whether they have been prudent or lived beyond their means
- A slowdown is actually excellent news for hard working educated young people as it will make housing more affordable and focus firms on performance. In this climate firms will reward those who work hard and improve productivity, whilst lazy or inefficent workers will be overlooked.
- Entrepreneurs will continue to thrive. A recession will push lots of big firms into the red and they will lose focus; leaving ample room for cunning entrepreneurs. Also a decline in rents for commercial property is good news for new businesses trying to get established
I am not an economist, and I DON'T want to get into an unpleasant argument with anyone, so please don't take the comments below as personal at all.
I just want to express an opinion that almost all of the above is based on wishful thinking, platitudes, unsubstantiated assumptions, and blind faith. Quite where sweeping positive statements like "Growth will resume at a much more realistic rate in a year or two" come from I don't know. Perhaps you have some economic insights that I don't and which you haven't mentioned.
As I say, this is NOT a personal comment, so please let's not get into a dumb internet shouting match. I just think each of your assertions is platitudinous and shallow.
No problem Treehouse, I don't take it personally - I can see your viewpoint clearly (it is the viewpoint of many people).
However, let me add a little substance to the above. I said I would expect growth to resume at a realistic pace in a year or so. To me that would be something along the lines of 08': -0.75%, 09': 0.75%, 10': 2.1% and gradually rising to about 3-4%pa for the medium term. I do not expect us to witness tiger like growth again - that would be absurd. I do however expect the current recession to be sharp, but relatively short (from an technical economic point of view). The shockwaves and losses will continue for some time, but as a whole the economy should still expand.
I too am not a professional economist, but have studied finance at third level and have had an avid interest in economics and business for a long time.
By all means we can have different opinions and yet take nothing personally, I am merely interested in constructive debate.
True and another problem is that the lowest income you need to pay the bills in Ireland is one of the highest in the world. But anything that a new business produces will likely have a price set by the rest of the world rather than by Irish partnership agreements.Originally Posted by MrKeane http://www.askaboutmoney.com/showthread.php?p=655703#post655703
A lot of entrepreneurs have been able to ramp up their businesses because they could get access to lots of cheap money over the last 10 or so years. The rising tide was lifting all boats, I suspect it will be a lot more difficult to ramp up a new business idea in the new environment.
By all means we can have different opinions and yet take nothing personally, I am merely interested in constructive debate.
That's cool CG, me too.
Yeah, my problem with all this optimism is that I believe we have had no economy for several years, or at least a fake economy - Billy Connolly might call it a Wee Pretendy Economy. Our economy has consisted of:
1. A housing bubble fuelled by cheap credit and easy access to that credit.
2. A consumer boom fuelled by the same cheap credit, and further fuelled by mortgage equity withdrawal
3. A boom in non-tradeable services that rely on other people having money (creating wealth I suppose) to pay for them. Again a result of the consumer boom and increasing demand for these services.
4. A massively bloated and inefficient public sector, funded by government revenue as a result of the housing boom, stamp duty, increased VAT income from consumer boom etc.
5. Multinationals, who help the economy through tax and employment, but with the massive downside that the tax take is limited, the employment insecure, and the "wealth creation" minimal. FinFacts reported in 2006 that 92% of Ireland's exports are from foreign multiationals. That's a damn scary statistic.
http://www.finfacts.ie/irelandbusinessnews/publish/article_10008570.shtml
What else do we have? Agriculture and tourism for sure. After that, we are down to small companies and a small amount of manufacturing. The vast bulk of our economy - it seems to me - was non wealth-creating as we see in the 5 elements listed above. So when those parts of the economy falter, we have little to fall back on.
And as I see it, each of those 5 major elements of our economy I listed above are now looking very bleak. This is reflected in rising unemplyment, falling government revenues, a tanking housing market, multinationals scaling back, the consumer boom faltering as credit tightens and rising interest rates make shopping more expensive as they make the mortgage more expensive.
And I don't know how any of this gets fixed in a few years.
And none of this even allows for external/global effects on our economy. A world recession would obviously make all of this worse, although I agree with Leesider that oil prices are just another speculative bubble and will fall back in time.
Anyway. We're fuc**d I reckon!
No problem Treehouse, I don't take it personally - I can see your viewpoint clearly (it is the viewpoint of many people).
However, let me add a little substance to the above. I said I would expect growth to resume at a realistic pace in a year or so. To me that would be something along the lines of 08': -0.75%, 09': 0.75%, 10': 2.1% and gradually rising to about 3-4%pa for the medium term. I do not expect us to witness tiger like growth again - that would be absurd. I do however expect the current recession to be sharp, but relatively short (from an technical economic point of view). The shockwaves and losses will continue for some time, but as a whole the economy should still expand.
I too am not a professional economist, but have studied finance at third level and have had an avid interest in economics and business for a long time.
By all means we can have different opinions and yet take nothing personally, I am merely interested in constructive debate.
4. A massively bloated and inefficient public sector, funded by government revenue as a result of the housing boom, stamp duty, increased VAT income from consumer boom etc.
Not sure where you get this idea from.The credit crunch is ongoing but the worst seems to be over.......no banks have gone under in the last few months and there has been no more cash injections by the ECB or the FED.
the public sector is our biggest problem. they cant have the same wages as the private sector and have job security and huge pensions as well, thats just all wrong. in the US no one wants to work for the govt as the private sector is so much better, its the opposite here, eveyone wants to end up in the civil service due to all the benefits
who said its responsible for the credit crunch, fall in house prices, etc. the public sector is our biggest internal problem that is directly managed by the govt. its woefully inefficent, overpaid,lazy, and totally full of wasters.
A recent OECD report found that general government employment in Ireland is relatively low among OECD countries. while, numbers employed in the PS has increased, such increases were from a relatively low base. They are significantly less than the level of public employment in Norway, Sweden, France, Finland and Belguim. Expenditure has increased substantially over the last decade but this reflected the need to play catch-up from historically low levels. Ireland has the third smallest total public expenditure as a % of GDP (behind Korea and Mexico) adn this figure has decreased over the past decade.
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