I’ve just read on the excellent Stephen Kinsella’s blog that he and others have set up Irish Recovery.ie, which is “a portal for people with specific ideas that will improve people’s lives and aid the process of recovery in the irish economy.” Good stuff I say.
One thing, however. The site welcomes “specific well-argued projects that are properly costed, based on good practice and have definable and measurable outcomes are the solution to many structural weaknesses in the Irish Economy.” I don’t think anyone can argue with the general point here: make sense and be realistic. So this is not the forum for “national strike…world revolution” style arguments.
Still, I wonder how the ‘properly’ in properly costed is to work itself out. Would Stephen think, for instance, that the Bank of England’s quantitative easing experiment is properly costed? How? Over what timescale? Assuming what outcomes? I’m not sniping here: without at all denying the serious intentions here, some guidance as to what it is to ‘properly’ cost structural reforms to an economy would be welcome. Indeed, once we get beyond Dragon’s Den level ideas, I’m not convinced that structural reforms/adjustments/what have you have ever been properly costed anywhere. They’ve been tried and then people have been either hailed as heroes, villains, or both.
On a macro note, I don’t think that the Irish actually have an important role to play in determining how their economy is to be shaped over the next decade or more. The two of the three Irish national business models have depended entirely on the structures of global capitalism for two decades. We have exploited our location in Europe to act as a magnet for American FDI and we have maintained, at best, a quasi-offshore status to facilitate the movement of global financial capital through the IFSC etc (the third involves the exporting of Irish national resources in the form of food production and tourism).
As such, Irish prosperity relies to some extent on the decisions that Barack Obama makes about the functioning of American global and domestic capitalism. To an even greater extent, the global financial crisis provides a major opportunity for the Europeanisation of corporate governance and capitalism – an opportunity for harmonisation of standards that the McCreevy’s DG in the European Commission is grasping. Have a look at the De Larosière Report for a sense of where things might move on some issues. The Commission also has an interest in the audit, tranparency and a rake of other issues. I touch on this in my chapter for O’Neill’s and Keane’s Corporate Governance: An Irish Perspective.
Anyway, all that’s for drawing out in another post. The main point is that the Irish just have to ride the storm and then choose whether they want to compete in whatever climate the find on the other side. Sad but true.
I'm simply astounded at the amount of bullshit being talked about Lisbon, and at the profoundly inept yes campaign's pussyfooting around the shady character (and hereandhere) of some elements on the no side. Anyway, courtesy of a friend, here are the facts about what Lisbon does. Not opinions, not distortions: facts. Or, given what Stefan points out in the comments (apologies!), here…
Fair dues to United Irelander, who though I do tend to find him annoying at times (which is not necessarily a bad thing), tends to be a generally honest interlocutor. Anyway, he's massively anti-Lisbon but did post a long email interview with Diana Panke at UCD on Lisbon and other matters. Check it out. My only quibble is that the format doesn't give UI an opportunity to reveal whether what Panke has to say makes him change his mind (or if not, why not), but still, this the discursive element in the Irish blogosphere at its best.
There's an interesting spot of research on Libertas over on Indymedia. I haven't chased down the sources myself yet but if what Checkov Feeney says is even a bit accurate he's revealed some pretty fascinating stuff.
Hat tip to John Carroll who I suspect is even more unlikely than I am to be lurking around the Indymedia site…!
Update: Having read the piece more closely, Feeney could do with distinguishing between someone owning a company and being it's CEO (though he's not the only one to get confused on that matter) (see comments below). I've updated this post because while, on the whole, there does seem to be an interesting allegation here (some of the people behind Libertas have made a mint from the shadier activities of the Bush administration and that their campaign coheres with the neocon perspective on Europe) I'm not sure I want to draw conclusions from it.
If there's one lesson that the government will take from the Nice treaty debacle, it's not that they should argue the case for the Lisbon Treaty. After all, with Nice only 8% of voters surveyed declared that they had a good understanding of the Treaty and it can't be much better this time around.
Besides, if they try to argue the facts they will likely end up in a mess. The Treaty is generally an unexiting, obscure and complicated institutional reform so there's nothing inspiring to argue for. More importantly no campaign is hell bent on a misinformation strategy (viz bullshit about article 48 of the treaty, or about corporate taxes etc etc) because they don't have to win the debate (and patently can't on the facts): they simply have to depress turnout. And turnout is the key to understanding why Nice 1 failed: the no vote barely increased from previous referenda but the yes vote collapsed, falling by half from the Amsterdam Treaty.
So what will the Government do, beyond bellowing threats at the electorate? They will run the referendum on the rights of the child on the same day. This element in the strategy was mentioned here, reporting Bertie Ahern's reply to a question by Enda Kenny: "If possible I would like to honour the commitment we made on the children's rights referendum." It's not particularly edifying politics (regarding either Lisbon or the rights of the child) and the politics of ideas it certainly is not, but if the gambit of running multiple referendums achieves its end of producing a high turnout it would be very difficult for the Government to lose.
There has been quite a bit of comment (also here) on Monday’s accession of Bulgaria and Romania into the European Union. Of course, this is by no means the end of Europe’s expansion process.
And then there’s Turkey. Of course, the Turkey question is the most fraught of all. The Turks are increasingly frustrated with European concerns over expansion (some legitimate (pdf), some less so). But expansion, partly because of the current political climate, partly because of wider cultural concerns and partly for good reasons, is going to be a heavy pill for Europeans to swallow.
One of the less recognised elements in the Turkish question is the army. I get the impression (partly from this debate) that the Turkish army is looked to to protect the ideological interests of the Turkish elites, specifically against encroachments into the secular architecture of the state.
I’m reading conflicting reports about the chances of a coup in Turkey over the next year. There was a report in Newsweek to that effect, and rumours are circulating elsewhere too. On the other hand, this rejoinder claims that Newsweek is well off the mark.
Nevertheless, coup or no coup, while the Europeans are concerning themselves with red-herring questions over secularism, more important issues – such as over the role of the military in public life – are not the subject of sufficient scrutiny.
Partly, I suppose because the question of the army’s role (at least in the eyes of some of its generals) isn’t entirely restricted to Turkey.
I’m engaged in two simultaneous projects for the day: trying to make sense of an article I’m writing on ‘hyperactive regulation’ (more on that when I’m finished it) and writing a brief blog post on Turkey and EU expansion.
Anyway, I’ve just come across a very informative site: the European Country of Origin Information Network. It collates country reports from the UK, the EU and the US as well as reports from NGOs in one handy spot. Very useful!
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