National Accounts

It could be worse……. I was expecting worse…….
But what exactly is this fixed capital formation increase ?
I don’t see much happening around my Gaff.

But personnel consumption is down on a quarterly basis which explains the empty streets and empty bars.
And now firmly in the high 19,000s now in my opinion.

This is a structured engineered crisis me thinks.
Its time Italy and Spain took the punches to create the all new Soviet we all wanted for Christmas (Batteries not included)

@Carson

“It seems that the latest quarterly estimate should come with a major health warning.:

It does!

“The calculation methods for quarterly accounts are similar to those used in the annual National Income and Expenditure. As some of the available sources are of lesser reliability than those used for the annual national accounts, the quarterly estimates are subject to a greater margin of error than the annual figures. These preliminary estimates will therefore be revised when the next detailed annual results are published.”

It seems perverse to focus on the Q1 contraction when part of the reason for it is that Q4 turned out to be better than expected.

I’m confused!

The Exchequer results for Q1 and Q2 both show healthy VAT returns in line with profile, and corporation and income tax are ahead of plan. Yet we have a lousy set of results for GDP and GNP in Q1.

There is nothing in the profiles which points to a bad start and a bounce back later in the year.

Any suggestions?

@ Rob S

“It seems perverse to focus on the Q1 contraction when part of the reason for it is that Q4 turned out to be better than expected.”

The media in general does tend to focus on the latest quarterly data, I agree, but there is some balance. I think Davy’s daily economic commentary is reasonably widely read amongst Irish business people and that gave a pretty fair and detailed overview I think. I’m sure there are other sources too who don’t just focus on the headline quarterly number.

I think the CSO doesn’t help the situation in that the first page of its report puts the latest quarterly estimate front and centre in a very prominent table and the more substantive data pointing to increased GDP estimates for previous periods are relatively concealed.

Howlin really cracks me up…….
A little evil smurf

He claims he is concerned for unemployment……….

He clearly has not read his Fishers debt deflation (thanks to S.o.V. for picking out this quote) or maybe he has and claims ignorance.

38. On the other hand, if the foregoing analysis is correct, it is always economically possible to stop or prevent such a depression simply by reflating the price level up to the average level at which outstanding debts were contracted by existing debtors and assumed by existing creditors, and then maintaining that level unchanged. That the price level is controllable is not only claimed by monetary theorists but has recently been evidenced by two great events:

[…]

39. Those who imagine that Roosevelt’s avowed reflation is not the cause of our recovery but that we had “reached the bottom anyway” are very much mistaken. At any rate, they have given no evidence, so far as I have seen, that we had reached the bottom. And if they are right, my analysis must be woefully wrong. According to all the evidence, under that analysis, debt and deflation, which had wrought havoc up to March 4, 1933, were then stronger than ever and, if let alone, would have wreaked greater wreckage than ever, after March 4. Had no “artificial respiration” been applied, we would soon have seen general bankruptcies of the mortgage guarantee companies, savings banks, life insurance companies, railways, municipalities, and states. By that time the Federal Government would probably have become unable to pay its bills without resort to the printing press, which would itself have been a very belated and unfortunate case of artificial respiration. If even then our rulers should still have insisted on “leaving recovery to nature” and should still have refused to inflate in any way, should vainly have tried to balance the budget and discharge more government employees, to raise taxes, to float, or try to float, more loans, they would soon have ceased to be our rulers. For we would have insolvency of our national government itself, and probably some form of political revolution without waiting for the next legal election. The mid-west farmers had already begun to defy the law.”

You print baby……i.e. the Goverment prints
Our goverment has no role.
They only wish to hold your hand.

When you make people unemployed you are simply throwing them off a monetary cliff to sustain exponential growth on the existing money stock.

The true waste is in Irish energy & import use patterns.
There is no internal economy withen Ireland because we were always effectively non sovergin.
We must farm external capital flows to now absurd levels to sustain this very strange and distorted economy.
A large North Atlantic Island with no fishery industry……a sick joke really.

@Fiatluxjnr

I am not making any claim about the export figures – if anything my point was in agreeing with Jagdip that domestic growth, based on the QNA, does not seem to have been responsilbe for whatever Exchquer growth between Q1 2011 and Q1 2012.

Total Domestic Demand incrased by 1.5% q-on-q primarily due to an increase in GDFC (investment).

Government spending was also positive in the quarter, but I assume this was due to the one-off costs of the early retirement schemes? Am I right in saying the CSO’s seasonal adjustment wouldn’t strip that out?

What must outsiders looking into this bog make of these figures.

Its such a strange non place really – all activity going on around the edge but nothing inside.
pre 1987 we are a absurdly open economy but post 1987……….

What can one say ?
The only choice is reintegrating with the UK Frankenstein prototype market state experiment (pre 1979?)…….. or producing sovergin currency that can stimulate domestic commerce and re nationalise the remaining wealth base.
The problem with the first option is the UK has 2 million banking mouths to feed now.(I think I heard this on Newsnight – correct me if I am wrong)
They are much more energy intensive beasts then the great army of the unemployed.
Although these guys would argue they are wealth creators for some reason.

It would be back to Spuds and cabbage for us 7 days a week……and lets hope there is no crop failure.

What a wonderfully sick world.
I am becoming more and more Jeffersonian in my old age it seems.
Whats the point of creating wealth with debt if all the surplus is extracted to pay the rent ?

Some of us have been in these threads long enough to remember a certain commenter with a name like John the Baptist telling us that other indicators didn’t accord with the gloomy GDP numbers for 2009-2011.

You can see the revisions working through the data if you compare the national accounts of 2010.
(Or is this and /or the new pop data ?)

NATIONAL ACCOUNTS Y2010 ( Pub .Aug 2011)
GNP per head (also current)
Y2007 : 37,661
Y2008 : 34,977
Y2009 : 29,653
Y2010 : 28,677.

PS I don’t follow (Dork is confused) – should not the new Data show greater falls given the new higher population data ?

Is this a straight division of GNP / population are is there more complex calculations ?

The Y2011 data shows Y2010 as 29,123
The Y2010 data show Y2010 as 28,677

Am I missing something besides me sanity. (explain the methodology of this someone)

@Seamus
Agree with you on the nominal figures. Both GDP and GNP look good on a YoY comparison (given that Q1 seems to have become the weakest quarter).

“VAT is 2.2% up in the year which is not a stellar performance given the increase in the standard rate.”
Actually, I think this is a pretty good out-turn. There were predictions of a collapse in VAT revenue due to raising the rate. It hasn’t been borne out. Mind you, an increase in headline VAT from 21% to 23% would suppose a 9.something% increase in income?

Does anyone know if there is a breakdown of VAT receipts anywhere?

@Michael Burke
You propose reinflating one of the largest (per-capita) credit bubbles the world has ever seen. Perhaps you should consider alternate methods for growth in the economy.

@ Fiatluxjnr

the site is run on 1950s software as used by Archbishop Mc Quaid

Me thinks we are looking at a economy in chaos…………

Much of this complexity could be reduced if credit deposit claims were turned into more equity like claims……….. if the credit deposits were turned into national debt interest free greenbacks and the private claims declared null and void it would go most if not all of the way towards making sense of this debt infested system
As the monetary system we now have is not capable of reflecting even basic internal commerce and failing the most basic medium of exchange criteria…..i.e. its available to transact.

The remaining wealth of this gaff would not disappear ….. where would it go ?
Ireland is a geographical reality as far as I am aware.
The debt masters can’t Philadelphia experiment a entire country can they ?

I can see the headlines now.
The monetary powers inject a entire country into monetary hyperspace when it declares their debt money system is a load of crap…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sWih8R86_0

@Eureka
The guys in charge refuse to give the citizen serfs equity like claims in this gaff.

We are a number – collateral on a balance sheet……a slave.

In a way its encouraging they won’t give us equity yet as it probally means we are worth something.
If they ever decide to give it back the assumption then would be we are worthless.

Its a extraction operation.
4 years of talk talk talk talk.

No wonder Freud found us unquantifiable.
Perhaps thats why they F$£Ked up the input output thingies so bad.

They have no solid data on us….
A bunch of Irish Freaks

Meanwhile down at CSO Lunar Base.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OE8Tc1cvSYM

@Anewdawn
So you don’t think the GNP per head crashing is important then ?
Give me a break.
Attack the central point not the man by pleading to the moderator to dump the discourse that can cut to the quick of this.

Don’t you see we are at that 1820s moment.
Do you actually know the History of this place ?
The Massive Post Napoleonic depression , the over population as a result of deindustrialisation or nonindustrialisation and the every sperm is sacred flaw we had.
The Rockite agrarian insurgency.
The subsequent famine 20+ years afterwards.

Its yee guys who are off the wall.
Its looks like most of yee want to suck your collective thumbs and just watch this train wreck.
Everything post 1987 has been a complete and utter disaster.

Dermot O’Leary of Goodbody says today:

For 2010, the year that Ireland returned to surplus, the CSO increased its estimate of the surplus by €1bn to €1.8%. The revision in 2011 was even larger – €1.6bn – resulting in the current account surplus remaining at 1.1% of GDP, the largest since 1997.

Large current account deficits in numerous euro area countries were the biggest sign of overheating and lost competitiveness. By extension, the return to current account surplus must be a sign of improved competitiveness, albeit somewhat due to depressed domestic demand.

All of the peripheral economies are seeing improvements in their current account positions but Ireland’s move, from a deficit of 7% of GDP in Q3 2008 (on a rolling four-quarter basis) to 1.7% of GDP in Q1 2012 is the most impressive. We see this surplus getting even larger over the coming three years.

Brendan Keenan says in the Indo: “the huge impact of software and computer services firms based in Ireland played havoc with the national economic statistics and widened the gap between output and the income available to Ireland, latest data shows.”

It’s certainly had to avoid the impact of the FDI sector but neverthless it is often ignored.

On Dermot O’Leary’s point on improved ‘competitiveness,’ actaul data again is distorted by the MNCs and I doubt that it is a significant factor.

The agri-food sector has been helped in recent years not by jumps in output but by rises in international commodity prices.

What is happening with the trade surplus is that bogus services exports are generally matched by royalty (some royalties would relate to goods manufacturing) and business services charges. So the trade was in balance in the quarter.

The goods surplus was over €8bn. Some of that would be kept in USD in the accounts of US banks.

Having surplus is not going to help the domestic economy.

Positions at the end of a peruiod and what happens within the period are likely to be different,

@GTFA
I guess I am dealing with people with no historical context.

Because the Rockites were both anti clerical and anti Landlord – that period of history was effectivally wiped from the school textbooks.

There was a massive boom especially in the south of this country during what was really a World War or at least a Trans Continental war.

Many 100s of ships excited Cork Harbour during the War of 1812….. sometimes in a single day under convoy.
(remember the war of 1812 was a Bank war like all Modern Great wars – it was all about the First Bank of the US)
Their Holds were full of Irish agricultural products -which meant the farmers were doing well.
By the late 18teens 1820s the demand was gone.
The Rothschilds who took over the BoE refused to cancel the war debt.
The money supply collpased on these Isles.

The guys who are the “advisors” to the Irish Goverment now that Merill Lynch are gone are who do you think ?

History is repeating itself.

@ Michael,

I don’t think I incorrectly attributed any views you to. I merely expanded on the point that the €20 billion real drop in investment is mainly down to the ending of the property bubble.

It wasn’t just the figure for dwellings that the property boom affected. Yes, Table 15 shows a €16 billion drop in Dwellings investment, but there is also a €6 billion drop in Other Buildings and Construction investment and a €3 billion drop in Costs Associated with Transfer of Land and Building (this is mainly Stamp Duty).

The full impact of the construction bubble is a €25 billion nominal drop in investment out of the €32 billion drop that you refer to.

And even then it is likely that the collapse in construction activity is not unrelated to the €2 billion drop in Transport Equipment investment and the €2 billion drop in Other Machinery and Equipment investment.

Investment had not stalled because profits are not being reinvested; it has stalled because we stopped building houses, offices and retail parks.

I agree we have problems with investment. See here, here, here and here and this recording. But lets not fool ourselves about why it fell in the first place.

@ Seafoid

JtO went of his own volition to set up his own website I believe (though I’m not sure it is up and running yet). Ala Karl.

@Micheal
When can you have enough stuff ?
Theres enough stuff for everybody.
Different stuff will perhaps be needed in a different monetary envoirment.
But there surely is enough stuff don’t you think ?
People don’t have any money in their Pockets Micheal.
They never did – it was credit – which is why it needed to grow to such absurd proportions.
Enough with the more stuff arguments.

@Michael Burke

Japan had about 10 infrastructure-led stimulus programs in the period 1991-2000.

It now has an impressive infrastructure, much higher debt and both women and young people continue to get a raw deal in an ageing society.

A recent business survey found that 30.4% of the companies “want” female workers to take child care leave and return to work, while 44.3% said they “somewhat want” them to do so.

So, it can be easy to put lipstick on an Irish pig.

Besides, the record of project management is very poor.