Author: Seamus Coffey

The film will be aired tonight at 9pm.  The film is good and well worth watching for those who missed its cinema run before Christmas. 

It must though be considered in the light of being a drama and not a documentary.  Unsurprisingly it differs somewhat from the stage version, Guaranteed!, with additional characters and less emphasis on a number of the alternatives that may have been considered. 

Obviously some of the characters and most of the dialogue is fictional and we can’t be sure that the stance of individual characters is accurate, particularly in the Cowen-Lenihan exchanges.  Overall it is a good dramatisation and will probably be more accurate than the debate which is due to following the airing.

I am looking forward to The Bailout later this year.

Some observations on some recent issues are below the fold:

1. The NTMA’s purchase and cancellation of €500 million of FRNs from the Central Bank
2. The passing in the US of The Tax Increase Prevention Act of 2014 which extends the “look-through” rule
3. The recent falls of the price of motor fuel which mean the pre-tax price of petrol is below 40 cent/litre

• Balance of International Payments Q3 2014
• Quarterly National Accounts Quarter 3 2014
• Trade Statistics September 2014
• Consumer Price Index November 2014
• Tourism and Travel Quarter 3 2014
• Production in Building and Construction Index Quarter 3 2014

For the first three quarters of 2014 GDP is running 4.9 per cent ahead of the equivalent period in 2013. GNP is up 4.7 per cent on the same basis.  Quarter on quarter growth has slowed through the year though much of this is likely the result of distorting effects from the MNC sector.

The “contract manufacturing” effect that influenced the quarterly figures at the start of the year seems to have continued into Q3.  This seems to be supported by the Industrial Production data which includes this “contract manufacturing” effect and is highly volatile at the moment.  After rising by over 20 per cent in the first half of the year the volume of industrial production in manufacturing industries fell by 5 per cent in Q3 so remains at the elevated levels.  The figures show that the effect is arising in the pharmaceutical sector.

The Q3 balance of goods trade in the national accounts was around €3 billion higher than the balance shown by the Trade Statistics figures.  The difference was around €2.5 billion in Q2.

In the first nine months of 2013 the national accounting adjustments for goods trade resulted in a difference of just –€76 million between the trades balances recorded in the national accounts and trade statistics.  For the first nine months of 2014 the balance of goods in the national accounts is €7.9 billion greater than that shown in the trade statistics.

The current account of the balance of payments showed a massive surplus equivalent to 8.4 per cent of GDP in Q3.  This has been driven by an improvement in the merchandise balance (with no corresponding outflow on the services side) which is likely the result of the “contract manufacturing” effect discussed above.

It is possible (i.e. this is a guess) that the “contract manufacturing” effect is arising in an Irish-domiciled company.  If it was the Irish-resident branch of an MNC the profits would be recorded as an outflow in the BoP (and also for GNP) in the same quarter they are earned.  If it is an Irish-domiciled (or headquartered) company the profits would not be recorded as an outflow until a cash dividend is paid (assuming those dividends are paid to non-resident shareholders).  It is not appropriate to say that GNP excludes multinational sector profits.

[As an aside one might consider what impact, if any, these activities are having on Corporation Tax revenues.]

In November, consumer prices fell 0.3 per cent for the second month in a row (there was also a fall of 0.2 per cent in September).  Annual inflation is just 0.1 per cent.  Excluding energy products (-2 per cent) and mortgage interest (-12 per cent) inflation in the remaining 85 per cent of the index is around +1 per cent.

All charts from the CSO.

The European Commission have published their assessments of the draft budgets from the 16 eurozone countries covered by the assessment (programme countries Greece and Cyprus are not involved).  Of the 16, five were judged as “compliant” by the Commission (shown in green below).

A huge amount of material is available here.  For Ireland there is the:

• Draft Budgetary Plan
• Staff Working Document
• Commission Opinion

The Commission have also published the Alert Mechanism Report as part of the Macroeconomic Imbalance Procedure. There is also the Statistical Annex from which Ireland’s scorecard is extracted here and shows four “imbalances” with house prices likely to add a fifth.  The “auxiliary indicators” may also be worth a glance.

This is still early days for the European Semester but at the moment it feels a little like a blizzard covering everything.  It seems to be designed on the maximin principle – by including everything they can’t be accused of missing anything.  The problem is that the important points may get lost in the noise.

The latest IFAC report is here.