With the Dail debate playing in the background, some notes on what Brian Lenihan insists is not a bail-out. Professor Morgan Kelly relates an incident at a conference he attended:…

Sometimes something happens that takes one breath away. It makes it hard to speak, never mind coherently. The Government’s bank guarantee proposal is one such. It constitutes a fundamental capitulation, not…

I was pulling my hair out when a friend rang me pulling her hair out.  A lot of hair being grabbed.  Let's start with my hair.  Noel Whelan has given us the benefit of…

Ah, the low-paid – if words were money they'd be living on easy street.  Everybody wants to help the low-paid.  Certainly, Fianna Fail was determined to.  Shortly before becoming Taoiseach,…

Good riddance.  Or as WorldbyStorm writes over at Cedar Lounge Revolution, 'The PDs get a a four week reprieve.  Then they die.'  Can't come soon enough.  The only downside is…

As of this writing, the full text of the draft pay deal is still not readily available but the broad outlines are clear.  The pay element contains real wage cuts,…

I admire people who have absolutely no shame about going public with their proposals, no matter how weird, strange and utterly nonsensical those proposals might be.  Such people don't care…

With the pay talks nearly at an end, IBEC, in the form of its representative here on earth – our friend Turlough – is warning of the gravest reperscussions if…

Good lord – is Master Batt O'Keefe in danger of turning into a modern-day Huey Long, a radical redistributionist who wants to confiscate wealth from the rich and give it to…

You'd think from listening to the employers of the land that every business in every sector is in danger of bankruptcy, liquidation or receivership.  They are all teetering on some ill-defined brink whose…

It seems that nationalisation is all the rage these days.  The takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,  if it does not put paid to the notion that housing finance…

Remember the 3rd of September. That is the day the economic conservative consensus died, when all the certainties propagated by our one-party state were shredded. Fiona Fail has panicked in…

In a previous post, I suggested Turlough O’Sullivan suffered from an unfortunate quirk – he couldn’t bring himself to saying the words ‘low-paid’ with inserting the rider ‘so-called’. I proposed…

IBEC's Turlough O'Sullivan has an unfortunate ideological quirk but it is treatable.  It seems he can't say the words 'low-paid' without inserting 'so-called' before them.  In fact, he has trouble…

From the American political blogosphere – an interesting concept (actually the religious-political-progressive blogosphere).  Yes, American religious-progressive.  With all the European media focused on Governor Sarah Palin and her supporters (Rush…

I don't know Dr. Gerry Burke.  Were he to walk past me on the street, I wouldn't know him.  So, please, someone point him out.  I want to buy him…

You can pick you friends but not your friends' friends.  Out last night with some former who brought their latter and, of course, their conversation turned to the recession.  And…

There are any number of issues that should be tackled in recession times.  I won't list them, you know them.  But bashing EU regulations is not one of them, especially…

A good idea is a good idea – or at least a partially good idea.  Tom Parlon, former PD parliamentarian and currently construction lobbyist supremo (yes, the same guy who said…

Enough is enough is enough. Our telecommunications industry is being turned into dog meat and we are powerless. The current owners, the home boys Down Under at Babcock & Brown,…