The transcript of Matthew Elderfield’s appearance at the Oireachtas Committee on Economic Regulatory Affairs is here. Reading over the answers, this was clearly a very impressive performance by Mr. Elderfield, one that signalled a break from past practices and attitudes in a number of ways. There are a couple of issues arising from Mr. Elderfield’s comments that I would like to discuss at greater length but don’t have time to discuss now, so for the moment I’ll leave it to our commenters to dig through the transcript for interesting material.
Year: 2010
Breda O’Brien argues that it is high time to gamble on wave power in today’s Irish Times.
She hails Danish wind power as an example. The Danes heavily invested in wind power for two decades before benefiting handsomely from German subsidies. The Danes were alone for a long time, while Irish wave power lags behind Scotland, the USA, and Portugal. And other renewables are far ahead of wave power. It is a gamble indeed.
O’Brien argues that wave power will bring a substantial amount of jobs in construction and manufacturing. That may be. Wave power devices have heavy and simple components that are best built close to the shore off which they are deployed. Wave power will be first commercialized in Ireland, if anywhere, because our waves are the best in the world. Those construction jobs will come to Ireland regardless of who invented the technology.
O’Brien picks a winner. That is best left to the market. We should prepare ourselves for a range of possible futures rather than pretend that we can accurately predict technological change and develop skills to match our preferred forecast.
The Department of Sociology and the National Institute for Regional and Spatial Analysis at NUI Maynooth are holding a symposium on May 6th on “Liberalism in Crisis: US, UK and Ireland”. The conference is free but we are asking that people register before Wednesday April 30th.
Registration form and details at:
http://sociology.nuim.ie/LiberalismInCrisis.shtml
Further details of the event below the fold
The IIEA and Law Society are running a seminar on April 26th on this topic – details here. Among the speakers is Lee Buchheit who was a leader in sovereign debt restructuring in the 1980s and 1990s and is currently representing Iceland in the Icesave dispute with the Dutch and UK governments.
Reminder: Bob Aliber talk on financial crises in TCD tomorrow Friday, 12.30-2, Room 3051, Arts Block.
Update: Aliber seminar will be held in IIIS seminar room, not Room 3051.
Barry Eichengreen writes about the Greek situation at Eurointelligence: you can read it here.
Daniel Gros has an FT comment here.
Both emphasise that the main challenge now is for Greece to undertake a very sizeable fiscal adjustment.
Update: The Economist has a nice article on the Greek situation here.