The Irish Times preview the film with the screenplay writer Colin Murphy and producer John Kelleher here. There is also a short clip from the movie to whet the appetite.
Having seen the Fishamble stage production of Guaranteed! last year I am looking forward to the film version which goes on limited release next week. They probably took some artistic license with the adaption but hopefully not too much.
The 2014 Finance Bill was published yesterday and it is available here with related documents.
There’s not a lot new in the Bill. One of the very minor changes relates to mortgage interest relief, with the relief now available to Income Tax payers in Ireland (who derive the bulk of their income in Ireland) for qualifying loans on PPRs in the entire European Economic Area rather than just Ireland. There are plenty of other minor changes.
On the changes to corporate residency rules announced in the budget The National Law Review in the US has published a useful article under the heading: Death of the “Double Irish Dutch Sandwich”? Not so Fast. re: Irish Incorporated Non-resident Companies. It is available here.
Earlier in the week the Minister for Finance and the Opposition Finance spokespeople gave statements to the Dáil on the pre-budget statement of the Fiscal Advisory Council. The transcripts of these Dáil statements are here.
The Bank of Latvia organised a conference on this topic last Friday: materials here.
The speeches by Coeure and Weidmann on the euro area are quite interesting; I can recommend the presentations on Greece; there were presentations on Ireland by myself and Craig Beaumont.
The ‘Battle of Ideas’ festival held at the Barbican in London last weekend included a panel session entitled ‘Piigs can’t fly: Democracy/Technocracy/Austerity’. I was invited to make a 7-minute presentation of my views as expressed at various crisis conferences over the years:
Back in 1986, long before most people imagined that the single currency would really come into being, Paul Krugman wrote of the potential fiscal co-ordination problem: a bias towards excessive restriction because each country ignores the impact of its actions on the exports of others. “Achieving co-ordination of fiscal policies is probably even harder politically than co-ordination of monetary policies. There is not even temporarily a natural central player whose actions can solve the co-ordination problem. None the less, in surveying the problems of European integration, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that this is the systemic change most needed in the near future”.
Without this problem ever having been addressed, the potential for exchange-rate realignment was locked down. As many US economists warned, the euro was a federalist project lacking in federalist foundations, whether minimalist (banking union or federalist insurance schemes) or maximalist (a Washington-style federal budget).
In the face of this existing (anti-Keynesian?; pre-Keynesian?; antediluvian?) institutional structure, Ireland had no choice but to impose austerity (which would have been required even in the absence of the disastrous bank guarantee of 2008). The large primary budget deficits – which meant that government spending would still far exceed tax revenues even if interest payments ceased – precluded debt default.
The actions of the ECB in 2010 in forcing us to pay off remaining unsecured bank bonds (by threatening to cut off liquidity) appear to have been beyond its mandate and it is difficult to think of any reason not to support economist Colm McCarthy’s call for this to be brought to the ECJ. But, as he notes, the need for retrenchment would have remained.
The Irish experience under austerity has been distinguished by remarkable industrial peace. Paddy Teahon, the chief civil servant behind social partnership, argued that the process had promoted a shared understanding among unions, employers and the government of the key mechanisms and relationships that drive the economy. I wrote back in 2009 that “the Teahon view will be seen to be of validity if some agreement can be reached to reduce public-sector pay until the current crisis is overcome”.
As to whether austerity has worked, it has achieved what it was supposed to achieve, which was to close the deficit and slow the accelerating debt ratio. It was never supposed on its own to get the economy back to work, but rather to position the economy well for when markets rebounded. The flexibility of the labour market makes it easier for Ireland to bounce back from austerity than is the case for Greece for example. So does the openness of the economy, as long as export markets recover.
[All of the other panellists having been hostile to ‘the displacement of democracy by technocracy’, I suggested that:] Many or most economists of my acquaintance in Ireland were content enough with the policies espoused by, and implemented at the behest of, the troika. Technocracy can be viewed as an advantageous buffer between government and – on the other hand – purveyors of snake oil and the representatives of powerful entrenched interests (though technocrats too are not immune, of course, from regulatory capture).
There’s plenty to discuss from yesterday’s announcements but any OP is not likely to be followed by related comments.
All the relevant documents from the Department of Finance are here.
This is a summary of the aggregate budgetary changes (in €million).
Here are two vintages of the debt interest table. First from the April 2013 SPU.
And this from yesterday’s Economic and Fiscal Outlook:
There are lots of opinions I’m sure on how this (temporary?) improvement was used.