Now that the transcript is available, it’s clear that lots of interesting stuff came up at yesterday’s Oireachtas Comittee meeting on NAMA, most of it unreported by the press. Here’s a collection of statements I found interesting.
When the NAMA Project was announced, Peter Bacon discussed the pricing process as follows on Morning Ireland:
Peter Bacon: It will be set by reference to the market. The market, as you know, has fallen dramatically. And I think people have overestimated the difficulties in estimating what these market values are.
John Murray: At the moment there is no market.
Peter Bacon: Well, there is a market.
John Murray: Nothing is selling.
Peter Bacon: For example, in the residential sector, you have monthly indices telling us how house prices have fallen by 1.4% to whatever level. We have information about yields on commercial properties moving out to 8%. I think a lot of people are saying “well, there’s no market” but really what they’re saying is “we don’t like the answer that’s there.”
The WSJ devotes front-page space to Chile’s success in saving for a rainy day during the boom times: you can read it here.
Following the publicity given last week to the Concluding Statement of the IMF’s recent Article IV Consultation Mission to the UK, I decided to check it out for myself. There is a full list of recent Concluding Statements here. As you can see, Ireland is conspicuous by its absence from a very comprehensive list of countries. This is not because Article IV consultations are not done here, since they are.
So, what explains our absence from the list? Have Concluding Statements never been published for Ireland, and if so, why is that? Or, were they published at one time, and was publication subsequently halted — and if so, why?
Ashoka Mody of the IMF has written an interesting paper on European sovereign spreads: more details here.