Draghi Into The Light

at

This afterenoon.

Paul Murphy TD grills the European Central Bank’s Mario Draghi over the bailout and his predecessor’s threat to the late Finance Minister Brian Lenihan during an appearance by the ECB chief at a Joint Oireachtas Finance Committee meeting.

Meanwhile…

The Irish economy has seen a particularly strong expansion in recent years. Ireland is now growing at the fastest pace of any euro area country,” he said.

“Unemployment has been falling too, and now stands well below the euro area average.

“This is all the more impressive given the severe crisis Ireland went through and the legacies it is dealing with, including high private debt and arrears.”

He said policies need to put in place to protect the exchequer and deal with “legacy vulnerabilities” in the system – especially the level of non-performing loans.

ECB chief warns Irish economy most at risk of overheating and Brexit (irish Examiner)

Meanwhile…

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9 thoughts on “Draghi Into The Light

  1. Jonickal

    Central banks with democratic control will end up as basket cases. CBs in Western Europe, US, Japan etc. have managed to keep a tight lid on inflation for the past 30-40 years. This is because they’ve remained largely independent of the electoral cycle. This is one of the huge unrecognised benefits of these banks’ monetary policy. Of course some people won’t see it this way, but the opposite could be a whole lot worse. Very few people now under the age of 50 have experienced high inflation, it’d be good to keep it that way.

  2. giggidygoo

    Listening to Drivetime this evening, Philip Boucher Hayes was reporting on the employment situation. It is reckoned that 20% of ‘jobs’ are not full time, and many of those are zero hours, ‘self-employed’ (forced).

    1. Owen C

      “It is reckoned”? We have actual data on this sort of thing. We don’t have to guess.

      17% of all employment is part time. For context, in 2006, the peak of the boom, it was 15%. There will always be a number of people (students, retirees, mothers) who do not want or cannot commit to a full time job but would like to generate some earnings from part time work.

      Just under 5% of all people in employment are “underemployed” (which would include zero hours and not actually working enough hours).

    1. Ronan

      We’re actually the shady ones, with anything from property investment vehicles to multinational corporations being given incentives in exchange for jobs and investment cash from other economies.

      We’re shady as fudge, the Eurozones finance red light district. We don’t like the ECB because they’re a bastion of abstinence from our brand of pro-cyclical hooring

      As for having a democratic central bank, that is beyond ridiculous. You might as well put a cash printing press in every village and tell them to go nuts.

      1. f_lawless

        What do you mean “we” -are you part of Ireland’s financial elite class? I don’t think high levels of corruption within Ireland’s financial system somehow make anti-democratic, bullying behaviour by the ECB insignificant.

  3. Emily Dickinson

    The bankers were Irish. The borrowers were Irish. The regulators were Irish. The auditors were Irish. The Department of Finance was Irish. The politicians were Irish, and so were the people who elected them. The banking crisis and its aftermath was 100% guaranteed Irish. If we’re going to blame Draghi for all of that, we might as well keep going and blame him for the trolley crisis, lying Garda commissioners and schools that fall down three years after they’re built.

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