Kilkenny Cats, Heterodox Economics and Economics Blogs

The latest issue of The Economist features a leader on the contributions of economics blogs and a briefing article that highlights the role of blogs in promoting various heterodox economic hypotheses (including the MMT advocated by various commenters here).

Howlin signals economists to be hired for analysis brief

The Irish Times reports on this development in this article.

A tale of three countries: recovery after banking crises

Zsolt Darvas at Bruegel compares the experiences of Iceland, Ireland and Latvia in this new paper.

Dutch Bankers’ Bonuses Go Bye-Bye, Thanks to Twitter

One thing journalists from other countries ask quite frequently is why there haven’t been more riots or other expressions of collective anger in Ireland, given the scale of the problems we’ve faced and the sheer injustice of some of the actions taken since all of this began in 2007. I always answer that I have no idea why we haven’t seen more grass roots reactions like Bondwatch Ireland. I really don’t know.

Last March in Holland we had an example of twitter-inspired social unrest leading to the reversal of bonuses being paid out. This is the first I’ve seen of it, so I thought I’d blog it.

From the piece:

ING customers mobilised on Twitter and other social networks to protest at bonuses paid to bosses at the bank, one of the biggest in the country. The threat of direct action raised the spectre of a partial run on ING, terrifying the Dutch establishment. Fred Polhout, union organiser at the bank, says: “People were outraged. We heard about the bloated sums being paid again in the City and in New York; but suddenly the issue exploded on our own front door.”

and:

So severe was the public reaction to Hommen’s bonus that within days he had agreed to waive the award and told other ING directors to do the same.

Fascinating, and perhaps something to watch for in the coming months in an Irish context.

The Euro Crisis: Behind the Scenes

The WSJ has a long article today on some of the key episodes in the 2011 stage of the euro crisis – you can read it here.

Jamie Smyth provides an overview of the current state of the Irish banks in this FT article.