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Contributor John is the first to “call” a recovery in Ireland.  He suggests that this should trigger a blog-thread here on irisheconomy.ie at some point.  I am a financial economist not a macroeconomist but I am curious to start such a thread and read what braver souls have to say.  See John’s text below (from an earlier thread):

“For what its worth, I’ll stick my neck out and say that Ireland is now out of recession. I should emphasise that I’m referring to Q3 rather than to Q2. I don’t claim to be infallible. Its just my opinion based on a reading of the latest manufacturing, trade, retail and other statistics. I could quite easily be wrong. But, if I’m right, I trust the news (figures won’t be published for Q3 until December) will trigger a thread here. “

Very interesting article in the Huffington Post (hat tip: http://9thlevelireland.wordpress.com/), seeking to demonstrate that, for a variety of reasons,  there is limited independence from government on monetary and banking issues amongst the economics profession in the United States. You can read it here. I will leave it to others to suggest how these arguments might play in Ireland where there is less scope (and appetite) for putting economists on the payroll or for control of opportunities to publish in key journals. On the other hand, at the same time as contributors to this blog are tackling government over key aspects of banking policy,  the universities and the government are battling over autonomy (the latter for financial rather than intellectual reasons).

In a welcome shift, the government has indicated that NAMA may pay for bank loans by issuing two claims to the participating banks: standard government bonds in the amount of the minimum fair value of the loan assets, and a continent claim against any realized underpayment (I explain these terms below).  It looks like the contingent claim might be classified as subordinated debt against NAMA as a separate government-owned entity.  What are the policy objectives guiding this security design problem, and what would be the best feasible security design? What about the other huge contingent claim held by the banks (the bank liability guarantee)?  Bringing the liability guarantee into the picture, and examining optimal design in the current circumstances, argues strongly for short-term nationalization as the best policy.  However, if nationalization is ruled out for political reasons, then we can search for a second-best optimum excluding nationalization. I hope to write a technical note on this interesting problem over coming weeks, but in this blog entry I just want to make a few general remarks.

The invaluable Dutch CPB, on whose trade data Barry Eichengreen and I have been relying for our ongoing vox piece, has just published a book (in Dutch) on the Grote Recessie. They also have an accompanying website (in English) with lots of data and links, that at first glance looks to be a very nice resource indeed.