The speech by Minister Lenihan is available here.
Beal na mBlath Speech
- Post author By Philip Lane
- Post date August 22, 2010
- Categories In Fiscal Policy
- Tags Beal na mBlath Lenihan speech
- 50 Comments on Beal na mBlath Speech
Year: 2010
Patrick Honohan’s Tokyo speech is a wide-ranging essay on different varieties of economic growth and the transition between fundamentals-based growth and unsustainable growth: you can read it here.
Frank Convery dreams of a Silicon Valley of Emerald Green over at Comhar. To get to Silicon Valley, you need to pass through that other valley, where bad ideas face a certain death.
Rigour and scrutiny, however, are not part of Convery’s vision. He claims that Palo Alto “will be submerged if sea levels rise significantly” — ignoring that Palo Alto is 9 metres above sea level (projected sea level rise by 2100 is less than one-tenth of that); that people there know how to build dikes and can pay for it too; and that Palo Alto is special because of its people rather than because of its physical characteristics.
I left a comment to that effect on his blog, but discussion is not appreciated in sustainablalaland.
UPDATE: Comments are up now at Comhar.
UPDATE: Frank Convery responds. I close the discussion here.
Dan O’Brien has an optimistic piece in today’s IT on why the political effects of the crisis have not been as noxious as the impact of the Great Depression. He lists three reasons: incomes have declined, but from a much higher base; there are no credible political alternatives, such as were offered by communism and fascism in the 1930s; and we are more tolerant and less nationalistic today.
I am surprised that he doesn’t mention a rather obvious fourth candidate: the size of the economic collapse has been much less this time around (except in a few unimportant countries such as our own). The duration has been shorter, also, and I think that is very important: after 1929 some economies continued to contract until 1932 or 1933. And this crucial difference is due to different policy responses: much more aggressive monetary policies, fiscal stimuli, and much more important automatic stabilisers.
The extent to which Europeans have become more tolerant can be exaggerated. In 1928, the Nazis only got 2.6% of the German vote. Contrast this to the 13.9% received by the anti-immigration Dansk Folkeparti in 2007, before our crisis started, or the 5.9% achieved by Geert Wilders’ revolting party in 2006. Since 2008, the political extremes have benefitted, just as Hitler did (the Nazis’ share of the vote jumped to 18.3% in 1930). Wilders’ party received 15.5% of the vote in 2010, while the terrifying Jobbik got 16.7% of the vote in the first round in Hungary. Sarkozy has been actively courting the xenophobic vote in France this summer. There are probably a few other examples around which people could point to.
Severe recessions can still bring out the worst in people, it seeems.
When I was a junior economist in short trousers, the first research I ever did was inspired by Ireland’s successful 1987-89 fiscal adjustment. Many international researchers looked at Ireland and decided that our successful adjustment stemmed from consumers stepping into the breach filled by the government spending cuts. The story was that increased consumer confidence, fueled by expectations of lower future taxes, was the key to the recovery.
From the research I did on this topic (both on my own and with John Bradley) I came away fairly convinced that this was not what had happened. Rather, the 1987 boom seemed to be fueled more by strong exports to the UK thanks to Nigel Lawson’s tax cutting exercise.
However, Ireland’s 1987 experience continues to pop up in discussions of fiscal austerity. I have to admit that I’ve not been too impressed by Alberto Alesina’s work (here and here) on how fiscal adjustment can be expansionary—work that has had a lot of influence this year. Well, sure enough, Paul Krugman now cites work from Arjun Jayadev and Mike Konczal showing that the only country that ever cut its way to growth in a slump was, you guessed it, Ireland in 1987. The power of this datapoint endures.