The New York Times carries a lengthy article (plus plenty of photos in a slideshow format) on the Irish situation: you can read it here.
A more accurate and comprehensive headline might have been: “Ireland paying a high price for boom-bust cycle in property sector and attendant banking crisis, amplified and abetted by procyclical fiscal policy and now requiring a sustained fiscal correction” – but that is probably too long!
Update: Paul Krugman adds his view in this post.
Athlone is the target of a major Chinese investment initiative, according to this Guardian report: you can read it here.
According to the Volkskrant, each World Cup match of Oranje costs the Netherlands economy 130 mln euro — essentially because people sit around watching telly instead of working. Oranje has yet to sparkle, so there was limited joy to offset the loss in productivity.
Thanks to Henry, Ireland’s economy was spared a similar fate — although the Boys in Green certainly would have put in a better performance than les Bleus.
The last week has seen a lot of coverage of the announcement by Brian Lenihan that there will be an external review of the Department of Finance. Some media responses:
In today’s Business Post, Colm argues that “smart” should be defined broadly if it is to stimulate economic growth, rather than the narrow focus on gadgets that the government is currently following
Others and I have argued roughly the same, in different words, but without much traction
I guess that in ten years time, when an independent expert will evaluate the lack of return on investment in the smart economy, politicians will argue no one had warned them at the time