Year: 2010

Conference on Constitutional Reform

There has been a fair amount of discussion on this blog about issues of constitutional reform. Some readers may be interested in a interdisciplinary conference to be held on Friday afternoon, 21st May, at the Clarion Hotel, IFSC which includes contributions from economists, political scientists and lawyers on the question ‘Does Ireland need Constitutional Reform. Programme below and further details from eoin.carolan@ucd.ie.

The UCD Constitutional Studies Group presents a conference on
Does Ireland need constitutional reform?
with the support of the School of Law, UCD.

Clarion Hotel, IFSC
May 21st, 2010.

Conference schedule

Session 1: Why constitutional reform?
1.00pm: An Iterative Constitution: dynamics of a rule-based legal system – Dr. Stephen Kinsella.
1.20pm: Re-placing the Constitution in the context of reform – Dr. Maria Cahill.
1.40pm: The problems of public understanding and constitutional reform – Dr. Oran Doyle.
2.00pm: Questions and discussion.

Session 2: Electoral and parliamentary reform
2.20pm: Reforming the Seanad – Senator Ivana Bacik.
2. 40pm: Is electoral reform the wrong answer to the right question? – Prof. David Farrell.
3.00pm: “Relaying the playing field – Implications of political reform for the constitutional law ground rules of political competition – Dr. John O’Dowd.
3.20pm: Questions and discussion.

3.45pm: Coffee break.

Session 3: Improving public governance
4.00pm: Sacred spaces and blurred boundaries: Administrative reform and constitutional governance – Muiris MacCarthaigh.
4.20pm: Enhancing government accountability to the Oireachtas – Eoin O’Malley
4.40pm: An accountability branch of government? – Dr. Eoin Carolan
5.00pm: The place of the media in the constitution – Dr. Carol Coulter.
5.20pm: Questions and discussion.

5.45pm: Close of conference.

National Fiscal Rules

The FT carries an article about the increased backing for the introduction of national fiscal rules across Europe: you can read it here.

Kocherlakota on the State of Modern Macroeconomics

Macro Theorist turned Fed president Kocherlakota writes on this topic here.

EU Set to Regulate Hedge Funds

I’ve written before about being in favour of a common EU-wide approach to financial regulation and crisis management. So, on the face of it, one might imagine that I’d be happy about the news that EU finance ministers are about to approve a proposal for EU-level regulation for Alternative Investment Fund Managers (AIFMs) including hedge funds and private equity firms. However, looking at the proposals, I’m not too positive about them.

I’m all in favour of registering these firms and collecting statistical information on the exposure that banks have to them. But EU the proposals seem to go well beyond this, including bans on selling to retail investors, limits on selling non-EU-domiciled funds inside the EU, the enforcement of capital requirements etc. I’m not sure that these proposals will ultimately do much other than encourage funds to set up outside the EU, for instance in Switzerland.

The documents associated with the proposal admit at various points that hedge funds did not cause the financial crisis. But other material says stuff like “the crisis has underlined the extent to which AIFM are vulnerable to a wide range of risks.” There seems to be an element here of trying to have it both ways. There is most likely also an element of being seen to do something by picking on an area that, as the BBC news story puts it “many say played a part in the global financial collapse” – even if what many say isn’t particularly accurate.

FT Magazine: How bankers brought Ireland to its knees

The cover story in this weekend’s FT magazine reviews the Irish banking crisis and features several current and former IE bloggers: you can read it here.