“Overall, I don’t think that I owe the Irish taxpayer any apology.”

Written by Jamie Smyth, the Analysis page in the FT today is devoted to Sean Quinn, including this quote from him.

New CSO Releases

So much basic information can be learned from the new Household Budget Survey here.

Measuring Ireland’s Progress 2011 is also fascinating – here.

Opinion versus Reality

Writing in today’s Irish Times Vincent Browne has an opinion piece that purports to look at the impact of austerity in Ireland.  Much of the argument is based on this graph from a presentation by Thora Kristin Thorsdottir at a NWCI/TASC conference on Monday.

I don’t know anything about the Icelandic data used in the graph but it may be worth noting a couple of points on the Irish element of the graph:

The Eurozone Debt Crisis – The Options Now

The Buchheit-Gulati paper is here.

The Eurozone’s Narrowing Window

Ashoka Mody (formerly IMF, now at Princeton) has a Project Syndicate article here.