In its first Budget, the Government managed to generate a correction of over €3bn without touching headline rates of tax or welfare, apart from a VAT increase that will barely break even. Magic, surely? This post explores the magic trick and finds it relies on the sleight of hand of assuming the equivalent of 200,000 new jobs in 2012, while still not grasping the nettle of reforming the three main areas of Government spending: social welfare, health and education.

The Nobel Prize in Economics, awarded yesterday, highlighted the important role of expectations. The IMF’s World Economic Outlook has given the world an important barometer of expectations about the economic climate and how they change over time. This post uses IMF figures to estimate how many jobs will be lost over the period 2011-2015 in the Eurozone, the USA and in the rest of the developed world, due to politicians’ inaction on the debt crisis over the last twelve months alone.

Ireland’s Budget 2012, announced earlier this month, contained a number of property-related measures. This post reviews them. One would hope at this time that any measures would be the bold actions of a government with a large majority trying to create a sustainable property market. Instead, they seem like the actions of an addict who just can’t give up. Unsustainably cheap credit can never be the answer, boosting confidence and finance has to be.