The Other Hand

The IDA's annual report on companies supported by them shows tech job losses. This is consistent with Ireland's external trade data - although the latter remains heavily distorted by post-pandemic return to normal for pharmaceutical exports. Three central banks met this week. All left interest rates unchanged but delivered very different messages. Members of the Federal Reserve's rate setting comm...

Jim returns from Canada and stresses the scope for improved economic & business ties with Ireland. Inflation is coming down but the world's central banks are poised to to do battle with the markets and disabuse them of their assumptions about rapid interest rate cuts next year. Falling interest rate expectations have helped some mortgage rates to ease, especially in the US and UK. House prices...

In conversation with professor Shane O'Mara of Trinity College Dublin. Novo Nordisk has become Europe's largest, most valuable, company on the back of some new weight-loss drugs. Is the hype justified? It's early days but the preliminary evidence is an emphatic yes! There are familiar caveats: potential side effects and cost. But these drugs do seem to work. And not just for weight loss - this is...

Jim shares his impressions of the state of Irish-Canada relations during a tour of the major east coast cities. Also in the frame: latest Exchequer returns and GDP data. Boom and bust in a week. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Inflation surprises, again, by its rapid fall. But central bankers have been telling us that the 'last mile' will take years. The markets have been laughing at those central bankers. And it is said that our monetary masters value their 'credibility'. Self-awareness training wouldn't go amiss. Or maybe they should just hire a decent PR agency. A week of obituaries. The death of the greatest investo...

The right is rising, even in Ireland. Each country has its own drivers but immigration is a unifying grievance. How big a problem is this in Ireland? Should we all abandon social media? Follow the example of the mayor of Paris? What are the economics of immigration? When people say "we should spend our money on our own citizens" are they right? Or just not able to do arithmetic? The grass isn't al...

What will be the business and economic consequences of the Dublin riots? There is often trouble when large pools of uneducated, unemployed young men are organised by old men - mad mullahs, army councils, Trump-style demagogues. The list of suspects is a long one. Whether that trouble fizzles out or leads to revolution depends on many things. Mostly how the rest of us react to far right (or left) n...

Argentina is a study in not how to do it. For a very long time. And here they go again. Weep for Argentina. Given the serial objections by Sinn Fein to house building in their back yard, NIMBY's should probably vote for them. But where are the houses going to be built? At what cost? Shinner published targets for house buliding on their watch are close to being met by the current government. If hou...

Solving the Irish housing crisis is, in principle, easy: just build 50,000 units a year until the word 'crisis' disappears from the headlines and public consciousness. Is that a practical, realistic proposition - for any government of any persuasion? Why not just do it? Lots of trade data, particularly for exports, suggest that economies are slowing down. Irish exports are really hurting from the...

The only way to understand the latest outbreak of fighting in the ongoing Conservative Party's 30 year war is to look back at history. This has all been going on for a long time. To paraphrase (only a bit) John Major, this is now the Battle of the Bastards. It really is Game of Thrones stuff. But the country - the UK - is being laid to waste. The fight to succeed Sunak is well and truly on. It cou...

Rishi Sunak surprises everybody - he is even capable of a surprise! Cameron is back in, Braverman is back out. Sunak wants to be the candidate for change? Look at Cameron's track record and weep. But could his return be a really smart move by Sunak? Or will it merely invite the right-wing nut-jobs to try and defenestrate him? Just when there was a chance for UK politics to become boringly predicta...

In this episode Jim asks Chris if he is ghost writing articles for the FT. An actual FT journalist, one of their best, wrote an article about the things that Chris has been banging on about since The Other Hand started. Life in the Uk is getting steadily worse. Tim Harford cites three personal anecdotes and lots of data to make the point that public sector services have collapsed in the UK. Chris...

The peak in interest rates grows closer. Maybe Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We will not be cancelled Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Lots of economic data on both sides of the Atlantic are now pointing to slowing growth. Very slow in the case of Europe, a bit slower in the US. Even the US labour market is no longer defying gravity. Is Ireland just an extension of the US economy? It certainly is extremely correlated with US economic performance. It looks like the Corporation tax boom is over. For once, economists can say 'we tol...

With Professor Shane O'Mara Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The US Congress is not a serious legislature Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

With Nathan Johns of The Irish Times. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Is ESG investing getting it right? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Will the ECB this week do the right thing? (Spoiler alert: nothing) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Nathan Johns @nathanrjohns of the Irish Times discusses all of the action in this weekend's quarter finals of the Rugby World Cup. One unfancied team making the semis is ok, two reveals poor RWC seeding & planning. But Nathan convincingly argues that calibrating these things is difficult. Nathan persuades Chris that the 'technical' aspects of the game are as important as the flashier, more 'en...

The end of liberal conceits? Chris thinks there is evidence for the existence of more anti-Semitism in the world, latent or otherwise, than most are prepared to admit. In the UK, few people can quite bring themselves to believe the evidence of their own eyes and admit to the anti-Semitism present in the Labour party - at least until Starmer began to clean the stables. Everyone, everywhere, says th...

Octabuild were kind enough to host Jim & Chris for a Webinar discussing all things Budget 2024, with a special focus on the construction industry. The 8 member companies of Octabuild are Dulux Paints, Etex Ireland, Glennon Brothers, Grant Engineering, Gyproc, Irish Cement, Kingspan Insulation and Wavin Ireland ’. The national housing crisis puts the construction industry at the heart...

Ireland's export data weakens again. It's beginning to look like a trend. And maybe the world economy is weaker than we thought. The Health Service needs more money. How many countries can say that? It's as true in Ireland as elsewhere. But the suspicion grows that you could give the HSE any amount of money and it would still have a budget hole of €2 billion at the end of the year. Any year. Someb...

Why Ireland lost in a game of the finest of margins - really. On the numbers, Ireland and New Zealand could replay that game, deploy the same players and tactics, and Ireland would win 9 games out of 10. This was the tenth game. What about Ireland going forward - looking good, even in terms of replacing Jonny Sexton. Tight Head Prop, a massively under-rated position, could be more problematic. How...