In Ireland, the papers are very much focused on how to deal with the bust after the boom. In the wake of the big fat no on the Lisbon Treaty and after 15 long years of upswing, it is readily apparent to anyone that the bust is happening. The question everyone is asking [...]

As Ireland faces a recession after a fifteen-year property boom, it has come to light that the government have been caught out and doesn’t have the enough funds to support the economy now that the boom has gone bust. The Irish Independent chronicles a research piece from the Economic and Social Research Institute, which is [...]

From the Telegraph:
Irish right to craic the whip over EU treaty
By Liam Halligan
Last Updated: 1:38am BST 15/06/2008
Against the advice of the major political parties and most of the media, Irish voters have rejected the Lisbon Treaty. Good for them.
That’s a perfectly reasonable response to an agreement which is not only absurdly complex, but also replicates [...]

That’s what Sir Howard Davies, a former deputy governor of the Bank of England (BoE), has to say.

The Lisbon Treaty, which was to give the European Union more say over matters in EU member states received a vote of no confidence from Ireland. The result was 52% against and 48% for. Just as with the EU constitution, there is great resistance from member states to the bureaucratic control of the [...]

As the Euro celebrates its tenth anniversary, Vaclav Klaus, the President of the Czech Republic, says:
“The question is whether the eurozone countries and their citizens have cause to celebrate. The answer is uncertain, given the zone’s sluggish economic growth, great growth differences among countries and large differences in inflation, even though a single currency should [...]

I am a Euroscpetic. I admire the political will of Europe’s grand designers in creating the Euro, but I have always felt that harmonisation would be a painful process fraught with tension – especially during economic downturns. And so it is today.

Along with the residential housing bust in Ireland, a commercial real estate (CRE) bust is definitely on the table. According to the newspaper the Irish Independent up to 10 billion euros of writedowns are possible for the Irish property developers and banks.

As I have mentioned in previous posts, the housing bubble was an international phenomenon. As a result, the U.S. subprime meltdown is indeed spreading beyond this limited sector. In the US, expect Alt-A and prime mortgages to feel the pain as the economy suffers recession. However, I would like to turn the [...]

While we all expected house prices to slow and even fall in bubble markets like Ireland, the UK and Spain, it comes as news to me that prices are slowing in Germany as well. I was just in Germany this past month, and while there were economic concerns, the atmosphere felt entirely different than it does in a place like the US.