[lbo-talk] Growth through austerity: Ireland

[cmk1 at eircom.net]

And the Irish elite can't their story straight about austerity. Michael Taft of the trade union UNITE (who I think has featured on 'Behind the News') has caught the government appointed Irish Fiscal Council, staffed by senior academic economists, getting confused between 'headline deficit' and 'underlying' in their first big report.

http://notesonthefront.typepad.com/politicaleconomy/2011/10/a-poor-start.html

And when Michael Taft called them on this they removed their findings from their website but still insisted, despite the evidence, that austerity is working. As he puts it 'Fiscal Council wants us to believe that austerity measures amounting to over 12 percent of GDP resulting in a deficit-reduction of 1.8 percent constitutes 'working'. Discuss.'

http://notesonthefront.typepad.com/politicaleconomy/2011/10/in-my-post-on-the-irish-fiscal-advisory-councils-first-report-i-pointed-out-they-made-a-blunder-in-short-they-claimed-t.html

http://notesonthefront.typepad.com/politicaleconomy/2011/10/quick-follow-up-on-the-fiscal-council-story.html#comments

Meanwhile an Irish government bent on imposing extreme austerity on its population for the next decade will next Wednesday get a rare chance to show that it is capable of caring and sharing when it pays a senior unsecured bondholder E700,000,000. 

http://bondwatchireland.blogspot.com/