Karl Whelan
@WhelanKarl
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Professor of Economics at University College Dublin.
Dublin, Ireland
Joined March 2012
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Last Seen Profiles
Newsnight opens with "Labour are going to renationalise water, mail, rail and buses ... radical stuff." My first thought -- all that stuff is nationalised in Ireland and people don't think we're some kind of radical socialist republic.
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Love how the response is “the man has no manners” not “Actually, we did have a plan.”
"The man has no manners, I think it's extremely regrettable, not at all helpful"
@AndreaLeadsom
on
@eucopresident
Donald Tusk's "special place in hell
#Brexit
comment
#PoliticsLive
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Some of you will have seen the story of the apartment block in London ordered to be demolished because it failed to comply with the planning conditions. You may not be aware of other stories about these Irish developers, Luke and Brian Comer. A thread.
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A sad day. My father, Christopher Whelan, Professor Emeritus of Sociology at UCD and former Research Professor at ESRI, has passed away. We will miss him so much but will cherish our memories of a fantastic father, grandfather, uncle, colleague and friend.
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Remember how Brexit was going to reduce unnecessary red tape? How's that working out?
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Well British people, you're going to get what you deserve. Personally, I'm looking forward to all the news stories of farmers, fishermen and small business owners saying "we had no idea we'd be ruined." They were told. They ignored it.
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Protests in Dublin about a pub being replaced by a hotel (which would also have a pub). A useful bit of context is that these are the buildings being replaced. Perhaps people think it's fine for central areas of a city to look like this. I would disagree.
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Anyone else understand the campaign against Eamon Ryan? They had no TDs when he took over as leader. Now they have 12 and are in government with a PfG that implements lots of their policies. It feels like there's some unspoken subtext here that I'm missing
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German request for Greece to sign over €50 billion in assets. This is 27% of Greek GDP. In the U.S. this would be €4.5 trillion.
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They may get 30% in opinion polls and get trendy columnists to promote them but this is who Sinn Fein are. The real slow learners are those who glorify violence and think it plays a useful role in resolving Ireland’s problems.
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Ireland's recent election was unusual by international standards for its intense focus on housing shortages, homelessness and the widespread need to build more housing. Events since however show that Ireland has as big (or bigger) a NIMBY problem preventing housing being built.
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Your daily reminder that the all-UK backstop was a British request, not an EU or Irish idea.
Ireland's
@simoncoveney
just wrote that "there are no credible alternative arrangements", so his condition for the
#backstop
to be replaced can't be fulfilled, so in reality his demand is for the UK to never again have trade powers
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@andrew_lilico
I can think of better ways than reading the Spectator to understand what motivates the Irish position.
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There will of course be a social media campaign from SF on this - not the right type of builder, claims it's a bad financial deal etc - but it will be interesting to see how long a party campaigning constantly on a housing shortage can keep opposing every proposal to add supply.
Sinn Fein in Fingal have just voted against 1,200 new homes for Donabate as part of a plan that’s been ongoing for years. Social, affordable and private; priced at €270k. Real homes for real people.
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@andrew_lilico
Just to clarify, I have talked with many people in Ireland about this issue and nobody has expressed this "opportunistic" "eventual reunification" opinion. People would much prefer the status quo. You are just making this stuff up.
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Have to say I’m genuinely impressed how various people have completely convinced the Irish print and broadcast media that Dublin residential housing follows none of the traditional principles of economics.
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Apparently Ireland’s foreign minister should try harder to be enlightening and interesting to UK journalists instead of defending our interests and pointing out that this is the UK’s shitshow and the least they could do is own it. Personally, I’m happy he’s doing his job.
Contrary to most (so perhaps it’s just me), I’ve found Coveney among the most boringly predictable and least enlightening voices throughout this whole sorry saga. Never a word outside the conventional bounds of Brexit wisdom. Not one “oh, that’s an interesting point.”
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Also seeing lots of references to border polls. One huge lesson from Brexit: There should be no Irish border poll without a clear road-map of what would happen if the vote was in favour of a UI. Ideally, a poll would come with an agreed UK\Irish plan for how a UI would work
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Why do the BBC keep asking this idiot on? He is not an expert on international trade. In fact, pretty much everything he ever says about it is wrong. Why deliberately misinform viewers?
Patrick Minford - Under WTO rules the border between the EU & UK should be seamless.... the EU has got to be cooperative or it will be illegal. 🤦
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Looks like Newsnight will go through their full discussion without mentioning the Irish backstop. No wonder the UK is such a mess. Failure to understand the basic process of the Brexit negotiations is endemic. Hard to see it ending well now.
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DUP's Jeffrey Donaldson on TV3 gushing about the great trade deals the UK are going to do. Most of them would involve cheap food imports that would devastate whatever was left of NI agriculture.
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Interesting that the parties in the new Irish government that supposedly nobody wants have a combined 63% support and that
#notmytaoiseach
Varadkar ends his term as PM with a 75% job approval rate.
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Channel 4 news reporting Ireland one of the toughest on Greece. Pretty shameful stuff. Hard to imagine this is what the Irish public wants.
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RTE repeating clip of Enda saying "in Ireland’s case we did not increase income tax; we did not increase VAT; we did not increase PRSI"
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BBC news appear to have essentially ignored Davis's admission on the sectoral studies. Not only are the days when ministers had to resign for repeatedly lying about crucially important information are long gone -- the British press actively thinks it just doesn't matter.
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By the way, I am concerned that 2021 will be a high point for anti-Irish sentiment in England. As the losses they have brought on themselves become clear, they are not going to blame themselves. Blaming Ireland will be comfortable jingoistic territory for Brexiteers.
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In what democracy in the world do parties that get 43% of the vote have to bow down and “do what they were told” by the 25% of voters who picked a different party? Strange idea of democracy.
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I wrote an old-fashioned blog post (warning -
#longread
) on the UK's fiscal black hole.
The bottom line conclusion is below but along the way it covers fiscal rules, vigilantes, crazy OBR calculations, the BoE's interest on reserves and other fun stuff.
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We can't keep objecting to housing being built and then expect housing availability or affordability to change.
My colleague
@AlisonGilliland
effectively putting forward the objection of
@labour
Cllrs and others to the plan at Oscar Traynor Road.
We can’t keep making the same mistakes and expect a different outcome.
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This seems like a really bad policy. Doesn't create any supply. Just drives prices up and gets the state into lots of complicated legal issues. Has all the hallmarks of a purely ministerial initiative - can only imagine the civil service briefings on it.
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Another example of the truism that Twitter isn’t real life. If you’d judged it based on contributions here it would have been 76% against.
Green Party members have voted to go into government with Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael by 76%.
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Perhaps Frost will be replaced by someone who is equally awful but I'm sure the Irish government will still be celebrating the departure of an arrogant twit who had a consistent malign influence on British-Irish relations.
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The vast majority of economists I've seen discuss the pandemic have emphasised that controlling the virus is essential for economic recovery. I've lost count of how many times I've seen economists recommend massive spending on test and trace and use if necesssary of lockdowns.
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Governments throughout the EU waking up to the immutable fact that Michael Gove is a complete dick.
2/ National capitals are waking up to the Protocol flare up, having believed it had all been sorted out in a meeting between Gove and
@MarosSefcovic
last December. One diplomat said the letter was "outrageous", another said member states were "incandescent"
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A hard border will not be the EU “betraying Ireland”. It will be the EU enforcing its rules. The border will be the inevitable consequence of so many Brexiteer red lines.
EU will betray Ireland by imposing a hard border but will try to blame Johnson
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Don't be surprised if this Irish election outcome leads to a second election. SF can play hardball on government negotiations so if FG and FF don't cobble something together, then SF can run a lot more candidates and translate a similar performance into having the most seats.
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Does there reach a point where a party that arose from the use of violence to attempt to achieve its goals consistently objecting to the legitimate outcome of a democratic election (person with the support of the majority of the seats gets elected PM) starts to be a bad look?
How many men does it take to do one woman’s job? People voted for change, this isn’t it!
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We've been building to this for a few years but here it is. The first few paragraphs (prior to the actual book review, which is also pretty bad) are the worst paragraphs about Economics I have ever read. The money creation stuff is particularly execrable.
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This is bloody awful stuff. I don't follow him but I'm blocking him now. Any of you that follow him should stop.
I am getting a lot of messages all of a sudden about Patient Number 3 in Ireland
If you know the identity of patient number 3, or just where this person worked and their role, please DM me
Thanks
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Seriously, what is wrong with these people? All this nonsense can achieve is to unite the EU in the belief that the Tories are lunatics and need to learn the hard way that the EU is serious in its position.
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Here’s what happened. Your parliament revoked your government’s repeated commitment to the NI backstop. But you didn’t mention it in your article and it wasn’t mentioned on BBC News at 10 or Newsnight. It’ll be in your news soon enough though.
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@andrew_lilico
@juanincognito
@JGForsyth
Whatever. If he's your source for the "Irish are pushing a sly quick reunification" idea, I'd suggest you ask around a bit more.
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@Aidan_Regan
Honestly Aidan, this is beneath you. You know what trickle down economics is. It's the claim that supply side growth mechanisms meant tax cuts for the rich boosted all. It wasn't true and wasn't backed by mainstream economists.
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The Eurozone has a million "rules" & lots of countries break them (including Germany). So this "rules based" argument on Greece is hokum.
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A 60-40 result would be extraordinary. Means support for No went way beyond Syriza's left wing constituency.
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I'm bored writing about the nonsense people say about property markets but as a professor I care about our students having places to live. Reading all the negativity in this article, I'd like to make a few points in favour of student developments.
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Marcus Rashford is to be congratulated for outstanding campaigning on behalf of deprived kids. But the whole thing shows how far the Tories have moved the window for debate. Surely the key question is why basic UK social welfare rates are so low that people can't feed their kids?
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Hi macro people.
@Kadee_Russ
and I have joined Review of World Economics as Editors-in-Chief and we would love to receive submissions on international macro\banking\monetary policy or anything related. The journal publishes a lot of trade\FDI but we are keen to broaden the scope.
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No doubt I will get lambasted for even asking this but here goes. The SCSI reckons a typical four-bed detatched home in Ireland's north west costs €210k to rebuild with extra for fancier than average fittings. Can someone explain why the €420k offer is considered unacceptable?
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Media never publish "Residents approve of proposed development" stories but I will note that, as someone who lives close to here (unlike Frank McDonald) I welcome this development.
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For people baffled by the Tory obsession with the ECJ, it might be helpful to know most of them think it brought cases against British soldiers. That was actually the ECHR which is nothing to do with ECJ but hey they both start with EC so it’s all the same to them.
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Hovering between relief and disgust at the agreed deal. I think this from Munchau summarises the key issue now.
http://t.co/1ytNfuVHSw
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5. Germany has an effective veto on ESM loan agreements. German strategy appears to be to set conditions that won't be met and force Grexit.
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@Aidan_Regan
In contrast, the claim additional supply eases supply constraints and reduces prices is a reasonable one and you've been shown plenty of empirical evidence. "Trickle down" is an attempt to associate a reasonable position by analogy to a totally different unreasonable one. Poor
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NIMBYism update. Apparently you shouldn't develop this site because the existing delapidated building has bats ... and it wouldn't be fair to the bats. There would barely be a broken-down building anywhere that could be converted if you used this logic.
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This man was Brexit Secretary during the period the UK -- repeat the UK -- lobbied for the backstop to be a UK-wide customs union. The EU eventually conceded this. Raab now says it was the EU's strategy "in order effectively to try and lock us into a range of their laws".
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“Brexit being dreadful shows why we needed to Brexit” is the worst of all the Brexit takes but it’s hugely popular with the true believers.
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Today I was Zoom lecturing a PhD class and asking "Any questions?" and for the first 50 minutes was disappointed at a lack of engagement. When we took a break for the second hour, I saw a bunch of chat messages. I'd had my volume down at zero and they'd been trying to talk to me!
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Guy on Question Time literally shaking with rage talking about how Barnier will be so upset if they don't pay over the £39 billion. Honestly lads, it's really not such a big deal for us or for you. Calculations here.
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It would be interesting to see the DUP's research detailing how the backstop would destroy NI's economy. They've had 26 months since Brexit and 10 months since the UK government agreed to the backstop, so they must have done lots of detailed work on this crucial issue.
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@andrew_lilico
@juanincognito
@JGForsyth
Your point is that this "strategic game" is what lies behind proposals for NI to remain in the EU single market and CU. That is not correct.
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Orla is right. I see good points on both sides in relation to tightening restrictions or not. I'd make a different point. Expert advisory groups recommendations should not be leaked to press and then everyone waits overnight for the government to react.
A friend makes a valid point - whole country is going to bed confused and worried and scared with no official statement from anyone. (I’ve already had a crying child).
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I do not know one economist who thinks Ireland's austerity was "a pro-growth policy". Pathetic preening from Kenny.
http://t.co/MqhD6tIN3o
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Brexiteers continue to be smugly insistent that no-deal will be fine and the fears are just nonsense dreamt up by unreliable "experts". It makes me wonder whether the UK needs a no deal outcome just to break the fever and expose these snake oil merchants for what they are.
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So it seems British journalists idea of a tough question is "You will cut taxes on the rich to boost growth even though it's unpopular?" rather than "Why do you say boosting taxes on the rich will boost growth given literally no evidence for this?"
PM Liz Truss defends her policies stating that "by keeping taxes low and growing the economy, we will get more tax revenues in" which will eventually result in "bringing the opportunities that people want to see".
📺 Sky 501, Freeview 233 and YouTube
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And remember how stressful this is for students who feel their career prospects are on the line. I am teaching two final year final semester modules. I have provided the following guidelines\reassurance.
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I wrote a blog bost about whether central banks are storing up "a ticking debt bomb". Short answer. No they are not.
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Leo Varadkar the latest PM to directly address their country. I thought he got it spot on, sombre, realistic about how bad things will be but reassuring that his government is working on as many angles as possible to make this easier.
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Not The Onion.
Duchess of Cambridge will be 'potent force' in Brexit bridge-building with EU countries
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Close to where I live, an apartment block derlict since 2007. The Comers bought it in 2012. Despite a severe lack of housing, it's still a shell.
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Apartment block in Sligo. Empty for about 15 years.
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The god-awful Nicholas Watt on Newsnight dismisses an Irish position on Brexit as "blarney". Asshole.
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Bought this hotel in Kilternan south Dublin in 2014. Still empty. Planning application for an equestrian centre expired.
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I see Sean Quinn still doesn’t understand (or pretends not to) how the insurance business works. Money taken out to cover his CFDs. Underpriced policies. No actuarial team. Huge insolvency. All covered here.
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The belief of (apparently all) UK broadcast journalists that a future trade agreement with the EU would mean no need for the NI backstop is remarkable. This almost certainly won’t be the case.
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Deciding access to university on the basis of a new ad hoc "predicted grades" system is a dreadful idea. I'm astonished it's being suggested by so many people. There is no system to estimate grades and any system put in place would be riddled with inequities and inconsistencies.
"It's one year, estimate the grades this year and revert to normal process next year"
@ciarakellydoc
on the Leaving Cert exams during
#Covid19
#TonightVMTV
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A reminder that Mervyn King supported the hard Brexit which has reduced the UK's standard of living and made all of the current difficulties worse. Not exactly an oracle of economic wisdom.
“All of us are going to have to share the burden”
Former Bank of England Governor Lord Mervyn King says the UK needs a government that will “tell us honestly there is a reduction in our national standard of living”
#BBCLauraK
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LC students know what the plan is. The only people adding uncertainty and stress today are the FF party -- which may be in government soon -- saying they want to change to plan to some other unclear alternative.
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I don’t know how much of this is pandering to bigots versus cluelessness about what giving bigots three months notice to object would imply. Either way it’s not a great look for a supposedly progressive party.
The manager of Magowna House knew for three months that asylum seekers would be housed there.
But nobody else was told.
Not the local community, not local politicians, not even Clare Immigrant Support Centre.
How was this handled so poorly?
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Varoufakis describes how he quit.
http://t.co/5bnxJP715c
Hard to see him as a loyal backbencher.
http://t.co/AX4pFVJauO
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May steering the Titantic straight for the iceberg. Speech almost completely at odds with reality.
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A massive upgrade for the BBC. Its viewers would have been so much better informed over the past few years if
@faisalislam
had been doing their reporting on the implications of Brexit.
We are delighted to announce that
@faisalislam
has been appointed the new BBC Economics Editor. He will take up the role in the new year. Press release to follow.
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So what is it that EU knows “exactly” is required? Alternative arrangements for the backstop? Ok, which ones? Show us your plans. DUP have had 2.5 years to put forward their own well-thought-out plan. To my knowledge, they don’t have one.
Parliament has mandated the Prime Minister to seek a replacement of the backstop.
The European Union know exactly what is required to achieve a deal which Parliament can support.
It's time for Dublin and Brussels to be in a deal-making mode.
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I wrote an old-fashioned blog post: The EU’s Backstop is a Great Opportunity for Northern Ireland.
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When I was finishing my PhD I interviewed at the university where I now work. They pretty clearly thought I was useless and weren’t subtle about it. I decided it would be best to not have an academic career and joined the Fed. 11 years later they offered me a full professorship.
A question for you: what's one of the biggest rejections you've experienced?
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Hotel in Portumna, Galway bought in 2015. Left to decay. Put on a derelict properties register.
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And again, BBC's Brussels reporter, who has been saying things nobody else in Brussels believes (e.g. EU ready give in on the backstop) picks up on this stupid editorial and probably imagines this is some kind of leverage the UK has against Ireland.
Some concern in Ireland👇that EU solidarity may not survive a no deal Brexit. Rumours are rife that Ireland could be “shut out” of the single market to avoid non regulation products flooding in through open border on the island of Ireland post
#Brexit
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Ah yes, true socialism is refusing to raise money on property owners to provide much-needed local services. I'm sure it's in Marx somewhere.
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Professional announcement. I have recently taken over as one of the Editors-in-Chief at the historic Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv - published since 1913).
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I don’t know. I’d like an explanation. What exactly is your leader doing holding up this idiotic sign?
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Galling to see Irish ministers preening themselves at big conferences about how much they lover higher education while at the same time leaving the sector chronically underfunded and preventing universities from recruiting permanent academic staff due to the ridiculous ECF.
Minister
@mitchelloconnor
at opening of
#futureofwork
@hea_irl
and
@mitsloanHEA
says the intellectual capacity nurtured by higher education is Ireland’s oil reserve.
@IUAofficial
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Here are my slides from this morning's conference.
Thanks to
@LiamDelaneyEcon
and
@stephenkinsella
and
@UCD_PFL_Eval
for chairing.
I'm speaking tomorrow at the second conference on "Ireland’s COVID19 Crisis Response: Perspectives from Social Science." I will be discussing the ECB's role and possibly Eurobonds vs. ESM.
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Some thoughts on the Greek situation prior to Monday's summit. "Greece, The Euro and Gunboat Diplomacy,"
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Downing Street strategy on Brexit seems to be as follows. Make up things like "Food Blockade". Then later announce that after intense discussions the Food Blockade has been lifted. Win!!! Presumably the purpose is have wins to point to when there are subsequent concessions.
Cabinet Office: “The EU has now said to us that normal processes will be followed on third-country listings. So there are no obstacles to listing our food and agricultural products as our food standards rules will be exactly the same as the EU’s"
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Prize for worst article of the week on Greece surely already wrapped up by Giavazzi. The FT on something of a run.
http://t.co/ESfCFdqh6q
…
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There's also this.
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Gabriel says voting No means rejecting the rules of the eurozone. Is he smoking crack? Bizarre and unhelpful.
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