Fuckin hell.
Nicely posted on the same day Daft.ie revealed they expect house prices to continue to drop for the remainder of the year.
That’s unbelievable. The advertisers must be turning the screw.
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/article532227.ece
From The Sunday Times June 12, 2005
Irish Outlook: Damien Kiberd: Come on in, the debt’s lovely
ALL available evidence suggests the Irish appetite for borrowing continues to grow. Even credit card debt, which typically carries an interest rate of more than 20%, about 10 times the rate of inflation, has zoomed ahead to more than €2 billion. This suggests that consumers who want it all and want it now are willing to pay about €8m a week in interest to the banks for the privilege of using plastic cards.
Simultaneously, the demand for mortgage finance continues to surge ahead with house and apartment purchasers looking for additional credit of about €1.6 billion per month or almost €20 billion a year. The total volume of credit extended by licensed banks within the economy is now in the region of €200 billion, the equivalent of €50,000 for every man, woman and child in the country.
Should we be worried about all of this borrowing? I think not. History may record that in the period since 1990 the Irish — who appeared to suffer every conceivable economic misfortune in the past — suddenly began to enjoy outrageous good fortune. That may be about to continue.
Both the International Monetary Fund and Goldman Sachs expect that the European central bank will cut interest rates later this year, having held base rates steady at 2% for the best part of three years.
This means the cost of borrowing within the eurozone is likely to fall in 2005, rewarding those who have decided to take on more debt. Bone dry economists argue that an interest rate cut is the last thing the soaraway Irish economy needs but, in practical terms, people who have borrowed heavily in recent times will welcome a continuation of the conditions which provide easy and cheap credit.
A leading tax consultant told me last week that anybody who had failed to borrow in order to purchase property over the past five years had simply “missed the boat”. This was a one-way bet, he said, with the cost of credit at a historic low and a booming economy driving an asset price explosion. A herd instinct had taken hold: people simply bought property because they believed its value could go in only one direction.
Some economic pessimists have been predicting a property crash for years, but the people involved in trading property and arranging the funds needed to finance property deals can see no evidence of any downturn. They claim that the unusual demography of the Irish market points to a continued demand for new houses and apartments at a level that is remarkable by European standards. The Irish housing stock is expanding by about 5% a year. This is primarily as a result of the explosion in domestic credit creation, though it should be stressed that department of the environment figures suggest a substantial volume of house purchases are funded without recourse to debt of any kind.
The problem afflicting the arguments put forward by the pessimists is that the capital value of the Irish housing stock has appreciated by about €65 billion a year at current values in each of the past five years. Two-thirds of this is accounted for by the appreciation in the value of existing domestic property, the rest by the creation of new houses and apartments.
All of this is creating a credit market that is flexible and open to rapid lending growth. It is also creating a wealth effect within the wider economy. This, in turn, leads to a degree of aberrant behaviour at the edges of that credit market, as shown by the statistically large increase in credit card debt which has been experienced in recent months.
Irish people are obsessed with property to such an extent that they are now among the world’s biggest purchasers of overseas property, driving up property prices in Prague and Budapest in the same way they have driven up prices in Dublin and Cork. Some property analysts believe that such is the appetite for overseas property that borrowers based within the state could take on cumulative debts equivalent to half the existing volume of domestic credit to pay for overseas purchases within the next 10 years. Not for the first time the Irish economy is breaking the mould.
How is this possible? Some quite startling information emerged last week to show what is going on out there in the real world. It was revealed, for example, that a quarter of corporation profits tax is now being remitted by 10 multinational companies. This is the equivalent of €1.5 billion per year. This suggests that these 10 firms are recording profits of at least €12 billion per year within this jurisdiction, or almost
10% of Irish gross national product (GNP). Effectively this country is operating as a sort of massive tax haven. The buoyancy in profits tax receipts, coupled with the surge in stamp duties arising from the property market effectively allows the government to operate a low income tax regime.
This, in turn, permits a level of buoyancy in the service sector which provides for growth in the labour force of about 3% a year. About 72,400 extra jobs were created in the year to the end of February, almost all of them in services.
The reality is that with ECB base rates at 2% and possibly declining, the cost of servicing the country’s cumulative credit burden is trivial in comparison with the level of wealth creation within the domestic economy, and especially trivial in relation to the increase in asset values.
Over the next two years there is no reason to see any big setback. The period from mid-2006 to 2007 will witness the redemption of the special savings incentive accounts (SSIAs) which will see the equivalent of more than 10% of gross domestic product pumped into the economy in a very short period of time.
For many years, Irish people were forced to pay very high interest rates. Fifteen years ago we were accustomed to paying up to 14% for borrowed capital. Given current credit market realities, it should hardly be surprising that borrowers are snapping up credit at rates which are less then a third of what was considered normal in 1990.
Do you believe that we are looking into the apocalypse over the next few years? I do not. The economy continues to grow at a rapid rate and the SSIA cash will, if anything, pump up a level of consumer spending which is already growing rapidly and paying for a huge increase in service sector employment.
PS: The doubts about the future of the euro refuse to go away. A black mood has taken hold in Italy with government ministers openly claiming that the creation of the euro has robbed the Italian economy of the flexibility that once allowed it to bypass Britain in terms of the absolute value of physical output.
The Dutch also claim the price inflation that followed the creation of the single currency was a big factor in causing voters to reject the EU constitution. And nobody really believes the denials that have come from both the German finance ministry and the Bundesbank that they had discussed the possibility of a break-up of the eurozone.
Even so, do people honestly believe the European project will be allowed to perish? Far too much has been invested over the past 45 years to allow for failure. The Italian and Portuguese economies are groaning under the strains imposed by the single currency regime and the German and French economies have gone ex-growth but nobody among the European elite wants to abandon the grand dream.
John Allen rolling out the same article for the 3rd year in a row.
In July 1972, two Protestant brothers from North Belfast, Peter and Malcolm Orr, went out to meet their Catholic girlfriends. They were picked up by the Provisional IRA from Ardoyne and shot dead, simply because they were Protestant. The Provisional IRA so deplored this double-murder that the brothers’ killer, “Cleekie Clarke” (who is now dead) went on to become Gerry Adams’ personal bodyguard.
http://www.independent.ie/opinion/an...y-2284660.html
Orr, Malcolm: 05 July 1972, (20) Protestant
Status: Civilian (Civ), Killed by: non-specific Loyalist group (LOY)
Found shot at Bell’s Cross, off road to Aldergrove Airport, County Antrim
Quote:
Orr, Peter: 05 July 1972, (19) Protestant
Status: Civilian (Civ), Killed by: non-specific Loyalist group (LOY)
Found shot at Bell’s Cross, off road to Aldergrove Airport, County Antrim.
Wouldn’t be the first time Myers had his facts completely wrong. If Amnesty had been a right wing group, the Indo would have forced him to write a grovelling apology such was the extent of the dishonesty of his piece on them. Of course if they were a right wing group he wouldn’t say a bad word against them.
Vendetta is an Italian word
By Eamonn Sweeney
Sunday October 17 2010
Giovanni Trapattoni is making a mess of the Irish manager’s job. And if he doesn’t get his act together pronto, the FAI should give him the boot. If you disagree with this admittedly brutal summation, it’s worth looking again at the case of Andy Reid.
We’ve become so used to Reid’s omission from the Irish international squad that there’s a tendency to treat it as a fait accompli. Last week’s papers made reference to Ireland’s lack of midfield options, ‘in the absence of Stephen Ireland and Andy Reid’. And on Friday it was mentioned that there was possibly ‘good news for Trap’ because Steven Reid had said he might perhaps play for this country again if we were really stuck and asked him nicely.
The persistent coupling of the names of Stephen Ireland and Andy Reid might give you the impression that the cases of both players are similar. Yet they couldn’t be more different. Stephen Ireland doesn’t want to play for his country, Andy Reid does. There’s nothing Trapattoni can do about the Aston Villa man. But there is no excuse for overlooking the Sunderland man again and again until every squad announcement heaps further humiliation on a player who never let his country down.
And what is the sin which has justified the manager’s appalling behaviour towards Reid? Apparently, some hotel bar disagreement between the two men. Reid did not have a brush with the law, he did not break a curfew, he did not fail to turn up for a game, he simply fell out with Trapattoni. And because of that the manager has allowed personal pique to interfere with the best interests of the Irish team. It’s not good enough.
Trapattoni’s determination to exclude Reid has seen him go to lengths which would be comical were the stakes involved not so high for an Association which could be courting financial disaster should Ireland put in another underwhelming qualifying campaign. First we had QPR journeyman Martin Rowlands starting in the centre of midfield for Ireland against Montenegro. And then we had the bizarre promotion of Paul Green, a player who bears the same relation to Reid as a flagon of cider does to a bottle of Champagne.
Utterly meaningless summer internationals against Paraguay and Algeria were used by Trapattoni as vehicles to introduce the hapless Green whose competent performances in these glorified kickabouts were declared to be proof that we had discovered the answer to our midfield problems. Green had played most of his career in the lower divisions with Doncaster Rovers before moving to Derby County, a poor Championship team, two years ago. Yet he was hailed as something like the second coming of Roy Keane by his manager who did not just bring him into the squad but gave him a starting role in the centre of midfield.
The results of this hare-brained decision have been painfully predictable. Green has looked like the footballing equivalent of Maurice Flitcroft, the crane driver who in 1976 conned his way into the British Open and shot 121 for 18 holes. He was woefully out of his depth against Russia last Saturday and against Slovakia on Tuesday before an injury mercifully cut short his ordeal. Andy Reid, a player of proven Premier League quality, meanwhile, sat at home, not judged good enough for the squad let alone the team.
This is lunacy. There have been attempts to justify the blackguarding of Reid by suggesting that there is no place for him in the ‘system’ employed by Trapattoni or that he would not be able to adjust to the ‘style of football’ played by Ireland. But, really, this is just a refusal to recognise that Trapattoni has behaved disgracefully. Andy Reid, on the other hand, has been a model of dignity. He remains available for selection, he has kept his counsel and will no doubt continue to do so even when Trapattoni finds further inferior players with which to pad out his panel.
Talk of Ireland’s ‘system’ rings very hollow after the performance against Russia when, as Ronnie Whelan incredulously pointed out, we played two holding midfielders and they didn’t actually hold anything. Green and Glenn Whelan might be devoid of flair, the argument went before the game, but their work rate and defensive ability would compensate for that. Instead, Russian midfielders poured through on to the Irish back four without let or hindrance. The players picked for their destructive capabilities hardly made a tackle. We might as well have played a couple of ball players in the centre of the pitch. At least they’d have given us something.
By the final 20 minutes of the game against Russia, we were reduced to humping long deliveries into the box at every opportunity. It was like nothing so much as the moment when a junior Gaelic football team realises the game is lost so they might as well move the full-back up front and leather high balls into him on the off chance that something might happen. It was anti-football.
Our best chances came from set-pieces. It was the same in Slovakia. But if that is to be the limit of our ambitions, surely it’s another reason to bring back Andy Reid who is by far the superior of any player in the current squad when it comes to delivering the dead ball. It won’t happen of course. Trap is too busy reminding everyone that vendetta is an Italian word.
Andy Reid might be the most obvious victim of the manager’s ignorance and obstinacy, but he’s not the only one. While Paul Green was judged worthy of a starting place in our World Cup qualifier teams, James McCarthy was left out of the panel altogether. McCarthy has played regular Premier League football for Wigan Athletic, and played it well for the most part, though like any young player he can be inconsistent. Yet he is infinitely superior to a number of players in the current squad. His offence was to cry off the panel for those meaningless matches against Paraguay and Algeria. Once more the right to take the hump with players is sacrosanct for Trapattoni.
The excuse that Ireland ‘just don’t have the players’ would be more convincing if the manager made the best use of the limited resources we do have. While Trapattoni appears willing to make overtures to the petulant Stephen Ireland, his snubbing of Rory Delap is incomprehensible. Glenn Whelan has been in and out of the Stoke City team, Delap has been an ever-present. There is a great deal more to Delap than his long throws. But the long throws alone would be a significant weapon in the armoury of a team devoted to aerial warfare, the equivalent of several extra corners a game. Delap wants to play for Ireland yet he too is ignored.
Stephen Ward of Wolves, injured at the moment, was left out of the squad when he would have been a better bet than the increasingly ludicrous Kevin Kilbane at left-back. Marc Wilson moved up from Portsmouth to Stoke in the same deal that took Ireland first-teamer Liam Lawrence in the other direction. No place for him either.
The placing of the immensely promising Darron Gibson behind first Keith Andrews and then Paul Green in the pecking order has affected the Manchester United man’s confidence to such an extent that he looks much diminished in the Irish shirt these days. Yet this is a player who fought in court for the right to play for the Republic of Ireland. Lee Carsley might be 36 but he’d still do a better job than Paul Green.
It’s time Giovanni Trapattoni started taking his job seriously before Irish soccer is once more run into the ground by managerial incompetence.
He can start by picking up the phone and talking to Andy Reid. If he can’t even do that it’s time for him to say Arrivederci Aviva.
backpage@independent.ie
- Eamonn Sweeney
Sunday Independent
Christ that’s a shocking piece.
No mention of Reid’s ability. An unmerited attack on Paul Green. Andy Reid is a model of dignity apparently!
Ward and Carsley and Delap elevated to brilliance. Ward has been involved but hasn’t forced his way into the team yet. Carsley is effectively retired because he understandably won’t sit on the bench. Delap for fuck’s sake. If Delap was playing ahead of A Reid I expect that clown would be raging.
A worthy inclusion in this esteemed thread.
:rolleyes:
Even despite the fact this thread specifically excludes the Sunday Indo??
Martin Rowlands described as a journeyman despite having only 2 former clubs and being at QPR for the last 7 years.
Neil Francis in the Tribune yesterday. Nothing factually wrong it but it’s fucking shocking writing. This is the only article on the front page of their sports section.
Sexton a perfect 10 as Leinster savour famous Wembley win
Heineken Cup: Munster also show their class by scoring six tries in 45-18 rout of Toulon[sup]1[/sup]
Neil francis
THIS one was not about which team could figure each other out.[sup]2[/sup] It was about guessing and second guessing what was going on in Christophe Berdos’ mind.
A very frustrating first half as Berdos put both teams at a disadvantage in terms of what constituted a release at the breakdown.[sup]3[/sup] Leinster had changed personality.[sup]4[/sup] Their alter ego, which appears on away trips, came to the fore: that swashbuckling Dr Jekyll who had thrilled us at the RDS with their wonderful running telenometry.[sup]5[/sup] Instead Mr Hyde had appeared - cynical, compressive and with malice. [sup]6[/sup]
They played Saracens, choked them, frustrated them and made them look like a team that worked on a training ground with no contest and no contact. Once again, Leinster’s backrow imposed themselves on proceedings and Jamie Heaslip gave us a world-class performance. Kearney, too, whenever Leinster went to the air won it back for them by simply keeping his eye on the ball. [sup]6[/sup]
Leinster were wonderfully stoic in their attitude and were quite happy to let Saracens play with an awful lot of width. [sup]8[/sup]
Quite often, it was lateral to the point on inanity.[sup]9[/sup] But to play this type of game, you need all hands on board and Leinster had given away too many penalties; seven or eight to my count against two.[sup]10[/sup] Eventually Berdos lost his patience and binned Richardt Strauss, not because he had done anything wrong.[sup]11[/sup] It was a group yellow.[sup]12[/sup] Jonny Sexton was supreme as a runner and with the placed ball and Leinster had the platform given by Devin Toner and the scrum but gave away too many penalties for comfort.[sup]13[/sup] They managed to reverse this trend in a fitfully fraught last five minutes as Saracens strung 31 phases together to gain no more than 15 yards and make targets of themselves for a belatedly disciplined Leinster. Yet another match which shows that the Premiership is Sky hype.[sup]14[/sup]
Notes:
- Munster match isn’t mentioned in the article so why in the byline?
- You’d like your opening sentence to make sense ideally.
- Another horrible construction of a sentence. No intro, just straight in with opinion and an awfully laboured sentence.
- Bizarre change of topic from the referee to Leinster after only one sentence.
- Eh, that sentence just runs to a full stop after referencing the alter ego on away trips but deciding instead to talk about the other personality.
- Another abysmal sentence to round off possibly the worst paragraph I’ve ever read in a newspaper.
- Back to match analysis it seems. Healip and Kearney singled out for praise quite strangely.
- A one sentence paragraph that’s supposed to pass for analysis.
- I think we’re talking about Saracens now.
- Back to Leinster.
- Well Strauss had conceded a penalty.
- Why is this a separate sentence to the previous one?
- Entirely without context we now have Sexton and Toner getting the praise. “Leinster had the platform given by Devin Toner and the scrum” is just about the least articulate clause I’ve read in a newspaper. Then back to penalties which we were discussing earlier I think before talking about platforms given by scrums and Toner.
- What a terrific conclusion with no relevance to the article before it.
I’d be very surprised if Francis actually wrote that piece. It’s appallingly bad. I don’t like Francis but he’s more articulate than that. My guess is that Michael Doyle wrote it. He managed to do player ratings for both games from his armchair and peppered his ratings with little things the Sky commentary team said, which was handy for him.
The worst part of that article is the use of the superscripts and notes.
journeyman refers more to ability than miles travelled.
It stank of an article that was thrown together just before deadline. I know the Tribune goes to print early enough so I’d say some pencil pusher in the kitchen was on the phone to Francis and just scribbled down what he said while Neil sipped on Remy Martin and puffed on a Montecristo. They managed to leave the result of the Leeds Middlesboro match as a late result in their results section but yet had 2 paragraphs on it on the previous page.
Although I’ve never seen a definition I thought it meant someone who has been around a lot of clubs. Be interested to see if yours or mine is the more common understanding.
Yours has slipped into common usage among the less educated but mine is the correct one
This suggests mine is the correct one. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journeyman_(sports)?wasRedirected=true
Mick O’Driscoll has only played for 2 proper club teams but I’d class him as a journeyman. remember debating the definition of this with someone on here before.
Ah this is an absolute cracker…
From the Irish Times, January 27, 2005
http://www.housepricecrash.co.uk/forum/index.php?showtopic=5108&st=0
Leverage your way to profit
CityLiving
You’ll miss out if you don’t borrow in this housing market says Jane Suiter
As the spring selling season moves into gear thousands of people are considering taking on large amounts of debt. For some that means using some of the money built up in the family home to buy a holiday home. For others it means holding onto old properties to rent when buying a new one.
The huge surge in Irish property prices over the past decade means that most people have large amounts of equity built up in their family home. They can now borrow more on the back of that and trade up or buy for investment. But even first-time buyers are borrowing large amounts of money to enter the market.
What all these people are doing is leveraging. It is the new buzzword in banking circles. “Of course we have always lent money but now we are telling people when they come in for financial reviews that they ought to look at whether they are leveraged enough,” says one banker. It’s a far cry from the days when to be respectable meant not borrowing.
But what does leverage mean and how much is enough? Essentially leverage means borrowing. First-time buyers can borrow 40 per cent of their net earnings, others far more, depending on how much equity they have already built up. And it is leverage that allows property to outperform almost all other asset classes.
Many investors believe that borrowing for property investment is one of the best routes to saving for retirement. At the end of the day you probably need a €500,000 pension fund when you retire just to ensure an inflation-proofed income of €27,000 a year.
That is very difficult to build up without huge monthly payments. Many believe that it will be easier to buy property 20 years before retirement and then take all the rental income as a form of pension.
Brian MacManus of IIB Homeloans points out that housing is the only form of leveraged asset. After all, no banker will lend you the money to invest in the stock market but he will fall over himself to lend you the money to invest in property.
And the key advantage is that you get the return not only on your original investment but also on the borrowed amount.
For example, if you had bought a house for €250,000 in 1992 with an 80 per cent loan, it would be worth around €1.3 million today.
If you deduct the loan and costs of the sale, that would be €1 million, a return of almost 20 times your original investment.
In other words the €1 million appreciation in market value averaging across the 14 years is €71,000 a year, more than a 100 per cent annual return on the €50,000 down payment.
On the other hand, suppose you had paid €250,000 cash for that property in 1992, thus reducing leverage advantages to zero. The €71,000 average annual appreciation in market value would be about a 28 per cent return on the investment. And you would have tied up €250,000 in cash instead of just €50,000.
The sums work out even better if you are planning to rent out the property, although with rents levelling off this is more difficult than it used to be.
A rough rule of thumb may be that you would actually need to put down 40 per cent of the value of the property to ensure rent pays off the loan, not 10 per cent, thus limiting your upside somewhat.
Even if Irish house price growth slows right down the advantages of leverage are clear. For example, if house prices grew by 5 per cent on average for the next 10 years, a home worth €250,000 today would be worth €387,000. According to IIB Homeloans figures, if you had put down a 10 per cent deposit or €25,000, that would have grown to a net investment of €257,000 after 10 years.
A 40 per cent deposit would have grown to a net investment after mortgage owing of €301,000 after 10 years. These figures assume an IIB tracker rate of 3.25 per cent.
When deciding how much equity to put in and how much to leverage you need to consider how much rent you can realistically expect as well as thinking about how constant your own income is going to be and how much free income do you need to fund your lifestyle.
One way to really cut mortgage payments is to go for interest-only repayments, which can dramatically cut the cost of your borrowings. However, you will still have the full capital amount to pay off at the end of the term so unless this is a short-term strategy it may not be helpful.
In the above example an investor paying off the €225,000 loan would have paid back €77,000 in interest in the 10 years and €154,000 if paying back both interest and capital.
Of course it is impossible to forecast what property prices will be into the future. However, most experts say that assuming growth of about 5 per cent a year for a well-located property is reasonable.
At the end of the day if you pay cash and don’t borrow or leverage, you miss out on the benefits when prices are going up and leave yourself open to almost unlimited losses in a falling market.
“In fact, many All Blacks would privately concede that Ireland have had the upper hand in every sense other than the scoreboard and, if pressed, would admit they secretly envy our rugby culture.” Keith Duggan, Irish Times, 20th November 2010.
:lol: