The podcast and slides from the session on fiscal policy at last Friday’s conference are below.
Chair: Dan O’Brien (Irish Times)
Philip Lane (TCD
Ireland and the Fiscal Compact
John McHale (NUIG)
Strengthening Ireland’s Fiscal Institutions
Seamus Coffey (UCC)
Current and Capital Expenditure: Getting the Balance Right (Part 2)
Colm McCarthy (UCD)
Public Investment and Fiscal Stabilisation
18 replies on “Friday Conference: Fiscal Policy”
@John
When we follow this “adjustment path” this will create a new surplus -My question is where will this surplus consumption flow to in a global monetory system without a final settlement mechanism & in a sad little country unable or unwilling to invest in intelligent capital formation.
I have to say I feel like a guy walking into a pious Church congration claiming that the tabernacle is not mysterious , the bread & wine is not turned into the body & blood.
If you do this over a period of days ,weeks or months sure some of the congregation will figure this church thing is a con job.
People may ask my analysis is too simple – where is the complexity , the Holy significance ? – my answer is there is none.
Its a simple trick – it just requires a critical mass of sheep.
But finally the people in the Church will consist of the true belivers & the priest who has skin in the game.
“They are determining who the losers are” WePollack
Colms stance is irrational at best and …….
He is claiming we have very little resourses to work with because of our external “partners” yet wishes to burn a vast amount of resourses going up & down the Cork Dublin road.
The mind boggles.
This is what happens when we no longer have a shared currency but a external one.
The Elite use the most selfish members of that society to destroy it from the inside out both during the inflation & now the deflation phase.
Dork
Can you PLEASE please please please give it a rest? You arguing literally swamping the comments. I suspect it’s a major turnoff to readers at this stage.
@Noneu
I am not getting any answers – we have a monetory blockade in operation but the local executive will not participate in any real efficiency programmes.
Its a consequence of a non optimum currency which makes such efforts pointless anyway – but there is no recognition of the problem which is very disturbing.
The U – Boats are off the coast of Kinsale yet we keep the illusion of steady as she goes.
Its a completly idiotic position.
Moderators; dork alert…
@Phillip II
You have one conservative & 2 very conservative economists speaking Verbage , one of whom was deeply involved in Irish economic policey “errors” over a couple of generations now and you expect Dorks to remain quiet ?
Meanwhile there is no recording of a Q & A session – its just Priests talking from a pulpit.
None of these guys were screaming during this epic 25 year credit malinvestment episode.
Its the same old IMF line – Its mostly Fiscal
They have no creditability.
Angela’s Commandments
German chancellor Merkel’s Tablets of Fiscal Law according to The Economist: “Thou shalt not incur a structural deficit. Thou shalt pay down thy excessive debt. Thou shalt adopt a balanced-budget rule in thy constitution, and subject it to the European Court of Justice.”
http://www.presseurop.eu/en/content/cartoon/1477441-angela-s-commandments
For the record we do not podcast the audio of the q&a because we don’t have permission to do so from participants who have, as you might appreciate @Dork, a right to privacy and anonymity!
@Colm
Fair enough Colm – may I request did anybody ask the simple question of how these fiscal conservatives propose to tax a declining domestic money supply ?
@Colm Harmon
In the USA there’s a release form in very small print on the back of the registration you sign when you register in the morning for this sort of thing. Sneaky.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/feb/03/jobs-us-job-loss-uk-tale-two-recoveries
“It is likely that Obama will run on a platform for jobs against an obstructionist Congress and a Republican party committed to fiscal austerity and a weakening of the Federal Reserve. As far as I can tell, they have no credible plan at all for jobs. The lab experiment that has been conducted in the UK, which essentially has done what Republicans advocate, which provides great ammunition for the Democrats since austerity has demonstrably failed in the UK – and with more than 90% of the proposed cuts yet to come. Despite both countries having their own exchange rate, and central banks that have cut interest rates to the nominal bound and which have injected large amounts of quantitative easing into the economy, outcomes on the job front are very different.
Unlike Greece and Ireland who are stuck in monetary union, the UK coalition government voluntarily decided to run the experiment to see if there is such a thing as an “expansionary fiscal contraction”. Now, they have found out that there isn’t.
The UK cut public spending and fired public-sector workers; over the last year for which we have data, public-sector employment fell by 276,000, while private-sector employment grew by 262,000, giving a net decline of 14,000. There has been no private-sector resurgence and a “expansionary” fiscal contraction has turned out, in fact, to be contractionary. ”
For Ireland, what difference does it make?
@ Dork
‘They are determining who the losers are’
You are right. The central process after a bust is the allocation of losses, and a respectable face has to be put on it. I suspect most folk are aware by now of the limitations of orthodox economic analysis.
Lets not forget, however, that economics is political economy. When all is said and done, practical politics is about finding a way to work with opposing points of view.
‘Say to yourself in the early morning: I shall meet today ungrateful, violent, treacherous, envious, uncharitable men. All of these things have come upon them through ignorance of real good and ill… I can neither be harmed by any of them, for no man will involve me in wrong, nor can I be angry with my kinsman or hate him; for we have come into the world to work together’
Marcus Aurelius Meditations
Your medicine is strange and bitter, but if things develop in the way you expect, you will have plenty of patients. In the meantime, more palatable remedies will be tried. That’s only to be expected.
I don’t always agree with Paul Hunt or DOCM, for example, but I sure do appreciate the clarity with which they set out their arguments. No harm to you, but there are some other class acts on this board.
You prefer the crypic comment and the video link. Edutainment in your own inimitable style. My tuppence worth is that it is all part of our rich tapestry. To use the cliche, we are all coming from different places, and a little bit of civility goes a long way.
@Paul
What really struck me about WePollocks statement is that in a fluid world without final settlement , Bankruptcy becomes a form of settlement.
Europe is eating itself alive so as to prevent itself confronting the US $ reserve currency.
It is now abundantly clear that “The Dork of Cork” ostensibly a harmless but deranged autodidact is, in fact, a cunning plot by the Gnomes of Zurich/the Illuminati/the Worldwide Jewish Conspiracy/the ECB/KPMG to disrupt as much as possible sensible debate on the Irish economy.
The level of commentary on the blog seems to have dropped markedly since the new year?
Listening to these podcats has helped me understand as a non Irish person why Ireland is in crisis. The economists speaking are compeltely wrong in their diagnosis and prescription. A totally biased one sided presentation.
@KEVIN
My hands are up – you got me…………..I am a hired gun.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syQZnWou3-4
NonIrish
Hmm… Given that the viewpoints are in some cases opposing your comment is not clear. Maybe you could exPlain which viewpOints you find incorrect and why? Or are you just “agin” it