What if unemployment in Ireland reaches 25% next year? What if GDP falls a quarter between 2007 and 2012? The spectre of the Great Depression looms over us large at the moment and there has been much commentary of late – see for example Robert Samuelson’s recent blog post – on whether and how our [...]
Intergenerational outsourcing and the consequences of building 10% too much: A look at Ireland’s property market in 2013
With Davy Stockbrokers predicting a 70% fall in Irish construction activity from its peak over the coming ‘medium term’ (2009-2011 or so), I though it might be timely to review some headline statistics for Ireland’s property overhang. Recently, I’ve been peddling the idea that between 2004 and 2007, we were building twice as many homes [...]
The Pelosi scare-graph revisited: Private sector job losses and camel recessions
As some of you may know, Nancy Pelosi has been scaring people with graphs, recently. By her metric, namely the absolute numbers of jobs lost, the current recession is more severe – and faster – than the last couple of regressions. Naturally, something that high profile gained a lot of attention and ultimately modification. The [...]
