Author: Philip Lane

IMF Staff Report on the Ireland Deal

The detailed IMF report is available here.

The Consolidated Foreign Claims of the Irish Banks

The Irish Central Bank has developed a new data series that shows the consolidated foreign claims of the six domestically-active banks headquartered in Ireland (ie it does not include the activities of the affiliates of UK banks in Ireland and it corresponds to the list of ‘guaranteed’ banks).

This note clarifies the vast differences between these claims and those reported in the BIS database.

Reading List

Today’s FT carries op-eds by Lorenzo Bini-Smaghi on the costs of sovereign default (here) and by Klaus Regling on the feasibility of monetary union without fiscal union (here).

This week’s Economist compares Iceland and Ireland here.

Blog is Two

Today is the second birthday of this blog.

The visitor traffic fluctuates with the level of interest in the Irish economy – November was a record with 261,000 visitors (567,000 page views).  The cumulative total over the two years is 1.89 million visitors (4.67 million page views).  You can find out more about the visitor patterns at this site.

Ireland’s Competitiveness Challenge

The latest report from the National Competitiveness Council is available here.