Economy:Robert Skidelsky
Friday, July 9th, 2010Keynes’ biographer Lord Robert Skidelsky is to address this year’s Northern Ireland Economic Conference. agendaNi profiles the professor of political economy. Lord Skidelsky is Emeritus Professor of Political Economy at the University of Warwick and is perhaps better known as Keynes’ biographer. His three-volume biography of the economist John Maynard Keynes received numerous awards. The financial sector crash brought Keynes back to life. In the 1970s, Keynesian policy became somewhat obsolete. He was seen as the great economist of the Great Depression of the 1930s but he had little...[full story]
Budget 2010:Going for broke
Friday, July 9th, 2010With the emergency Budget looking to cut the deficit, Owen McQuade looks at the risks of such deep cuts in stalling the economic recovery. The UK’s emergency Budget of 22 June aims to deliver a severe fiscal retrenchment equal to 6.3 per cent of GDP by 2014-2015. Three-quarters of the adjustment will come from spending cuts and the balance from raising taxes, with £113 billion per year knocked off the deficit by 2014-2015. Government spending will fall from 47 per cent of GDP in 2009-2010 to under 41 per cent and borrowing will fall from 11 per cent to 2 per cent. The cyclically adjusted...[full story]
Budget 2010:Businesses on the Budget
Friday, July 9th, 2010Businesses have been largely welcoming of George Osborne’s Budget, particularly the paper into rebalancing Northern Ireland’s economy. The reduction of corporation tax to 24 per cent over the next three years is a positive element of the Budget, but should go further according to local business. “Even after the four years of reduction, our corporation tax will be 6.5 per cent higher than the Republic; a position that is simply not sustainable and any paper which fails to address this point will have little or no impact,” commented Francis Martin, President of the Northern Ireland...[full story]
Budget 2010:Esmond Birnie Q&A
Friday, July 9th, 2010How hard were the hard choices? On 22 June 2010, just 90 days after Alistair Darling warned in his final Budget speech that “there are tough choices ahead”, his successor, George Osborne, told a packed House of Commons: “I will not hide hard choices”, and he didn’t. Esmond Birnie, Chief Economist with PricewaterhouseCoopers, reads the Budget tea-leaves to see just how hard those choices really were. George Osborne described it as the “unavoidable Budget”. Was it? Not exactly – this was a Budget of choice, but it wasn’t much of a choice. Osborne had to send a message...[full story]
North/South:NAMA looks north
Friday, June 4th, 2010The Northern Ireland NAMA Advisory Committee has begun its task of protecting the value of the region’s property and assets that are due to be taken into the National Asset Management Agency. Meadhbh Monahan looks at the role of the ‘bad bank’ in the province. An estimated £4.6 billion of Northern Ireland assets will be transferred to NAMA, the asset management agency which was established with the aim of transferring key property-related exposures from the balance sheets of the participating financial institutions in return for Irish Government-guaranteed securities. Initially...[full story]
Business:A modest recovery
Thursday, June 3rd, 2010Economic recovery will be “sluggish by historic standards”, according to Ian McCafferty. Speaking at the annual CBI economic briefing, McCafferty reminded delegates that recovery induced by a financial crisis tends to be “twice as deep and lasts longer” than a recovery that is brought about through government policy or decisions. Economies across the world are currently showing “upbeat signals”, he said. “It was only a year ago we were talking about a free-fall in the global economy.” However, inter-bank rates have normalised, falling to rates “not seen since before...[full story]
Business:Quinn cuts
Thursday, June 3rd, 2010Over 900 redundancies have been announced at Quinn Insurance following three months of turmoil at the company. Meadhbh Monahan reports. After it was taken out of control of the wider Quinn Group and placed into administration following “serious and persistent breaches” of the solvency rules in March, Quinn Insurance Ltd (QIL) was ordered to stop writing policies in the UK. They have since been allowed to re-open to all private motor drivers in the UK, but on 30 April the company announced the redundancies saying: “although regrettable and painful for the employees and their families,...[full story]
