Fintan O’Toole is a thoughtful and eloquent commentator on arts and social trends, and sometimes he gets things right about economic issues too! Today in the Irish Times he has a compelling piece on bank bailout policies toward Anglo Irish.
Category: Uncategorized
RTE reports today that 14 million euro will be provided from the European Globalisation Adjustment Fund to people who have been made redundant at DELL to assist them in the process of retraining and finding a new job. The website of this fund is available below and the basic idea is that the fund will support people who have been displaced by trade-related developments. It is intended only to fund active programmes rather than social protection measures. It is worth some discussion of this in light of the long running debate here about active labour market intervention.
According to today’s Irish Times the legislation to ban leases providing for upward-only rent reviews has been shelved in the interests of NAMA:
Nama sinks upwards-only law
The Government is not to proceed with the abolition of upwards-only rent reviews even though the legislation has already been passed by the Oireachtas, says FBD Retail Excellence which represents over 50 retailers. David Fitzsimons, CEO of Retail Excellence, told members it was very unusual for a minister to announce a measure in the Dáil and then not proceed with it. His interpretation was that advisers to the Department of Finance and Nama had insisted on not abolishing upwards-only reviews as this would further undermine asset values.
Legislation to end upwards-only reviews on new leases was approved by the Dáil before the summer. While it would not have affected existing leases, Retail Excellence says it would have “sent a strong message to the landlords”. Labour TD Ciaran Lynch has tabled a question in the Dáil enquiring whether the legislation is to be implemented.
The report of the high-powered Commission on the Measurement of Economic Progress and Social Performance set up by President Sarkozy and chaired by Joe Stiglitz and with a stellar cast of economists amongst its members was published today. President Sarkozy has promised to follow the report by measuring well-being as well as gross domestic product. The full report does not appear to be available yet on the Commission’s website, [Update: link is now available]. For a flavour of the issues raised in the report, see Stiglitz’s commentary on the GDP fetish.
Morgan has a piece in today’s Irish Times, which you can read here.