The CSO have released the first results of the most recent HBS which was taken between August 2009 and September 2010. There is also this press release.
Average weekly expenditure is estimated to be €810 per week or around €42,000 per year. The release contains lots of detailed information by income decile, region, location and household tenure.
My slides from this evening’s Policy Institute event are available here.
Michael Moore of QUB raised an interesting point with me last week. A NO vote would not affect our membership of the IMF. Presumably, Michael asked, we could still turn to it if/when we need a second bail-out? And recall that the troika – the coalition of the willing – was just put together because it was considered demeaning for the EU that a member state should seek a bail-out from entirely external sources. Given all the indications of how much the IMF has changed in the wake of the Stiglitz critique, they might even have a better deal to offer than our EU partners.
Michael, of course, likes to lace his stews with chili. But still…
Then, though, it would be up to our American partners. A senior IMF official confirmed to me over the summer the veracity of Morgan’s account of the Geithner veto. Soundings to be taken over St Patrick’s Day at the White House?
Randy Wray is a prominent economist writing in the post-Keynesian tradition, and is very prominent in the debates online around Modern Monetary Theory. He has an intriguing paper on a jobs guarantee scheme for Ireland here. I’m sure our readers will have lots to say about this proposal, and it is welcome food for thought.
Paul De Grauwe argues that the LTRO operation is a poor substitute for direct ECB intervention in the sovereign debt market in this FT article.