1. Karl Whelan's Irish Times article is one of the most important pieces to come out about the Irish Economic situation since christmas. It is compulsory reading for anybody interested in a potential solution to the current mess in Ireland.
2. The CSO unemployment release for Quarter 4 2010 makes for very grim reading and, at least, will quell people looking for false hope in minor ticks in the Live Register. This is the major issue dominating the real Irish economy at present.
3. John McHale irisheconomy piece arguing about the costs of default. In classes on the ultimatum game, I have been using support for default as an example. A lot of the debate about default in Ireland has been driven by a perception that the European negotiators acted unfairly, rather than the repayments are unsustainable. The latter may be true but I wonder how much the momentum for default would have progressed had the EU team not imposed an interest rate that almost all independent commentators have argued is too severe. I have yet to read a convincing explanation for their reasoning in this matter. The IMF logic seemed much more understandable. In general separating out concerns for fairness from economic self-interest is always hard because if something feels unfair, it is often because it hurts us.
4. A belated link to Henry Farrell's review of Fintan O'Toole's Ship of Fools (via Mostly Economics blog) It is a fascinating question as to what we learn about international capitalism from looking at Ireland. Ireland is certainly not mentioned as much on neo-liberal websites as it used to be, and our poster-child of capitalism image is not likely to return for a long-while. But we need more debate about which aspects of the system were particularly poisonous in Ireland.
5. Constantin Gurdgiev, Ciaran Nic an Bhaird, Brian Lucey and Lorcan Roche-Kelly paper on Irish economic meltdown
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