10 replies on “QNHS: Effects of the Downturn on Households”
Mid-life bulge in Fig. 6 is informative; austerity bites!
fyi … good graphics
Crisis of Faith: Doubts Grow Over Spanish Reforms
By Martin Hesse
Measures to pull Spain out of the crisis are failing to bear fruit and exacerbating social tensions. While some are optimistic, the core problems remain, and many are questioning the old elite’s ability to clean up the financial sector and reform the country.
[…]
“Spain has three core problems,” says Clemens Fuest, head of the Center for European Economic Research (ZEW) in the western German city of Mannheim, “the extremely overinflated construction and real estate sector, the ailing banks and rapidly growing government debt.”
All three problems are closely related. Public debt is growing because the economy isn’t gaining momentum. This can be partially attributed to the fact that the banks aren’t lending enough money because they are still struggling with consequences of the precipitous end of the construction boom.
[…]
In any case, what is still growing is debt. In Spain and the entire euro zone, it reached a new high last week. At 88 percent of GDP, the Spanish debt ratio is admittedly only somewhat higher than Germany’s. But Belgium and Ireland are still the only other EU countries where the national debt has recently grown more quickly.
Meaningless figures really all you have to do is go out and talk to people you don’t need any graphs. These fancy graphs tells us more about who plotted the graph, and why they plotted them, than it does about who is being graphed.
I am meeting people all the time and they are broke, wondering if it is even worth their while continuing to go to work and almost in tears as they try to convey the results of what the government are doing to them. Spoke to one bottom of the heap public sector worker today, clerical grade, who has just fallen into the clutches of a money lender. AIB her bank would not give her a loan. She spoke about her colleagues who were living on cans of soup. Frighteningly she works in the area of mental health. I had to tell her that she looked like someone having a nervous breakdown! Graph those little facts, Jack O’Connor David Begg. They have deliciously sliced and diced the various grades in the PS to be roasted slowly over a spit.
Maybe she needs to become one of those nasty “strategic defaulters” that are so beloved of Ritchie Boucher, David Duffy, Gregory Connor, Karl Dieter. Karl also uses an interesting distinction between what he calls the ‘honest poor and the rich poor and of course it is the rich poor who are Karl’s clients. Surely they all cannot be wrong can they? “Strategic Defaulter” is has to be up there with the best of them. “only game in town”, “cheapest bailout in the world,(so far)” add your own favourite!
fyi Der Spiegel
Last Call: Crisis Closes Pubs, Mainstay of Irish Society
By Patrick Kremers
With high unemployment, a surge in emigration and rising beer prices, Irish pubs are getting pinched by the crisis, and some 1,500 have been forced to shut their doors. But one entrepreneur has found a novel way to keep patrons and hold his community together.
A thick fog blankets Kilfynn. Despite poor visibility, Mike Parker steps on the gas. It’s half past midnight, and it’s been a long day. He can only go to bed once he’s gotten John and Dan home safe.
“The two had a few beers in my pub,” he says. And it would be “much too dangerous” to let them go home alone and drunk in this weather along the narrow roads that wind through the countryside here in County Kerry, in southwestern Ireland.
Methinks high time for Colm McCarthy to pin a piece of critical realism for Der Spiegel International ….
fyi
Friday, August 2, 2013
More Good News from Europe
Yves here. I don’t want to be withholding good news when there is good news to be had. But remember, the ISM results for Europe are just over 50, which is the difference between growth and contraction. So in this context, “good news,” given how high unemployment is in the Eurozone periphery, is sort of like “the vital signs are improving enough that the patient might be able to leave intensive care and go into a regular hospital room.”
[…]
By country, Germany recorded the strongest output growth in July, mainly due to improving domestic demand as new export orders declined (albeit at a slower pace). Production increased further in Italy, the Netherlands and Ireland, and returned to growth in France and Austria. Unlike Germany, the expansions in these nations were generally led by solid increases in new export business.
Greece remained the worst performer overall, recording the steepest reductions in output, new orders and new exports of all the nations covered by the surveys. Spain was the only nation to report a faster rate of contraction in output.
Job losses were recorded at eurozone manufacturers for the eighteenth month running in July, although the rate of reduction was the weakest during that period. Meanwhile, backlogs of work fell at the slowest pace in over two years.
If you did not notice we are making a lot of Drugs and doing a lot of Drugs. As Michael Hennigan has pointed out, on the other thread, the take over of Elan should add greatly to our “exports” and improve our debt to GDP as Ireland is used once again as a one arm bandid tax haven.
@ Robert Browne
Too right.
But don’t forget that 75% of new jobs created in the US were low paid part time jobs.
This is not a situation unique to Ireland.
Simply put – the financial sector is robbing us all.
Politics needs to be as global as finance. We do indeed live in interesting times.
@Robert Browne
I hear, from a usually unreliable source, that Fine Gael will allow all small farmers in the Westh and Border regions to grow MaryJoanna [noted as a herb by an Act of the Oireachtas] as a suitable cash crop to be sold at farmers’s markets in the local towns (VAT at 25%). At a stoke this is expected to boost tourist numbers and save the small business interests in said small towns as well as providing employment for local unskilled labour. FG are reported to be on a real high as they expect to romp home with a fuzzy majority in the next election as they dump the joint deal with Labour.
10 replies on “QNHS: Effects of the Downturn on Households”
Mid-life bulge in Fig. 6 is informative; austerity bites!
fyi … good graphics
Crisis of Faith: Doubts Grow Over Spanish Reforms
By Martin Hesse
Measures to pull Spain out of the crisis are failing to bear fruit and exacerbating social tensions. While some are optimistic, the core problems remain, and many are questioning the old elite’s ability to clean up the financial sector and reform the country.
[…]
“Spain has three core problems,” says Clemens Fuest, head of the Center for European Economic Research (ZEW) in the western German city of Mannheim, “the extremely overinflated construction and real estate sector, the ailing banks and rapidly growing government debt.”
All three problems are closely related. Public debt is growing because the economy isn’t gaining momentum. This can be partially attributed to the fact that the banks aren’t lending enough money because they are still struggling with consequences of the precipitous end of the construction boom.
[…]
In any case, what is still growing is debt. In Spain and the entire euro zone, it reached a new high last week. At 88 percent of GDP, the Spanish debt ratio is admittedly only somewhat higher than Germany’s. But Belgium and Ireland are still the only other EU countries where the national debt has recently grown more quickly.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/doubt-grows-in-reforms-of-rajoy-government-in-spain-a-913866.html#ref=nl-international
Changes in Debt/GDP ratios
Check out IE …. the leader in such ‘growth’
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/07/europes-good-news-bad-news.html
Meaningless figures really all you have to do is go out and talk to people you don’t need any graphs. These fancy graphs tells us more about who plotted the graph, and why they plotted them, than it does about who is being graphed.
I am meeting people all the time and they are broke, wondering if it is even worth their while continuing to go to work and almost in tears as they try to convey the results of what the government are doing to them. Spoke to one bottom of the heap public sector worker today, clerical grade, who has just fallen into the clutches of a money lender. AIB her bank would not give her a loan. She spoke about her colleagues who were living on cans of soup. Frighteningly she works in the area of mental health. I had to tell her that she looked like someone having a nervous breakdown! Graph those little facts, Jack O’Connor David Begg. They have deliciously sliced and diced the various grades in the PS to be roasted slowly over a spit.
Maybe she needs to become one of those nasty “strategic defaulters” that are so beloved of Ritchie Boucher, David Duffy, Gregory Connor, Karl Dieter. Karl also uses an interesting distinction between what he calls the ‘honest poor and the rich poor and of course it is the rich poor who are Karl’s clients. Surely they all cannot be wrong can they? “Strategic Defaulter” is has to be up there with the best of them. “only game in town”, “cheapest bailout in the world,(so far)” add your own favourite!
fyi Der Spiegel
Last Call: Crisis Closes Pubs, Mainstay of Irish Society
By Patrick Kremers
With high unemployment, a surge in emigration and rising beer prices, Irish pubs are getting pinched by the crisis, and some 1,500 have been forced to shut their doors. But one entrepreneur has found a novel way to keep patrons and hold his community together.
A thick fog blankets Kilfynn. Despite poor visibility, Mike Parker steps on the gas. It’s half past midnight, and it’s been a long day. He can only go to bed once he’s gotten John and Dan home safe.
“The two had a few beers in my pub,” he says. And it would be “much too dangerous” to let them go home alone and drunk in this weather along the narrow roads that wind through the countryside here in County Kerry, in southwestern Ireland.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/economic-crisis-leads-to-mass-closing-of-irish-pubs-a-914375.html#ref=nl-international
Methinks high time for Colm McCarthy to pin a piece of critical realism for Der Spiegel International ….
fyi
Friday, August 2, 2013
More Good News from Europe
Yves here. I don’t want to be withholding good news when there is good news to be had. But remember, the ISM results for Europe are just over 50, which is the difference between growth and contraction. So in this context, “good news,” given how high unemployment is in the Eurozone periphery, is sort of like “the vital signs are improving enough that the patient might be able to leave intensive care and go into a regular hospital room.”
[…]
By country, Germany recorded the strongest output growth in July, mainly due to improving domestic demand as new export orders declined (albeit at a slower pace). Production increased further in Italy, the Netherlands and Ireland, and returned to growth in France and Austria. Unlike Germany, the expansions in these nations were generally led by solid increases in new export business.
Greece remained the worst performer overall, recording the steepest reductions in output, new orders and new exports of all the nations covered by the surveys. Spain was the only nation to report a faster rate of contraction in output.
Job losses were recorded at eurozone manufacturers for the eighteenth month running in July, although the rate of reduction was the weakest during that period. Meanwhile, backlogs of work fell at the slowest pace in over two years.
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/08/more-good-news-from-europe.html
What are we ‘making’ so that it will come roight?
@ David O’Donnell
If you did not notice we are making a lot of Drugs and doing a lot of Drugs. As Michael Hennigan has pointed out, on the other thread, the take over of Elan should add greatly to our “exports” and improve our debt to GDP as Ireland is used once again as a one arm bandid tax haven.
@ Robert Browne
Too right.
But don’t forget that 75% of new jobs created in the US were low paid part time jobs.
This is not a situation unique to Ireland.
Simply put – the financial sector is robbing us all.
Politics needs to be as global as finance. We do indeed live in interesting times.
@Robert Browne
I hear, from a usually unreliable source, that Fine Gael will allow all small farmers in the Westh and Border regions to grow MaryJoanna [noted as a herb by an Act of the Oireachtas] as a suitable cash crop to be sold at farmers’s markets in the local towns (VAT at 25%). At a stoke this is expected to boost tourist numbers and save the small business interests in said small towns as well as providing employment for local unskilled labour. FG are reported to be on a real high as they expect to romp home with a fuzzy majority in the next election as they dump the joint deal with Labour.