Indecon have conducted a survey of economists on the economic impact of the Lisbon Treaty vote. The full results of the survey can be downloaded here.
Month: September 2009
This report includes an article on NAMA by Brendan Dowling.
The FT reports that Oliver Stone is consulting with Nouriel Roubini in making preparations for the sequel to the Wall Street movie; moreover, Roubini may take a cameo role in the movie.
Contributor John is the first to “call” a recovery in Ireland. He suggests that this should trigger a blog-thread here on irisheconomy.ie at some point. I am a financial economist not a macroeconomist but I am curious to start such a thread and read what braver souls have to say. See John’s text below (from an earlier thread):
“For what its worth, I’ll stick my neck out and say that Ireland is now out of recession. I should emphasise that I’m referring to Q3 rather than to Q2. I don’t claim to be infallible. Its just my opinion based on a reading of the latest manufacturing, trade, retail and other statistics. I could quite easily be wrong. But, if I’m right, I trust the news (figures won’t be published for Q3 until December) will trigger a thread here. “
Here‘s an article I wrote for today’s Irish Times on tax. The article was slightly edited in a way that might obscure one of the points I wanted to make. I understand that the Commission on Taxation were not really given a mandate to think about what is the “correct” level of taxation but the fact is that we are going to have make serious Boston-versus Berlin-style decisions over the next few years and this issue will come up time and again.
I don’t favour raising income taxes in the upcoming budget and I do favour full implementation of the McCarthy report. But after that point, a decision to keep income taxes at current levels will have major implications for spending. I heard the Minister for Finance on the radio yesterday say that there is was “no further room” for income tax increases. It is possible he is referring only to the upcoming budget but the idea that income tax has hit some very high level that can’t be increased doesn’t strike me as correct in light of the facts.