In the past couple of weeks, the Oireachtas Committe on Finance and the Public Sector met with the authors of the two forthcoming preliminary banking inquiry reports, Klaus Regling and Governor Honohan (Regling was accompanied by his assistant Max Watson). The transcripts of these meetings are now available online here and here.
Last week, the IDA launched its new strategy document “Horizon 2020.” Michael Hennigan has a critical article on the strategy in today’s Irish Times.
The Department of Foreign Affairs recently released a report on the progress toward meeting some of the goals set out in last year’s Farmleigh summit. I have to confess to a degree of unease about a process that doesn’t permit people to debate and scrutinise ideas in full open view. I am pretty sure that the vast majority of the people who attended and spoke are big enough and bold enough to have withstood an IrishEconomy type treatment for their ideas and I don’t see why it wasn’t simply podcast. As it was, the event was mostly held in private for a group of selected invitees. The progress report for what was discussed is linked below. Some of the ideas include a National Diaspora bond and an overseas graduate programme. Other paragraphs suggest that Farmleigh may have been influential in shaping budgetary policy, which is something that doesn’t sound very plausible. In general, I can’t disguise a degree of scepticism about such approaches but, having said that, some very influential and succesful people attended and gave their views so debating this document seems a good use of a thread.
Bundesbank president Axel Weber gave a speech on “The Reform of Financial Supervision and Regulation in Europe” today at the Institute for International and European Affairs. The Institute has provided the text of Weber’s speech and an audio podcast here.
Update: Thanks to Michael Hennigan for noting that the impressive Mr. Weber also gave a completely different speech to Financial Services Ireland on the same day, titled “Making the Financial System more Resilient – The Role of Capital Requirements.” Link here.
Here‘s a link to the latest set of briefing papers for the European Parliament’s Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee. One set of papers (including one by me) focuses on global imbalances and the role they played in the financial crisis. The other set of papers focuses on European fiscal issues. These papers include a summary by Daniel Gros (CEPS) of his proposal with Thomas Mayer (Chief Economist of Deutsche Bank) for a European Monetary Fund.
These briefing papers are provided to MEPs on the committee prior to a meeting they will have with ECB President Trichet on March 22nd at which these and other issues will be discussed.