I wouldn’t trust any chart where they can’t spell
Saw that as well. The source is reuters though.
Max Keisler calls for the jailing of Seanie Fitz
Two top news stories in the Irish Times 
Cowen says four-year plan will bring economic stability
:lol: :lol: :lol:
I met a chap that I did my accountancy training with in town today. He audited one of the Irish financial institutions that’s at the heart of this complete mess. I asked him where he was working these days. “NAMA”, says he. True story by the way. :lol:
He calls for a little more than that, WTB, he calls for the execution of poor auld Seanie!
I’ve been banging the Baader Meinhof solution for months now, it looks to be finally going mainstream.
Dunno what you’re all worrying about, apprently everything is fine.
Amid the gloom, Ireland’s exports are booming November 26, 2010 - 3:34PM Sydney Morning Herald
Country A is drowning. A catastrophic recession has thrown a tenth of its workforce out of jobs in just two years. Firms are shutting, banks are barely solvent and the IMF has been called in to bail out the government from crushing debt. The standard of living is eroding, taxes are being hiked, state spending is being slashed, and the deeply unpopular government is being forced into an election it is certain to lose.
Country B has a huge and growing trade surplus. It is attracting a flood of international investment from global firms, building thriving hi-tech export industries. Exports grew this year by 6 per cent and now amount to more than $50,000 per person. Taxes are low and staying low, and the English-speaking population is highly skilled.
Both countries are Ireland. And therein lies a tale, or rather two tales: of a domestic economy that is in tatters, side by side with a global export economy in the rudest of health.
In some respects, the success of Ireland’s export economy obscures just how thoroughly ruined its domestic economy has been by the bursting of its property bubble in 2008.
Whole industries have completely vanished in a matter of months. Since government revenue depends mainly on domestic economic activity, the sudden fall in output has blown apart what were once exemplary public finances.
Once again, the Irish are leaving an island that seems unable to support them, a particularly resonant omen in a country that had finally reversed centuries of emigration.
But while all that misery has piled up, Ireland’s “Celtic tiger” export economy has quietly continued purring.
The story has been often told of how Ireland was transformed in the 1990s from one of the poorest countries in Europe to one of the richest by attracting exporters, especially American firms who turned it into their base for European operations.
US firms have invested more in Ireland than in Brazil, China, India and Russia combined, says Joanne Richardson, CEO of the American Chamber of Commerce.
The clout of those businesses was on display on Thursday when Finance Minister Brian Lenihan, fresh from announcing 15 billion euros in spending cuts and domestic tax rises, addressed the American Chamber of Commerce’s annual Thanksgiving lunch.
In between the pork and pheasant terrine and the roast turkey, he reassured a ballroom full of US business chiefs that Ireland’s 12.5 per cent corporate tax rate was untouchable.
That tax rate, far lower than in the other countries of Western Europe, has been Ireland’s calling card in competing for international investment. It infuriates European neighbours that are now funding Ireland’s bailout and think it competes unfairly with their higher rates, but it remains popular in Ireland.
Ireland’s main political parties are committed to keeping it, and even argue with each other over who will do a better job defending the low rate from outside meddlers that want it hiked.
With growth slowing in the United States and Europe, Barry O’Leary, head of Ireland’s investment promotion agency IDA, has his eyes on attracting investment from Asia. The IDA has opened offices in Mumbai, Shanghai, Moscow and Sao Paolo, and is opening new ones in Shenzen, Singapore and Bangalore.
Foreign firms are not frightened off by the chaos in the domestic economy, which does not really affect them since they don’t rely on Ireland’s domestic demand for customers or on its financial system for funding, he said.
“Ireland has such a strong track record of companies operating here and they are not caught up in the domestic financial system.”
The IDA’s O’Leary says foreign direct investment was responsible for 110 billion euros of Ireland’s 159 billion euros in exports last year.
For the Irish, the biggest question is whether the foreign companies will be able to provide jobs. For now, they seem to be the only source of them.
Brian Murphy, CEO of the Irish branch of recruitment firm Morgan McKinley, Ireland’s biggest professional recruiter, says job vacancies are now just half of what they were before the bust. Most of that loss has been among firms serving the domestic market, while demand for workers among multi-nationals has held up much better and is now growing.
Multi-nationals made up just 40 per cent of the vacancies on Morgan McKinley’s books before the crisis but now make up nearly two thirds, Murphy said. Employers are looking for computer programmers, experts in pharmaceuticals and life sciences, accountants, supply-chain managers and other skilled workers.
With unemployment at 14 per cent instead of 4 per cent, there are a lot more applicants for those vacancies, which is only good news for foreign firms who will now find Irish workers “more competitive in the wage space”, Murphy said.
Richardson rattles off the names of US firms that have announced plans to hire in Ireland in recent months: Ebay, IBM, Google, GE Healthcare, Covidien.
Facebook opened its office last year, hiring 200 people. Video game company Activision Blizzard hired 800.
Intel, whose $US7 billion, 360 acre “centre of manufacturing excellence in Europe” in county Kildare is perhaps the grandest monument to Ireland’s export-driven boom, is looking for a Senior Silicon Validation Engineer and a Thin Films Deposition Engineer, among other vacancies.
That may be cold comfort for Irish bricklayers, plasterers, estate agents, carpenters and property lawyers who have been cast out of work in their thousands.
When and if the wider economy picks up, it remains to be seen how many of them will still be around. Last year saw the first net migration out of Ireland since the boom years, when Ireland attracted tens of thousands of foreign workers a year.
Bobby Stewart, 32, a fund valuer who lost his job four months ago, went down to the welfare office this week to take his name off the unemployment rolls after finally finding a new job with a pay cut of around 20 percent.
“If I hadn’t got a job by Christmas, I would have moved to London. This was last ditch,” he said. One of his close friends, a carpenter, had recently left for Australia.
“It’s not just a case of waiting around. It’s a case of maybe there won’t be anything.”
Unfortunately if Ireland is to properly reform then a lot of those multinationals will go. A load of those companies use Ireland as a mechanism to evade tax in the EU. Development of indigenous export based industry is key to a return to growth.
Funny how people get more left wing as they get older.
Posted this article before - it’s a good website:
http://www.mediabite.org/article_The-Elephant-in-between-the-property-ads_665274077.html
I see the IMF met with some of the heads of the main trade unions earlier today. Nice of us to lay on a free comedy show for them during their time in Dublin.
They’ve had enough comedy already during their stay.
That John O’Keefe prick mentioned in that article is one of the most hateful people from the celtic tiger era. He edited the property section in the sindo and I used read his bit on the front page of it most weeks just to annoy myself. Unbelievably condescending, badly written fuckfaceness on an epic scale. He looked like an awful bastard in his byline pic too. In short, a ferocious cunt. Anyone see any sign of him lately?
Imf/EU loan interest rate reported to be 6.7%
don’t believe we can afford this,
Interest rate is going to be on average 6.7%. That is 8.5 billion in interest per year not including the banks and is 25% of income compared to 7% presently. Goodnight Vienna.
turn off the light on your way out please
Indeed. The question now becomes whether the opposition resolve to take that as a start point for negotiation, or whether we are forced to struggle onto 2013 and EU wide debt restructuring?
Whatever the case, 6.7% says all we need to know about what Europe thinks of us.
The opposition should be on tv tonight imploring people onto the streets tomorrow. We can’t sign up to this.
:lol:
Some chance
I know. We as well default now and get on with putting things right, instead of being crippled for another 2 years then defaulting anyways.
Let’s make sure to borrow 300bn before we do that!