Kilkenomics 2011 Reminder

A reminder that the Kilkenomics festival gets in full swing today.

10 replies on “Kilkenomics 2011 Reminder”

I cannot describe how pathetic this conference is. Considering how much fail is in the Irish economic community, you’d figure shame might put a stop to malarkey like this. But no.

@Kevin Lyda
While I’m sure it’s great fun to knock home-grown events like this, I think it’s pretty darn impressive that David McWilliams has attracted the likes of Jeff Sachs, Will Hutton, John Mauldin and Max Keiser over to an event in only its second year in somewhat not particularly close to an airport like Kilkenny. And they’re only the ones I know ahead of time. As per A-Mac, I look forward to being impressed by others when I’m down there.

Looking through the contributors list, your attitude is all the more bizarre given that there are so few Irish economists actually speaking at the event! Only one that I can see has been involved in policy here in the last few years (Colm McCarthy) and I would think he’s not ashamed of his track record.

Not that I want to do your research for you, but if your beef is with the Irish economic policymaking community, surely you should be picketing the annual DEW conference in Kenmare.

@ All

As an exercise in escapism, why not? And Kilkenny is a very nice city.

There are always iconoclasts in any debate. But very few of them are ever right and especially not in Kilkenny if the PK show today is any guide.

People wish to be deluded. It is much more comforting than to face reality. The government with its document today – which tells us nothing that we did not already know – understands this only too well.

@Kevin Lyda

Here’s a list of this year’s contributors:
http://www.kilkenomics.com/about-kilkenomics/contributors/

You can have a listen to some of the topics from last year here:
http://www.kilkenomics.com/about-kilkenomics/kilkenomics-fm/

In fairness the “comedians” are unfunny – I’ll give you that – and the journalists were missing (presumed having a good time) during the bubble – but the economists/finance participants are a good mix of contrarians, academics and big names.

It’s also more of a festival than a conference.

I’m guessing you’re not 100% au fait with it?

@Kevin Lyda

I agree with you. I attended the session in Langtons on thursday night. Four economic “experts” there. All of whom had not one positive contribution to make to get this country into recovery. The English fellow was away with the fairies, the American likes to use bad language to make his point, the Argentinian was good but the Argentine crisis was 10 years ago and this is a different crisis in 2011. Finally, we had the Irish rep D Mc W who suffers from selective amnesia. He should read his own blog and articles which he regularly contradicts at a later date. Read his articles on his website of the 28 September 2008 – guarantee “100% of all depositors/creditors” excluding shareholders in the Banking system and 1 October 2008 – Lenihan’s move to guarantee everything was a ” masterstroke” .

Kilkenny is a lovely City !!!!

There are serious problems affecting millions in this country. It would seem to me that people with economics training should be busting their asses to fix this.

Even those not in power could be gathering data and providing the information required to make intelligent policy decisions.

Right now there are protests where people have highlighted the difference in income between the 99% and the 1%. I’ve seen graphs for the US for taxes paid and income earned by those two groups (as well as having more detailed breakdown by other percentiles).

Where are those numbers for Ireland?

Some other numbers that would be nice to know broken down by income brackets:

* Number of people employed. As in how many people do folks in each income bracket employ themselves in companies they own?
* Consumer spending broken down by income bracket.
* Values for those two numbers over the past five years.
* Net worth.

I think numbers like that would be interesting to have.

We just had a crash of the housing market. But is it really a market? For a given property, where do I go to find the price history of it? Last I knew that information was not directly available. The only source of this info is from estate agents. So how is it a market if price discovery is controlled by an interested party in the transaction?

A while back there was a post here that insisted banks were less willing to lend money because less mortgages were being given out. But that’s honestly the level of research I’d expect from a primary school student. Where are the numbers on the annual (or monthly) number of mortgage *applications*? Where are the numbers where applications are broken down by percentage of the value of the property (and by other ways of measuring risk)?

I don’t see those numbers either.

Economists in this country could contribute meaningful, intelligent and very, very, very necessary information to the serious crisis this nation sees itself in.

Instead they’re in a fucking festival cracking jokes and letting policy makers spout ass-covering lies.

It’s disgusting. And the fact that it’s being done proves that shame is not a state you’ve spent time visiting.

@ Kevin

Congratulations for a post that is as nasty as it is ill-informed.

The only full-time academics from Irish universities appearing at Kilkenomics are me, Brian Lucey and Colm McCarthy. If you think any of us are in the habit of “letting policy makers spout ass-covering lies” then I don’t know what planet you’ve been living on. In any case, each of us are doing this in our spare time at the weekend. That you have a problem with this indicates you’re a pretty mean-spirited chap.

As for your rant about gathering data, many of the data you think don’t exist are available and have been discussed many times (and the house price data don’t come from estate agents). But if nationally representative data on a certain area don’t exist, there is no way a small group of academics could go out and “gather” it. This requires large, expensive, nationally-representative samples — that’s why we have the CSO.

That someone that knows so little about statistics can engage in such a righteous rant about it shows you’re not quick to feel shame yourself.

Anyway, I’m off to spend my weekend you know where and don’t have time to monitor more moaning posts, so I’m closing this thread.

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