Ireland: Unemployment expected to reach 17 percent

[Hannah Bell]

A report released early May by the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) states that Ireland is expected to go through the sharpest economic contraction of any industrialised country since the 1930s. The ESRI’s spring quarterly commentary predicts that Ireland’s gross domestic product (GDP) will fall 9.2 percent this year.

The report continues, “Ireland’s economy will contract by around 14 percent over the three years 2008 to 2010. By historic and international standards this is a truly dramatic development.”

It continues: “Prior to this, the largest decline for an industrialised country since the 1930s had been in Finland, where real gross domestic product declined by 11 percent between 1990 and 1993.”

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/may2009/irel-m06.shtml



Ireland = neo-lib poster child only a few short years ago.

[Cruzan]

1. Well, they shot their load in the Irish version of the housing bubble so what do you expect?

Hope those potatoes taste OK.

[TheBigotBasher]

6. That is a nasty nasty thing to say.

No one jokes about the Nazi holocaust and that should be the same for jokes about the potato famine.

[sasquatch]

2. Where's the villager Thomas Friedman on this?

[JVS]

3. wow. nice work, friedmanites

[ColbertWatcher]

4. Doesn't the GOP always hold up Ireland as a "great place for businesses?" n/t

[muriel_volestrangler]

5. World Bank ranks it 7th in the world

and that's for the period April 2007 to June 2008, when the wheels were starting to fall off the world economy:

http://www.doingbusiness.org/EconomyRankings/

Top 11:
Singapore
New Zealand
USA
Hong Kong
Denmark
UK
Ireland
Canada
Australia
Norway
Iceland

Yes, "easy to do business in" correlates fairly well with "up shit creek without a paddle".

[Dappleganger]

7. Well they have my husband's job now.

The company moved the plant to Ireland and laid off the US employees, so they should be happy. :mad:

[Hannah Bell]

10. & now they're laying off the irish ones.

see how that global economy works?

[applegrove]

8. And they were the poster child for deregulation. Shame on them for

playing fast and loose with regulations.

[earth mom]

9. Wow. That's scary. Wonder what the U.S. TRUE numbers are?

:yoiks:

[aikoaiko]

11. Wow, that's a sudden turnaround for them.

In the late 1990s my Irish friends were taking delight in watching English laborers cross over to do the dirty work because the Irish were doing so well financially.

[quiller4]

12. That is an EU commissioned report and considerably bleaker

than the predictions of the Irish government. The unemployment rate is currently 11.4%. The Economic and Social Research Institue does predict a rise to 17% but that figure is subject to dispute since the ESRI is a think tank for Fine Gael, Ireland's second largest political party.

There is little doubt that Ireland's economy is in sad shape. However, I wouldn't put too much faith in figures released by a Fine Gael think tank in the same week that FG leader Enda Kenny "challenged Taoiseach Brian Cowen to put the Budget 'to the people' in a general election". (IrishTimes.com Dail Report 8 April 2009).

[TheFarseer]

13. Isn't Ireland the Republican Utopia

where taxes are so low and industry is booming because companies are relocating there for lower taxes? or is that another country?