Today is the second birthday of this blog.
The visitor traffic fluctuates with the level of interest in the Irish economy – November was a record with 261,000 visitors (567,000 page views). The cumulative total over the two years is 1.89 million visitors (4.67 million page views). You can find out more about the visitor patterns at this site.
The latest report from the National Competitiveness Council is available here.
The lead story in the Companies & Markets section of today’s FT carries this headline and focuses on the high apparent exposures of “Irish” Banks to Portugal, Greece and Spain: you can read the story here.
I am pretty sure that the exposures of the banks that are underwritten by the Irish State to these countries must be quite small. Rather, the high numbers in the BIS dataset reflect the activities of international banks that have operations in the IFSC – these banks do not have a role in the Irish domestic financial system.
(This is a periodic story that is re-reported with every release of BIS data.)
I have a piece over at the fantastic Eurointelligence website which is aimed at a foreign audience. It is available here.
Update: there seems to have been a Krugman-effect which has brought the eurointelligence site down temporarily. Until normal service is resumed, the article can be accessed here.
The draft Memorandum of Understanding with IMF, ECB and CEC has that the government will study the transfer of the provision of water services from the county councils to a water utility, and will start charging for water no later than 2013. This is a year earlier than in the four year plan.
The Irish Times has some more detail. Besides the water utility, there would be a water regulator. That is silly. There is a regulator already: the EPA. It would be better to extend the mandate of the EPA to price regulation than to create a new body (plus CEO and fancy offices) and a turf war.
It would be better still to do away with the separate regulators for this and that and create a unified regulator. The Commission for Energy Regulation, for instance, reports to the Department of Energy, who write the regulations and own most of the regulated companies. It may be better to have the regulators report to Department of Finance or the Central Bank. A unified regulator would have economies of scale (regulation is regulation) and be less prone to regulatory capture.
The plan is still to have a central program to install water meters in every home in the country, and to have a free water allowance. Fortunately, the IMF will review the plans and chances are they will talk some sense into DEHLG under the new minister.